A Common Man Sustainability Cross Bow

Description

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Tags: Pathfinder,Survival,Bushcraft,Cross Bows

Video Transcription

morning guys Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school back with another in our series of common man sustainability type arms okay and so I want to show you today is this is a Barnett Wildcat crossbow it's just a fiberglass bow it's not compound it's basically a recurve and it's got a wooden stock very simple trigger mechanism it's got adjustable sights for elevation and windage also has adjustable pin sights on the front it has two bolts on the side that probably had some kind of a cocking stirrup on the front that's missing I've just tied a piece of paracord on there for the time being I'll go ahead and Forge another stirrup for it the simplicity of something like this is that if the string were to break you're probably not going to break this piece of fiberglass and if the string were to break you could make another string from bank line very easily for this bow if you had to that makes it a pretty good choice for self-reliance type weapon now here's the real kicker okay price I got this at a gun show for $25 $25 for this Barnett wildcat crossbow okay nothing fancy it's a very old wooden non compound crossbow but it is a 150 pound draw it's plenty to kill anything up to including a deer I've got a couple arrows here that I fashioned very quickly from older arrows that I used to use with my bow and all I did was cut them off at the back I cut the nock points off of them and rounded them over with a file so that they wouldn't split out and cut them to length and put a couple filled tips on them these are eleven thirty seconds or eleven sixteenths cedar arrows you could go buy wooden dowel rods you could cut saplings you can make ammunition for this bow very very easily you could use duct tape for fletchings you could use bottle glass or some kind of scrap metal for broadheads if you wanted to an expect casing on the front would make a very good blunt point for small game and things like that but a weapon like this that's silent for the most part compared to a gun very efficient easy to aim the repeatability is easy and when I'm looking at equipment you know I've got this acronym that I use quite a bit called farmed okay it's f AR MD the F stands for functionality and that refers more to multi-functionality than anything else and the multi functionality of this is that it will take a variety of game from small game all the way to large game so it makes up for several calibers if I were carrying a firearm then you have affordability affordability depends on what you can afford 25 bucks almost anybody can afford that and you can make the arrows basically for free so you have a very affordable weapon the R stands for repeatability am i able to use this weapon and get the same results every time I shoot it well that depends on the quality that depends on my ability in my skill level but with practice I should be repeatable with this weapon so that brings us to the M and the M s maintainability how easy is this maintenance on this weapon was very simple it has a very simple device art that just needs to be oiled here for the cocking mechanism it has a few metal parts on that need to be taken care of with some type of fat lard or something like that and it has a string that has to be maintained with wax fixing wax will do the job just fine as well as Coon tallow do your towel things like that all of those things work and then you can maintain the stock the same ways your wood ax handle or anything else with oils and waxes and things like that so the maintenance of this weapon is very low it has a very good maintainability factor and the D stands for durability how durable is this thing going to be if I drop it banging around bump it beat on it bang it against a tree drop it onto the rocks things like that how durable is this weapon well this piece of fiberglass is very durable you're not going to break that it has one bolt that holds it in the front if you're not going to take it apart you're not gonna take a chance on stripping that out the overall wood stock is going to be very durable I would guess that this crossbow is probably at least 20 years old maybe more probably seen some use got some scratches on things like that so the durability factor this weapons pretty good as well so that's how I kind of look at things that I'm going to put in my kit that's one of the acronyms I used farmed I look at the functionality I look at the affordability I look at you know the repeatability the durability and I look at them

maintainability of that weapon or that item and if they all are pretty good then that's going to be something I'm going to add to my kit so this might be something I would put into a longer-term kit where I had a vehicle a four-wheeler a horse a cart a buggy a sled a canoe something where I could carry an extra weapon with me other than my firearm this would probably be a very very good choice because it's very simple to master in skill it takes a lot more skill to shoot something with a bow then it does a crossbow crossbow is very similar to shooting any other shouldered weapon like a rifle or a shotgun so you're used to doing that already if you're familiar with firearms makes it very very accurate and very easy so we're going to take these two arrows I just made up this morning real quick and I've got a raccoon target over here we're going to try to sight this thing in a little bit well started about 10 yards when we move our way back to about 25 and we'll see how accurate this thing is over distance because I figure if at 25 yards I can hit a raccoon size target at 25 yards I can kill a deer stay with me guys okay guys so I'm going to back up a little bit behind the camera I've got the camera about probably seven yards away I'm going to back up behind the Cameron fire we'll try to get this thing sighted in I'm going to aim center mass to begin with I've got all the sights pretty much centered and everything up and down elevation windage everything centered we'll see what happens here

okay looks to me like things shot high and to the left which the high parts not a big deal at this distance the left is so we'll move it right a little bit a couple clicks very simple to do on this thing it has a very simple mechanism right here it has turned dials and I'm going to move this to the right one two three clicks that will move it this way which will put the air of the opposite direction it absolutely buried that arrow for sure it has target of ten yards okay real quick like let's talk about cocking this weapon this like I said this thing is 150 pound crossbow I put a loop on the bottom of it to hold it on my foot and Lou of the stirrup but this thing is no picnic to try to cock it would take a pretty strong kid to build a cock out then it's as simple as dropping the arrow in with the cock feather down sliding backwards pushing the safety off and firing the crossbow so we're going to stay at the same distance

check our windage adjustment see what happens

all right still shooting high still shooting a little left we'll bring it in just a little bit more it wasn't much left it's almost center mass we just need to bring it maybe one more click and then we're going to aim low on the next shot

well again high left a couple more clicks okay want to call this the final adjustment before we move I know we're sitting I wanted to hit a little bit high this close but I'd rather it be a little bit more to the right for sure okay that's not bad at any horrible we'll take that and move back okay guys we're going to double the distance this time go to 20 yards so let's back her up zoom best I can you're not gonna be able see this very well from this distance for sure we can put one in here I'm gonna be real happy okay that shot was hi little spine shot I may have jerked a trigger on that I'm not sure we'll give her one more shot and find out okay guys if we're hitting a raccoon size target with this thing at 20 yards you know four or five shots out of the box pretty happy with that I'm gonna have to work with it make some more adjustments get my technique down a little better I'm not a crossbow guy for the most part but this thing could make me become one pretty quick I think real simple light easy thing to shoot and carry doesn't hardly weigh anything it's not like the big heavy fibreglass mechanical things they have now with the wheels all over them you know those things are just god-awful to try to carry through the woods this thing's pretty light this thing doesn't weigh near with my 22 weighs even as far as my 22 rifle goes so I hope you guys enjoyed this video I appreciate everything you do for me for my family for my school I'll be back to another video as soon as I can in this common man series on sustainable weapons for hunting and gathering meeting

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