Making the bow was a short adventure because it is so simple and so unfinished. I was gifted a lovely piece of black ash by Mike Ulen, local tree-destructor, and got to work splitting a nice piece.

The bow is a very simple straight rod with a D-shaped cross-section, slightly tapered on both ends. That's it. So, I took to the branch with a small drawknife and shaped it.

This ended up being a bit shorter than Ötzi's stick, which was nearly as tall as he was. Some have experimented with hiking around in Ötzi's gear, and have said that the bow-stave made a brilliant hiking stick. Perhaps he intended to finish the bow whenever he made it to an area with more wild game.

There was some long, strong plant cordage found with Ötzi, which has been sometimes identified as a bowstring. Reading some wooden bow-building manuals, though, there is a consensus among experts that grass fibers simply aren't strong enough to bend an adult-size wooden bow. It seems that Ötzi was perhaps waiting to harvest some sinew for his bow, if he ever did intend to finish the piece.

EVen though this piece is short, I can attest to the fact that it is lovely for a wander around the woods. Espcecially in deeper snow, it helps to have a poker to test the trail ahead. Yeah, I'm pretty good with a bow-stave.