Bolas survival weapon: throwing and crafting tips!

The Bolas or Boleadoras is a primitive survival tool used to entangle animals. Today, I will share a number of construction and throwing techniques that made the Bola a really effective improvised hunting weapon for me.

First some crafting Tips:
Consistent weights allows the bola to spread out more predictably. One trick is to saw off 3 identical billets of wood. This enables weight consistency as well as floatation if a bola is casted onto water.
2 notches are carved into each billet of wood.
You’ll want 2 pieces of cordage of the same length, from your chest to your finger tip. The 3rd piece of cordage should be 3-4 inches longer, the longer cordage will help the bola spread out in flight.
Now tie a claw hitch around each billet on the notches.
Then an overhand knot to secure the 3 lengths of cordage.
The finished bola takes less than 10 minutes to construct and will perform reliably for thousands of casts.

Now on to Throwing tips

When carrying the bola, you want to create a cinch knot. This knot keeps the weapon compact when in transport. It also allows a silent and fast deployment of the weapon..
When casting, too much spinning reduces the accuracy of this weapon. Instead, I prefer a half rotation or at most 1 rotation before releasing the bola.
During the cast, you want to lean your body into the release given it extra power. At the moment of release, this introduces an imbalance in the weapon’s center of gravity. This imbalance then causes the bola to fully spread out in flight.
During the release, the bola should be kept completely parallel to the ground. Minor changes to the release angle greatly limits the spread of the bola, thus significantly reducing hit probability.
Now in terms of learning curve. I find the bola to be harder than a throwing stick, but easier than the bow, the atlatl or the sling. After just 2 weeks of daily practice, I was able to get 2 hits out of every 3 casts at 30 feet.


Now this weapon has some limitations. The bola cannot be used in dense vegetation. Throwing it creates a highly visible motion, giving away your position to the prey. And you can't carry more than a few bolas with you on the hunt. With that said, the bola is easy to make, simple to maintain, and relatively quick to learn. The bola can take down a broad range of prey, from long legged ruminants, to birds with long necks or wide wingspans.. Overall, I believe the merits of the bola outweighs it's disadvantages as a survival weapon And thus it has a place in my arsenal. Anyways, you enjoyed this video, if you want to see more videos like this one, please like, share, and subscribe to my channel, thanks and good bye!

Audio: Creative Commons Dangerous Toys