Thought I’d nip in and add this about the hiking staff: I took aikido for a while. The variety I studied was “seidokan”, but I was exposed to other variations. All of the styles that I know of teach forms with a “jo” staff, which is similar to the more common six foot long “bo” staff, but is only four feet long.
The thing about the forms, though, is that they really exist to teach movement and theory, not effective combat. But, when you have the theory and the movement, you may find you can swing a mean stick, who can say.