# being shot with an arrow **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 11, 2010, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286 "2010-07-11T09:30:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/41 "2010-07-13T04:37:30Z")
> [@ExTank](#): > > Damn you, **engineer\_comp\_geek**! I just lost an hour-and-a-half to Tropes! All links to TvTropes should include a warning about that. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/42 "2010-07-13T04:46:58Z")
> [@](#): > > Check out Two Mules for Sister Sara with Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine. When Clint is shot through the chest with an arrow, he breaks off the shaft sticking out of his chest, puts gunpowder on the broken shaft, which is lit, and them MacLaine pulls the arrow out from the back with burning gunpowder cauterizing the wound. I don;t know if that works, but movies are way cooler than real life. But that’s Clint Eastwood. He probably uses gunpowder to brush his teeth. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/43 "2010-07-13T07:39:49Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > I’ve seen enough westerns to know that if you are shot with an arrow, you don’t pulll the arrow out… you need to push it through your body. > > My question is why? I can understand if an arrow is made of steel, and has barbs on it that would be impossible to yank out without ripping the wound apart. However, the native americans used stones chipped into arrowheads. There doesn’t seem to be any reason the arrow must be shoved through the body. It would seem that pulling the arrow back out is the way to go. > > So, does anyone know why they always show an arrow being broken off below the feathers and shoved through the wound instead of being pulled back out of the wound? What they show or what was really done a hundred years ago, no. I am betting it was because the points would come off if pulled back but not if pushed forward. Now that you got me curious I may just have to shoot some traditional arrows in a pig and try it out. But reality today I can speak to as a certified range safety officer who has had to be trained and actually deal with this. Luckily with modern course design, this doesn’t happen a lot but there is always some dude shooting in his back yard at a box full of newspapers and they help keep the science of this advancing. Field points you immobilize and transport to the hospital where the doctor will shoot an x-ray and then pull it out the way it went in. The x-ray is to check the path and help predict the amount of bleeding and possible organs involved. Even if it is a “through” sticking out both sides, he will often pull it back rather than drag the fletching or remaining traces of fletching (why they snap that part off in the movies) through the wound. How the point is attached makes some difference as one simply hot-glued to a cone insert is likely to pull free if pulled back and those _may_ be pushed through. If it comes free the result is often digging as it never picks and easy location to fall off. (hence my suspicion on the historical thing) Broadheads are another story and the x-ray really helps here in finding the type and position. Some are made to shed the main cutting “razors” inside the animal (or unlucky archer) and those have to be removed surgically and leave big wounds and scars that would impress any outlaw biker or gang-banger. But some with solid blades can actually be pushed through safer than pulled back since the shape and edges are made to enhance cutting being withdrawn. IE - as the animal runs, brush tugs and pulls at the arrow, pulling it back slightly and causing more damage. I am told that native flint arrowheads are designed this way but I’ve never done actual testing - yet. Should you find yourself shot by an arrow, try to have one matching it not shot through your body transported with you. It will make the trauma doctor smile; he will appreciate it. (In “Sister Sara” - historical records from the French and Indian War, the French do seem to have sometimes tried to cut the rear of the arrow off, carved a small trough in the remaining rear part of the shaft, filled the trough with black powder and ignited the powder to “cauterize” the wound as the arrow was shoved along its path and removed head first from the other side. They died as a rule as far as I can tell. I know black powder residue can cause some pretty bad infections and/or blood poisoning so I’m looking at that as the CoD) ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/44 "2010-07-13T07:50:49Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > _Interesting_. Looks like May may be wrong then ( heh ), which now makes me curious where the idea came from. Possibly early fiction being passed off as fact. J F Cooper in his one leatherstocking tale said Hawkeye used silk to patch his bullet because it would shoot longer and straighter. And some serious history books have passed that little tidbit on as fact. I (and many others in the NMLRA and like groups) tried it a lot in different conditions and it doesn’t work. Unless the thickness exactly matches the usual patch used for the rifle, it shoots far worse and even with a perfect match is doesn’t work very well; burns through too quickly and unevenly. And while we’re at it, no way the Shadow used two Colt automatics at the same time and shot at the rate he did. Try changing clips with a gun in each hand – I dare you. And don’t get me started on Tonto casting silver bullets over a campfire let alone how good they would be. ---
**Author:** ![bluezooky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@bluezooky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluezooky)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/45 "2010-07-13T07:51:37Z")
Googling arrow wounds papua new guinea gives almost 10000 results on arrow wounds, I’m not sure about the current situation however in the nineties you had the choice of paying for surgical removal or just leave the wooden arrow tip in place and in most cases you’d be fine. There was no free treatments an incentive for people to stop their intertribal warfare so plenty of people just grinned and beared it for a while. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/46 "2010-07-13T12:09:03Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > And don’t get me started on Tonto casting silver bullets over a campfire let alone how good they would be. Or how much damage they would do to your barrel. Always seemed to me, with modern bullets, the best anti-werewolf bullet would simply be a semi-jacketed hollow point with the hollowpoint stuffed with either a small silver slug, or silver shavings for maximum effect. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/47 "2010-07-13T12:44:21Z")
Several times gun writers have done articles about silver bullets. While they don’t mention any damage to the guns, they did note that the bullets performed very poorly. The were too hard to properly obturate and to engage the rifling. As a result, velocities were very erratic and accuracy was very poor. One of the writers casted his own bullets, and had the devil of a time getting any that were useable. Bullet casting equipment is designed around the use of lead which melts at a much lower temperature than silver. He did destroy at least one set of molds in the process. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286/48 "2010-07-13T15:34:09Z")
Back to the arrows - I did a quick scan of my library and some of the Wennawoods reprints (such as “Indian Wars of Pennsylvania”) have little bits here and there as do the Jesuit Relations in North America. But a lot of what we seem to know and see portrayed in movies looks to come more from early fiction. I checked a medical text from the 1840s and no mention of arrows - which sort of surprised me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-shot-with-an-arrow/546286.md?page=2)