DARTING AROUND

BLOWGUNS HAVE A LONG HISTORY, AND THEY'RE STILL USEFUL TODAY.

-  Michael D'Angona

With a just a whisper of sound and a quick exhale, a dart can be projected from a simple, cylindrical tube and enable the user to eat for the night, win a competition and even defend their home or belongings from thieves. These are the amazing qualities of a blowgun.

This overlooked tool/weapon is often overshadowed by more powerful projectile weapons such as the bow and arrow, the crossbow and even the Slingshot. However, what few people truly understand is that the blowgun can hold its own against these more-known competitors, involving a variety of uses and especially for hunting wild game.

Conversely, just as other hunting weapons are adapted for sport, so is the blowgun, albeit with far less popularity. Most people would never imagine that competitions could, or actually do, exist.

Here, we take the mystery out of this on-the-surface-simple weapon and peel back the long history of its use, the differences between hunting with a blowgun and participating in a rule-based competition, and finally, the diverse materials that are used to create the blowgun, from its ancient roots to its modern-day counterparts.

BACK IN TIME

The blowgun is not a modern device-not by a long, long shot. In fact, the oldest blowguns date back to the Stone Age. They've been seen in paintings on Pre-Columbian pottery and mentioned in ancient Mesoamerican myths. The Maya used blowguns, as did the North American Cherokees, Eastern Asian peoples, Western Europeans, South Americans and many more. Africa is the only continent (and Antarctica, of course) that doesn't have evidence of blowgun use.