Deerhunter21, I really can't give you advice about gathering staves from your area. I will give you a few tips in general though.
1- don't overdo it. Looking for cutting and hauling logs out of woods is the easy part. Preparing the staves to cure is time consuming and time sensitive.
2- look for nice straight sections of tree with straight bark and no limbs or knots. Twisted bark usually means twisted staves. They very rarely look better after you remove bark. Usually you find more imperfections after the bark, cambium or sapwood is removed.
3- plan for when you have time to take care of them. It's best to remove bark and cambium right away. Then split staves lengthwise. Then seal backs (side that bark was on) and ends (where you cut) with some type of sealer. I kinda like shellac but there's lots of options. White woods harvested during growing season will slip bark and cambium. It can pealed of. Yellow wood like osage, mulberry I like to remove bark and sapwood but it doesn't peel off. You have to scrape or split if off. The bark will help keep back from drying and checking but bugs live in it and can ruin your staves. It all has to come off to make a bow anyway and I figure the sooner the better. And seal backs and end at least one more time. Don't seal belly. It's actually best to remove some off the belly wood. We want stave to lose its moisture through belly. If it dries to quickly from back or end it will shrink faster than center and cause drying checks.
3- store for a couple weeks in a dry but not overly dry area. After a few weeks the drying process can be sped up a bit.
4- leave em dry for longer than you'd care to. I've speed dried some because I just wanted to start the learning process. I had plenty of staves and feel it was worth the lose in quality to start the process but if your looking for good quality Bow you need dry staves.
5- there's lots of other things you can build or aquire while your waiting for staves to dry. Tillering tree, maybe caul for straightening a or curves. Try a board bow to learn the process. Learn the vocabulary. Look at full draw and profile pictures to see what a good tiller looks like.
6- enjoy the adventure.
Best of luck
Bjrogg
