how can you tell live river cane?

[Pat B]

Jimmy, Collect shoots that are about 3/8" at the base and that have small branches, rather than just leaves on the tops of the shoots. The ones with only leaves are first year growth and will make weak arrows. Once you get them, bundle them in groups of 15 or 20. Be sure you lay them straight in the bundles before you put them up to dry. Give them a month and check one by removing the bark and see if the wood is dry. If not, give them a bit longer. I store mine next to the hot water heater in my utility room.
   Another method it to hand straighten the fresh shoots and bundle them. Every 3 or 4 days unwrap the bundle, hand straighten and re-bundle and set aside for a few more days. By the time they are dry they will be relatively straight with only a little heating necessary.
   With the sourwood shoots I use for arrows I can scrape the bark off when they are fresh and not worry about the wood checking(drying cracks). Some shoots will check even with the bark left on. Do a bit of experimenting by scraping a fresh shoot and see if it checks. Someone mentioned removing all of the bark but a few inches on each end. Try that. Give your shoots a few weeks and scrape a few and see what happens. By doing these things you will figure out what method works best for you.       Pat

[ballista]

 thanks, alot, these posts have made it alot easier. went out toay, in search of anything. saw two chitmucks and a squerrel, but I was out looking for some osier more that anything . I looked well, like when we go mushrooming, I just couldn't find the red shoots. I cut some gnarly, crooked tan colered "shoots", growing off a sapling,, those were 100% wood. other than those three, the other long woods i thought useful for arrows were all about 3mm thick of wood, one centimeter of foamy, useless white crud... I checked right along the river though, which its kinda steep. Im thinking maybe in a ditch, where rain water would stand, if I can get a hold of a camera ill post the 3 thick sticks i chopped today. thanks again guys, and do you guys know of any good sites for pictures of red osieror if someone has a few snapshots of red osier (cowboy, those pics are  ideal, I think i might buy some cane from the blanket, but... i dunno, it kinda takes the self chopped feeling away. -jimmy

[Pat B]

Jimmy, do a search for red osier. There were pics posted a few months ago.    Pat