ATATL however its spelled

[Coo-wah-chobee]

....SORRY ole' boy seen it spelled both ways. About the catch I would not wanna have one change his mind and reach fer handcuffs ifn ya on public land. Game offices will tell ya its up ta the officer in that area that sees ya. Too much ambiguity here fer me ifn I was on public land. The penalty ifn it goes against ya is BIG TIME as ya know. Course I hunt on private land most of the time so dont apply then as ya say......bob

[M-P]

Minor disagreement in how it's spelled.  The real problem is pronunciation.  There's at least three different pronunciations and nobody's sure which is correct.  Well, I suspect there are some Nahuatl  (spelling?) speakers left somewhere, but they aren't speaking up.   Ron

[Otoe Bow]

How did the cavemen spell it

Otoe

[Pat B]

oogah boogah!          Pat

[Coo-wah-chobee]

....................Hahahaha ! ...bob

[Kegan]

"Big stick chucker" sounds more fun than atlat anyway  !

But then again, that could apply to some of the peoiple around here, couldn't it  ?

[phalcon005]

Well, I had some fun in my youth with an Atlatl.  When I was around 15 I made a very crude atlatl and one spear, a roughly four foot hickory salping with nothing but a notch in the back and a whittled point on the front.  I chucked it at just about anything (remember, I was a teenager) and had an affinity for scaring the daylights out of the squirrels on our land.  There was an occasion where the stars were aligned or something and I actually managed to thump a squirrel with it and almost sent the squirrel out of the tree, but I can imagine I would never be able to hit a squirrel again in a million shots!

My main interest was the simplicity of constructing my crude setup, I probably spent two hours on the "thrower" and an hour on the "spear".  In a survival situation that seemed to be a remarkably short amount of time to create a ranged weapon with a lot of power. 

[Hillbilly]

I think Alabama is the only state that allows them for hunting all species of big and small game. Atlatls are fun and pretty amazing, I've thrown darts over a hundred yards before, and those suckers have amazing penetration. Don't ask me how I know, for instance, that an atlatl dart will go completely through both walls of a metal storage building or stick about 6" through the hood of a Ford 4000 tractor   

[Coo-wah-chobee]

.............Ya know I was wonderin' what that hole in hood was ! .......bob

[huntertrapper]

on youtube theres a video of a kid younger than me probably 11 or 12 and he hits a doe with one. i was looking for primitive archery hunts and found it. just type in something of the sort and you should be able to find it.

[medicinewheel]

Bob, Isn't it spelled atlatl (pronounced at-lattel). I know folks that are good enough with them to hunt with them but I don't know if most states allow them for hunting. Probably most state officials wouldn't even know what they are.      Pat

yes it's spelled atlat and it's commonly pronounced as you say,l but the hyper-correct pronounciation would be atl-atl; it's a maya or aztec word, i believe.
frank