# Ever used poison tipped darts?



## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

I'm not a hunter, but, ironically I have an interest in pretty much anything lethal. particular ammunition of all kinds. I've been crafting arrows for some time as Archery is a fierce hobby of mine (when i find the time).

I was wondering if anyone here has used poison darts of some kind, and how effective they may be, and whether or not that poison can be used on small darts to successfully hunt quarry of a size disproportionate to the size of the dart - if you know what i mean...

Recently i used a few weeks to do some research about toxic plants and which ones in particular were and are used in the creation of poisons for hunting. After a lot more research into the properties of specific toxins i started to theorise how i could use the plants which contain said toxins to create potent poisons for use on ammunition. I came to the conclusion that i can in fact create a poison which may serve as a viable replacement to big heavy darts for hunting bigger game. The problem was sourcing the plants and finding out about methods of extraction to get what i need. I know this kind of stuff is already out there, i'm doing this because obtaining this stuff is probably pretty difficult and possibly illegal, depending on where you are. also, i thought it would be cool if people could make effective poisons from plants in their area!

i'd like to know what design of dart everybody thinks would best serve the purpose of delivering a lethal dose to a prey animal with minimal materials.

any ideas?


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## muddog15 (Dec 16, 2012)

Any kind of poison would take a long time for it to work. It's really not that practical, unless you want to wait all day or longrr for it too work.


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## GhostHawk (Oct 28, 2013)

Well I can't speak for anyone else, but living in Fargo ND there is not a whole lot up here that is really capable of being turned into a fatal poison. Plenty of stuff that might make you sick, but trying to brew it into a poison could make you sick also.

If I lived further south I'd be looking at things like snake venom. Not that hard to find, and a smear on a dart could well be fatal to a smaller animal.


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## Chimes (Dec 30, 2013)

If I were to try anything it would be Monkshood, or as most people know it as Wolf's Bane. I'm pretty sure it's used for landscaping in the US(not native), so you would have to grow it yourself. As for Africa I would look into poisonous sap from certain trees if you're in the right area. There's also a beetle that is poisonous in that area but I don't remember it's name. Though the beetle's poison could take days to kill the animal. Wolf's Bane on the other hand can take a couple of hours in small doses and be immediate in large. Never really know how much a small or large dose really is though.


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## NaturalFork (Dec 7, 2012)

I am more of a target shooter when it comes to blowguns. If I did want to kill something with a blowgun I would most likely just try to use the most lethal dart I could come up with.


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## muddog15 (Dec 16, 2012)

With some kinds of poison you could poisen your food & then yourself. Or yourself just working with the stuff.


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## Chimes (Dec 30, 2013)

The thing about using the poison is to go for larger game, so you have more meat. Normally once they had taken prey with their poison blow darts they would not eat the meat where the wound was. At least that's what I've heard. A lot of the poisons were not made to kill the animal, but to stun/paralyze, which are the poisons I'd like to make if ever needed. Such as Curare, it's a paralyzing poison. Though in sufficient doses it leads to death. As for working with the poisons, yes there are a lot of them that could in fact poison you just by working with it. Such as the sap of the tree I mentioned earlier. Nicotine is another toxin that has been used as a poison, 1 drop of pure Nicotine is enough to kill someone. It can be absorbed through your skin too, which is why you must wear protective clothing and eye wear when extracting it. Plenty of dangers when dabbling in poisons and such.



muddog15 said:


> With some kinds of poison you could poisen your food & then yourself. Or yourself just working with the stuff.


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## muddog15 (Dec 16, 2012)

Good luck.


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## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

All true. So conclusion = poison, bad idea. 
There it's a plant called Acokanthera Oppositifolia, it occurs naturally rather close to where i stay now, that's the one I'm looking for. History tells us that humans inflicted with an arrow wound using a poison created with only that bush leads to death in 30 minutes to 2 hours.

So what type of dart would best deliver a toxin?


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## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

Chimes, curare might be fun to make, i think i can actually get hold of Strychnos spinosa or St. pungens. You might have to grow it yourself though. I never knew that nicotine was so toxic! How is it extracted?


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## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

Chimes said:


> If I were to try anything it would be Monkshood, or as most people know it as Wolf's Bane. I'm pretty sure it's used for landscaping in the US(not native), so you would have to grow it yourself. As for Africa I would look into poisonous sap from certain trees if you're in the right area. There's also a beetle that is poisonous in that area but I don't remember it's name. Though the beetle's poison could take days to kill the animal. Wolf's Bane on the other hand can take a couple of hours in small doses and be immediate in large. Never really know how much a small or large dose really is though.


I'm sure you could get hold of water hemlock. That is extremely potent too. Might work well with monkshood!


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## NaturalFork (Dec 7, 2012)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curare


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## Chimes (Dec 30, 2013)

Chips said:


> I'm sure you could get hold of water hemlock. That is extremely potent too. Might work well with monkshood!


I'm sure I could easily find Water Hemlock, also able to find Poison Hemlock. Which is similar to Curare's workings where it causes paralysis of respiratory muscles which results in death due to lack of oxygen to the brain and heart. Also, it's similar to Nicotine. I've seen a lot of Poison Hemlock at the river I go night fishing/snagging at.


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## orcrender (Dec 8, 2012)

Nicotine seems easy to extract. If you want to look up *The Anarchist Cookbook. *Maybe also The Poor Mans James Bond. Nicotine has been used to kill insects on crops for some time. They may have stopped using it, but I do not know. Believe it or not most of what I typed has come from mystery novels and then I checked it online.


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## Chimes (Dec 30, 2013)

orcrender said:


> Nicotine seems easy to extract. If you want to look up *The Anarchist Cookbook. *Maybe also The Poor Mans James Bond. Nicotine has been used to kill insects on crops for some time. They may have stopped using it, but I do not know. Believe it or not most of what I typed has come from mystery novels and then I checked it online.


Seems to be expected since Nicotine is in fact a natural insecticide. That's the tobacco plants natural defense!


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## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

orcrender said:


> Nicotine seems easy to extract. If you want to look up *The Anarchist Cookbook. *Maybe also The Poor Mans James Bond. Nicotine has been used to kill insects on crops for some time. They may have stopped using it, but I do not know. Believe it or not most of what I typed has come from mystery novels and then I checked it online.


Wow! i did not know that! thanks! *The Anarchist Cookbook * looks awesome!


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## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

Chimes said:


> Chips said:
> 
> 
> > I'm sure you could get hold of water hemlock. That is extremely potent too. Might work well with monkshood!
> ...


haha, no way! thats hectic, lol mail some to me!? just kidding. probably illegal as hell


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## GhostHawk (Oct 28, 2013)

I get Nicotine for my Electronic Cig (Make my own juice, long term cig and pipe smoker, 40 years)

It is available in quite high concentrations, and is very reasonably priced.

Now how much 48 milligrams per Millimeter Nicotine in Vegetable Glycerin you would need to kill a creature is a whole nother subject.

Along with exactly what kind of delivery system you'd need.

But if anyone near Fargo ND wants to try some, stop by, have a cup of coffee or a homebrew beer and we'll set you up.


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## squirrelslinger (Feb 2, 2014)

Chimes said:


> The thing about using the poison is to go for larger game, so you have more meat. Normally once they had taken prey with their poison blow darts they would not eat the meat where the wound was. At least that's what I've heard. A lot of the poisons were not made to kill the animal, but to stun/paralyze, which are the poisons I'd like to make if ever needed. Such as Curare, it's a paralyzing poison. Though in sufficient doses it leads to death. As for working with the poisons, yes there are a lot of them that could in fact poison you just by working with it. Such as the sap of the tree I mentioned earlier. Nicotine is another toxin that has been used as a poison, 1 drop of pure Nicotine is enough to kill someone. It can be absorbed through your skin too, which is why you must wear protective clothing and eye wear when extracting it. Plenty of dangers when dabbling in poisons and such.


Actually, you can eat curare.

Not that I am suggesting you do so.

I honestly think that the safest way to make such a poison dart is to make a sort of hypodermic needle dart with a ball in it, which on impact the ball literally shoves the poison out of the needle.

Curare kills by paralyzing the muscles- it is sometimes used in modern medical stuff for relaxing muscles.

It kills because it paralyzes the diaphragm. So its actually suffocation.

I dunno how to extract nicotine, but I imagine one could simply buy a lot of tobacco- it does have nicotine content...

A better way might be to use something EXTREMELY corrosive, with the same hypodermic method mentioned above.

very-small-diameter bamboo can be used in .62 cal blowguns. I have done so.

Actually, I found some river-cane(an american bamboo) growing wild(of course I cut some).

There were a few 1/8th inch diameter MATURE stems... and they were hollow. They were also some of the toughest bamboo to cut ever, and had some of the hardest outer walls ever.

I believe wolfsbane isn't actually that toxic compared to other compounds.

Another effective one would be needle-darts shot from a SMALL .22 or .30 cal blowgun. extremely high speed, very accurate(I have a carbon fiber tube inner diam is 6.15 mil... about .25), and extremely lethal to most small game. I recall killing a rabbit by hitting it in the eye with spun nail dart. Needle-darts will easily penetrate the skull of most birds. combine that with a little poison.


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## squirrelslinger (Feb 2, 2014)

Chips said:


> orcrender said:
> 
> 
> > Nicotine seems easy to extract. If you want to look up *The Anarchist Cookbook. *Maybe also The Poor Mans James Bond. Nicotine has been used to kill insects on crops for some time. They may have stopped using it, but I do not know. Believe it or not most of what I typed has come from mystery novels and then I checked it online.
> ...


Just warning you, The Anarchist Cookbook is actually mostly BS from what I have heard. Most of its projects assume the maker has no qualms about accidentally killing themselves in the process.

I believe that it may also make the gov't watch you rather closely.


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## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

I finally found Acokanthera Oppositifolia! going to combine it with Nerium Oleander and maybe some latex from a few other nasty plants and then, sorry to say, it's on to testing on the damn pigeons that shit on my tiles. Or i'll just keep using stun darts.


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## Teach (Dec 30, 2013)

Chips, over the years of Blow Gunning that I have been involved in the hobby/sport this subject has come up many many times and generally speaking now it is usually met with the same thoughts and although those thoughts are not always voiced most are of disapproval for the idea and it is generally the younger members of the forums who bring up this topic the most.

I can only see the use of poison being justified in situations of needing to provide sustenance in places like the jungles where such poisons like curare (spelling?) are used which when introduced to the blood stream of the animal kills the animal but does no harm to the person who consumes that animal. Very very special knowledge is needed in the preparation of these substances that has been learned and past down through generations of tribal peoples which I'm pretty sure you don't possess.

The other scenario I could see someone wanting to use poison is in vermin control like rats, racoons etc. It has been mentioned that Monkshood/Wolfsbane could be used by Chimes. Yes this is a deadly poison of great notoriety. But what is seldom known is what a long and painful heinous death this and many other poisons inflict on the animal that is is being used on. i don't believe in shooting anything I'm not going to eat just for sport with the exception of problem animals that do harm to property or could spread disease but I don't hate those animals so why oh why would I want to inflict such treacherous torture on these animals by using poison? I can with a little planning dispatch them far more humanely than by the use of poison and so can you. Please re-think your plans of their use.


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## GKU (Aug 19, 2013)

A lot of my friends like to hunt with their .625 bore BGs with proper broad head darts, witch is fine with me. It's my personal choice that I don't just because of the fact that no mater how good or well I place the shot in the kill zone there is a slight chance that my attempt(s) may fail and cause unnecessary suffering to the quarry. For me I prefer an Airgun with an attitude of one shot = one kill, bigger game = bigger weapon. I even use a caliber with enough fpe to kill the quarry 5 time over, a minimum of 12 fpe expelled into the pray is needed in order to humanly kill a Starling according to. Also having confident that with having extremely consistent repeatable accuracy to expedite a quick follow up shot(s) just in case. For me there is no such of a thing as over kill, but to not have enough to kill humanly to begin with obviously and in the need to use poison(s). Seems rather desperate, cruel and dangerous for the shooter (BGner) as well.

Just my 2 pennies ~ GKU

Added note:
BG shooting a 3 gram dart @ 200 fps at the muzzle = about only 4 fpe at the muzzle.


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## squirrelslinger (Feb 2, 2014)

it depends a LOT on how said energy is distributed.

an arrow has far less KE than a .22, but it is a heck of a lot more deadly if tipped with a broadhead.

Anybody disagree?

My main problem with poison-

What if I accidentally scratch myself?


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## Chips (Jan 1, 2014)

Teach said:


> Chips, over the years of Blow Gunning that I have been involved in the hobby/sport this subject has come up many many times and generally speaking now it is usually met with the same thoughts and although those thoughts are not always voiced most are of disapproval for the idea and it is generally the younger members of the forums who bring up this topic the most.
> 
> I can only see the use of poison being justified in situations of needing to provide sustenance in places like the jungles where such poisons like curare (spelling?) are used which when introduced to the blood stream of the animal kills the animal but does no harm to the person who consumes that animal. Very very special knowledge is needed in the preparation of these substances that has been learned and past down through generations of tribal peoples which I'm pretty sure you don't possess.
> 
> The other scenario I could see someone wanting to use poison is in vermin control like rats, racoons etc. It has been mentioned that Monkshood/Wolfsbane could be used by Chimes. Yes this is a deadly poison of great notoriety. But what is seldom known is what a long and painful heinous death this and many other poisons inflict on the animal that is is being used on. i don't believe in shooting anything I'm not going to eat just for sport with the exception of problem animals that do harm to property or could spread disease but I don't hate those animals so why oh why would I want to inflict such treacherous torture on these animals by using poison? I can with a little planning dispatch them far more humanely than by the use of poison and so can you. Please re-think your plans of their use.


I agree entirely! that was put as excellently as it was wise and thought provoking.  i'm not a hunter of any sort, occasionally shooting a rat on my bird feeder would be one of my only exceptions. I too believe in hunting only what one needs to eat, as for pest control (pigeons), I normally use home-made foam tipped stun darts. in the past my parents used rat poison for the ones in the ceiling, i eventually prevailed upon them to stop and instead I practiced "catch and release." thanks for showing concern. lol i honestly don't know what i would use the poison for as I doubt i'll ever have need, it's more of a novelty for me than anything else, if that makes any sense. in my above post i guess you could say i was joking around as i couldn't shoot a bird with something lethal and not regret it unless it's for food.


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## craftsman (Sep 24, 2014)

OK, bad *bad BAD *idea to use poison for hunting. Curare is NOT a poison, it is a muscle relaxant. It relaxes your heart and lungs to the point of not working. It also dissipates, making the meat safe to eat. If you are shot with curare (or get it in a hospital during an operation), you can be safely resusitated. Game taken (Amazon jungle) with curare tipped darts - runs off, moving the checical through the body. Heart and lungs fail, it drops down out of the treetops, breaking its neck or back - THAT kills it. The muscle relaxant dissipates, and its good to eat.

Not so with poison. Use that, eat it, and you join the game animal. Cherokee hunted with a blowgun, never used poisons. Ditto for the Chocktaw, and a few other North American tribes.

In the US, it is illegal to hunt using chemical enhanced weapons (darts, arrows, etc.). ... if we're talking survival scenario - better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6 - so anything goes.


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## Slingshot Silas (Jan 28, 2018)

GhostHawk said:


> Well I can't speak for anyone else, but living in Fargo ND there is not a whole lot up here that is really capable of being turned into a fatal poison. Plenty of stuff that might make you sick, but trying to brew it into a poison could make you sick also.
> 
> If I lived further south I'd be looking at things like snake venom. Not that hard to find, and a smear on a dart could well be fatal to a smaller animal.


Hey GhostHawk,

You could probably kill some of the prey in N.D. with the right size ice sickle.* HEHEHE*!!! That guy sure was interested in a bunch of random poison information, eh? I don't feel comfortable with subjects like that for very long, and it keeps getting more and more "random". Well, I *do* live in the South, and foolin' with the snakes we have here is an adventure in and of itself----in stupidity as well as a fair amount of danger. I'm almost 60 years old, *and have an attitude of; don't "F" with the rattle snake, because he's not "Fn" with you*. And please don't kill the snake, or attempt to "milk" it . That just makes the snake angrier, at best, and at worst, there is the concern of being bitten. I've had friends over the years loose some fingers, toes. If the equipment you are using is not enough to get thrvcx gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff c


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## Slingshot Silas (Jan 28, 2018)

Sorry guys.

Computer went boom.


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