I went to my very first 3D shoot this morning and had a blast. That is, right until my accident. Stupid me picked up a carbon arrow I found laying around and decided to shoot it. It shattered as soon as I let it go. I've seen some nasty accidents with shattered carbon arrows, and based on what I've seen, I got lucky. It just scratched my hand. The worst injury seems to be on my forearm. I wasn't wearing an arm guard. I've never been popped this hard before by the string. It swelled up immediately like it had filled with blood or something. I wonder if I popped a blood vessel. Do you think I should go see a doctor about it?

Ouch! Look how swollen it is!

Just want to make sure you get to see every angle.

I wouldn't personally go, if it doesn't get a lot worse. And I have "free" health care. I've had pretty nasty slaps on the arm the odd time, and they take care of themselves. Glad you didn't get a passthrough!

Sam,

I too, am guilty of picking up a carbon range arrow at an early-season shoot. Hindsight proves it was probably lost the year before and spent the fall and winter season in the elements. I was hiking to a buddy's house and took a shot across the creek and BOOM! Hand marks looked like yours X2, but I did have an armguard on. It took me a few seconds to muster the courage to look at my hand. This was all I could find. Last range arrow I put in the quiver.

Looks like you might have ruptured a pipe in there. Ice will help. I did that to the wrist a few times back when I could still dunk.

Zip'

wow are you lucky you dont have a carbon chunk through you hand. The only thing that would concern me is blood clots they can be killers. I have delt with blood clots before but iam also no dr so its up to you.

I would probably only go see the Doc if I thought it had carbon fibers in the wound or if the string slapped area got a lot worse. I bet you get some nice colors out of that one. ;~) Glad you weren't hurt worse.

ice it and give it an hour

Now I feel lucky that my bow failed today in a nice pain-free manner ... LOL

Sorry for your injury; I hope that the ice helps.

Regards, James.

Do that about 3 or 4 times a week and you won't need an arm guard anymore, you will just grow one.

LOL Badger. You have such a kind heart. ;~)

LOL @ Badger. That's a good point!

Check it out! There were dinosaurs on this 3D shoot.

Head shot. :-)

My friend caught my arrow in mid flight.

Sam, did you make the bow you're shooting? Tell us about it if you don't mind.

I did. There's a whole thread about this bow here: http://leatherwall.bowsite.com/TF/lw/thread2.cfm? threadid=194755&category=88

Lemme try that again: http://leatherwall.bowsite.com/TF/lw/thread2.cfm? threadid=194755&category=88

Well, just remove the space between the ? and the 'threaded,' and it should work.

Aha! I figured it out: http://leatherwall.bowsite.com/TF/lw/thread2.cfm?threadid=194755&category=88

I hate these threads as they always make me ill. Your a very lucky young man. Ice will go a long way to helping out that arm. If your sure.....really sure that there are no carbon fibers in your hand you'll be fine.

But the lesson here is (ain't there always one LOL???) NEVER shoot anything except your own arrows and ALWAYS check them. I have a habit of flexing my carbons and checking the shafts as I take them out of my quiver and ready for a shooting session. I have a gut fear of the exploding arrow after seeing the results of carbon failures.

Scarey stuff. Glad it wasn't worse.....now go get some more ice. Take care of them Dino's!!! Its been awhile since we had them in my area LOL

great lesson ,dumb move,you know the rest,don't go to the doctor,he'll probably cut it off at the elbow and ask you to thank him for it,and pay him so that he can afford the finer things he's entitled to because he's a doctor and suffered so much to become one.

Always wear an ARMGUARD. This is for protection get a full length or forearm guard and don't shoot without it. You are lucky that carbon fibers did not go into your arm or hand. Ice will help as other have said and if swelling does not go down in a day or two or if your arm start hurting higher up go to Doctor. Don't mess with Blood Clots. I have had two in my leg. One was from a work accident where I sprained my left leg in Septembr and by December a blood clot has moved in my thigh. I lost 7 months work and still have pain in that leg from scar tissue. Also right before my open heart surgery I got a colt again in my left leg from my heart not pumpng right. A clot can move to your brain or your lungs and kill you so don't mess around.

May God be with you.

Oops, sorry about the blank post. Be careful out there folks.

The string rash will go away. Eventually. In the mean time, DO NOT RUB ON IT !!!!!! just put some ice on it and repeat after me. "I'll always wear an arm-guard!" Now say that over and over until it becomes ingrained in your memory.

Here's my forearm today. Day 2 after the incident. The swelling has gone down a lot, but the colour has come in nicely. The picture doesn't do it justice.

Gary, you're freakin' me out with that blood clot talk! Stop it!

Wow,Glad you don't look like that pic I posted the other day, but I gotta say, fellas it can happen with any arrow!!....Today I was out shooting some arrows I bought new just yesterday, shot all 6 once into a 3-d target, none touched together, then on second time the second arrow snapped in half upon release, fletched end went flying about 40 yds past the target, and the point end hit another arrow IN the target, severly damaging it too.....Have no Idea why either, checked them over with a fine tooth comb before and after the shot, didn't see anything wrong anywhere...........be careful out there......

I'd give that a 9.5... Excellent work. Man that hurts just lookin at it. You can put your arm down now.

Thanks, Coy. My arm was getting tired.

This makes me skittish about shooting wooden or carbon arrows. Aluminum seems like the safest thing to shoot. But I'll be using an arm guard anyway. I couldn't find my arm guard yesterday morning, and since the bow I shoot doesn't have a habit of smacking my arm, I went ahead and shot it.

Easy Fix, all ya gotta do is go down to the bait store an get a few leeches, they will suck the blood out of that pretty fast, then you can go fishing :)

Ouuuuch! Yeah, clots are killers, that's true. Here a few years back a bowhunter fell from his stand and only broke his leg. His buddies had a great visit with him at the hospital. Next day he was dead from a clot.

I'm going to die of hypochondria if I keep reading stuff like that.

You can cut down on the blood clot risk with a few stiff drinks and some aspirins.

Please don't take my advice on this, it's either worthless or dangerous or both. I just couldn't help offering it anyway.

I've had a couple of carbon arrow mishaps similar to yours and they were my good arrows (or so I thought). This is one of the several reasons I went back to aluminum.

Sam, I'm glad you were not hurt tooo bad. Takes alot of courage to shoot anything again after something like that happens.

Make a paste out of salt and a couple drops of water. Apply paste and cover overnight. Might draw out a little blood.

What do I know, I'm just a surgeon's kid....

When you have a lot of swelling in your forearm or lower leg, you should have it checked out IMMEDIATELY if there is any hint of restricted blood flow to your hand or foot - numbness, tingling, reduced mobility, weal pulse in places you ought to be able to find one, poor color (too pale, or blueish fingernails, or...). Rule o' thumb on color: If it don't look good, it's probably bad.

What you need to be concerned about is called a compartment injury - there's a heavy layer of connective tissue between the bones of the forearm/lower leg, and that prevents things from moving out of the way of the swelling, which can mean that an artery gets squeezed shut and the tissue downstream dies from lack of oxygen. So yes, you COULD end up needing your arm taken off at the elbow if you got one of these compartment injuries and didn't get it attended to properly and in time.

Now, IIRC, a full-on compartment injury is painful enough that you'd have to be the World's Toughest Moron to sweat it out without getting to a doc if you were capable of doing so. But there's the beauty of it; if you have a regular doctor, then you can CALL THEM on the TELEPHONE, describe what's going on, and they will tell you if they think you ought to be hustling your tail to the ER. And they do this Absolutely Free, even outside of office hours. It's called Being On Call; just about all docs do it, and getting woken up in the middle of the night is part of what they signed up for going in.

Jus' sayin'....

Thanks, Matt. I feel better now. No tingling or funky colours downstream of the injury. I guess it's just bruised.

Another reason I'm an aluminum arrow guy. I grant they're not much to look at, but I can get them cheap, and I've yet to have one blow up in my face...

Ice will help it and advil..no aspirin...cause you might get someone to shoot it out of your finger if you hold an aspirin..just kidding. Be careful..arrows are dangerous.

Paul, you have a good point about the aspirin. LOL

Ephphatha--if concern about a blood clot, just go to your doctor and have hiom checkit. If he has any concern he will send you for a doppler exam. Same thing like a sonagram. Had it done when I had a subdural blood glot in my leg. Only warning--the gel the use 5 degree below absolute zero in deep space, or it felt that way on my in thigh.:)

I don't have medical insurance, so I can't be frivolous about going to the doctor.

Anwho, I thought y'all might like to see how my arm has been progressing. It's very colourful, isn't it?

Sorry about the zombie thread, but that looks about half as bad as my arm looked after my first week of shooting with no arm guard til I finally figured out how not to smack it with the string! And no broken arrows!

I saw a guy put one right in between the bones of his forearm. Scary for sure.

Ouch.

Hey Sam, I musta missed this one when it came around. I hope yer arm is still hanging on and didn't fall off or nothing. But seriously... you shoulda known better. You got lucky and learned a lesson that didn't need emergency medical attention!

I bet leeches woulda help with the swelling :)

Keep the ice on it. Should get better in time . As stated before be careful of blood clots they can become very serious if not looked after .

ALWAYS , flex your arrows before shooting them . Especially wood and carbon. In some instances it would be a good idea to do aluminum too, especially the thinner walled shafts. Just because they are of an alloy doesn't mean they can't fracture . JMO .

That was two months ago so it should be healed up by now. Well I hope anyway. Don't feel bad....I doubt there is a person here who hasn't pressed their luck in such things. Most of us have just been lucky to get away with a slap or mild contusion. You are lucky too...that is just a good warning.

I shot Gordon Graphlex for about a year, back in the early 1980's. I had a 65# Bear Takedown and never checked the arrows. One day at the Pa. Bowhunter's Festival, the guy next to me exploded one on the shot...he was also shooting Graphlex. After the splinters settled to the ground and I saw he was okay, I just donated the Graphlex and went back to my aluminum arrows. I figured it would happen to me sooner or later because I'm not the best at checking shafts.

My arm is all back to normal. No amputation required. :-) I dodged a bullet...er, um, an arrow.

With wooden arrows, you will know when one gets injured if you do like Byron Ferguson says and become the arrow!

Been shooting wood for 50 years and broke some, but never broke one shooting it. Pay attention to what the arrow hits and treat it accordingly. (Or accordianly, as the case dictates. ;-)

Jim

Drop a cinderblock on your bare foot...you will forget all about your arm

now that its been a while your ok good, i had surgery, and 2 days later they said i had bronchitis, felt the pain in my left calf getting off couch, thursday said it was bronchitis, saturday i couldnt breath, had a lung scan in hospital, blood clot in lungs dont show up on xray, doc came in and said lay down and dont move you should be dead,spent 2 weeks in hospital, my lungs were 3/4 full, the clot went thru my heart and was closing up my lungs, if anything would of bronke loose nothing they can do bu watch you die,pulmonary embelism,now i stay onasprin and heart meds,not due from archery related just pay attention to your body if it tells you something,i had to argure with the er nurse till i couldnt quit talking and pulled myshirt up and showed the 1 ft incision with staples,now every surgery i have to wear leg pumps, what a pain, but im alive

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