Blowgun

The North American Cherokee were known for making blowguns from river cane to supplement their diet with rabbits and other small creatures.

Back then and today, the Maya use a blowgun to hunt birds and small animals with spherical dry seeds and clay pellets.

[2] Shorter blowguns and smaller bore darts were used for varmint hunting by pre-adolescent boys in traditional Cherokee villages.

A standardization of competition style, based upon fukiya, is being pursued by the International Fukiyado Association and hopes to become an Olympic event.

The Field Style competition is similar to the winter Biathlon, where the shooter runs from a starting line to a target lane, shoots and retrieves the darts, and continues to the next station.

In Japan, the competition darts are made of cellophane rolled into a cone (Fukiya), topped with a non-pointed brass brad.

Use of home-made darts in the larger sizes, or for hunting is common, utilizing bamboo skewers (3 and 6 mm or 1⁄8 and 1⁄4 in diameter), wire coat hangers, and even nails, or knitting needles.

[12] In Canada, the blowgun is classified as a prohibited weapon and is defined as any device that "being a tube or pipe designed for the purpose of shooting arrows or darts by the breath".

In Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, some isolated areas in South America, and in the Amazon and Orinoco basins, blowgun hunters fill the tips of their darts with curare.

The Ticuas, an ethnic group from Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, produce a type of curare called Ticuna.

An animal hit by a dart poisoned using the Piaroa recipe usually dies within fifteen minutes, depending on its body mass.

In the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi, the sumpit (or sumpitan) blowgun darts are typically coated in the sap of Antiaris toxicaria (upas)‍— a toxin also used by the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia[22]⁠— which causes convulsions and death by cardiac arrest.

Uniquely among blowguns, sumpit are also commonly tipped with metal spearheads for use in close combat or when the ammunition is exhausted, functionally similar to bayonets.