Random Worldbuilding Questions (Biology, Geography, Society, etc.)

[Spiryt]

Dry shot is definitely very damaging, especially for natural materials.

I once did rather fatal dry shot, but since fiberglass bow is rather hard to kill, string had gone to hell....

I don't see why it should be bad for the bow to spring back without an arrow to push against. Given the amount of pull of a bow, and especially crossbows, I don't think the mass of the arrow slows down the speed of the arms springing back in any significant way.

?

With some solid wooden bow, good loose and arrow of proper weight, about 60% of energy gathered in the limbs go to the arrow, speeding it up. Up 20% could go into the limbs kinetic energy, in movement, vibration etc. Although it will depend. The rest is string kinetic energy, internal friction and some other stuff.

Take away arrow and it's 60% and there's recipe for catastrophe.

Unless you mean "springing back" like, holding in full draw and bringing it back to 'no draw' instead of shooting. Then it's misunderstanding.

As far as the question goes, it's a good one.

I think that if one can't manage to relieve the bow by hands slowly, he have to do a safe shot to the ground or something like that.

All kind of spanning mechanism would be of limited use at best.

Although belt and claw would probably be pretty practical in 'reverse'.