Quote Originally Posted by Vanguard319 View Post
Hey, quite a few of the of the bows are more metal clad/reinforced than wooden, (the calvary bows, Ifrit's bow, Garudas' spine, and of course the Storm Lt's bow in my sig.) so it's not completely improbable. Also, I noticed you had nothing to say about my other comment, about using an arrow as an improvised stabby melee weapon. Finally, as many have pointed out, it works in Skyrim.
you could use an arrow as an improvised weapon, given the guy your trying to stab with a projectile weapon isn't wearing chain, plate or Hardened Leather...otherwise he'll just laugh at you while he's lopping of your arms and head.

Modern arrows are made out of stronger and lighter Machine Metal, arrow hafts of the past were often made out of a light wood that often more than not would break and splinter upon impact of hardened mass. there are exceptions to that rule, long distance archery used for siege warfare required the use of heaver hafts while this arrows were much sturdier and could be reused they had a drawback, heavy arrows were useless at close encounters as the bow could not provide enough torque to propel the heaver mass of the arrows. this lead to many tales of warriors who could shunt the blow of arrows but the truth is these arrows didn't pierce deep enough to do any damage. the invention of the crossbow negated all effects of heavy arrows except arching which was later rectified using bolts instead of hafts.

Sorry for that long winded Explanation...but the more you know.

in skyrim the character does not use the bow for hitting. the animation is clearly just using the fist that happens to be holding the bow, so in essence its still punching.