this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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I can almost guarantee you are not trained to throw a spear hard enough to stop an angry, motivated horse.
And definitely not a sharpened stick with no weight at the front.
I mean, to be fair, boar are hunted with spears, knights used Lances, and pike blocks were the end all be all counter to cavalry for thousands of years, specifically because sharp sticks are really good at killing things in a head on collision situation. Horse kinda doesn't stand a chance if you bring a proper stick tbh lol
All of the things in the first sentence are true, yet I am still confident that the horse wins unless you are a knight WITH a lance or a boar hunter. I'll even give you might get lucky and inflict a mortal wound, but that horse is still gonna kill you. I'll also point out that the knight with the lance has his own horse, otherwise that won't work either.
In any case the assertion that was made by the other comment was that you could stay out of the horse's range and throw the spear which, no, you could not. Setting a spear, which I think is what you're suggesting, might work, but you still need to make a spear long enough and strong enough to beat the horse's range, and you have to successfully keep it between you and the horse, and even if you did all those things a lucky hoof blow could break your carved stick. Mostly, you die from a flailing hoof in this scenario.
I'm by no means saying this is a definitive win. Just that setting a spear (I perhaps should have mentioned this in the previous comment) is a historically proven method of countering a charge. You might still die but I think with a proper spear odds might actually be in your favor if only slightly
In this very skilly hyper specific scenario where you are tasked with fighting a horse to the death, but with the stipulation that you are given prep time, I believe you could find and properly whittle a passable enough stick to function as a rudamdntary spear for the purpose of bracing against a charge, and that's assuming you don't have some particularly sharp metal/rocks on hand with some basic lashing materials. If the horse pulls up and tries to canter around the set spear you could hoist it up and now you have range. If it pulls back for another charge? Set it again. You don't have to thrust with it, just hold it point out and wait for the horse to either impale itself or get tired. That's how boar hunts work after all.
Like yeah I don't like your odds lmao but its not nearly as doomed as you might think imo
You have given me much to think about here for my upcoming battle with some guy's horse
While I now feel more confident about the overall strategy on my side, I do feel some concern about the horse using its time to build what it has called "the Bipedcutioner"
Yeah, that's the more difficult part.
Well, unless the preparation time includes a few months of training, then you could probably throw spears somewhat well.