The wooden bolt made by the Santhal tribe of Jharkhand is a document of their relationship with nature and forest-based livelihood through time. This consists of an octagon wooden head and long, lightweight shaft made out of reed for its use while hunting by means of the crossbows. The octagonal shape of the bolt head was most probably intentionally designed for augmenting the impact area while coming to contact with the prey. The shaft's lower side is attached to feathers, also called fletching, which act to stabilize the flight of the bolt for better accuracy and greater distance. To the end of the shaft, a raised band helps with the alignment of the bowstring or with gripping the bolt for loading it.
This tribe, one of the largest indigenous communities in India, has a craft and their own non-ecological hunting tools besides culture. These bolts, generally small in size, would all be cast in small game and birds that either naturally came into festivals, rituals, or even brought in sustenance-based activities associated with them. These impart the tribe's indigenous knowledge and sustainable economy of exploiting wood, reed, and feathers that all could be sourced from nature. Emergence of gas-powder weapons, such designs like this bolt still speak very powerfully about the craftsmanship and identity of the Santhal. Such ethnographic examples and traditional heritage collections are kept in museums, which reveal indigenous technology and strategies for forest-based living.