i've seen an old b&w video of an old masai lion hunt in which a spearman missed the lion & the spear bent dramatically. he retrieved it, straightened it and carried on. maybe a hardened and tempered spear like that could break rather than bend and a broken spear is useless.
also there is the old roman pilum reasoning, if used in warfare throwing a spear into an opponents shield where it would bend and encumber the enemy to force him to abandon the shield, or if missed would bend and render it incapable of being thrown back at it's owner until it hand been straightened, made sense.
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