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So I've been playing Skyrim for awhile and have noticed a particularly annoying glitch with everone on of my followers. This started when I was a meek Lvl 2 and took Faendal as my follower. We went everywhere together. Early on I gave him an Elven Bow as soon as I could. Around the time I got to Lvl 20 Faendal began using his old Hunting Bow again. I can't take the bow from him because it's not in his inventory. I could deal with it though because he rarely missed a shot and kept launching arrows at the enemy. Around Lvl 50 I began having Mjoll the Lioness travel with me. She also happens to be my spouse in the game. I have her in Legendary Orcish Armor with a Legendary Orcish Battle Axe and Legendary Orcish Bow. She re-equiped her old hunting bow as well but again it's not in her inventory and I can't buy it from her. I'm now a Lvl 58 and decided to take Onmund as a follower just for fun. Well immediately after I recruited him he pulled out a Hunting Bow! But again it's not in his inventory. What surprises me most is that he is a mage who uses no weapon other than magic.

Has anyone ever had this problem? Is there a way to fix it?

First of all, are you on the PC? If not, there's not much I can help you with. If you're not on the PC, the best you might be able to do is get patch 1.9 if you haven't already. That will help avoid getting your follower over encumbered with these Hunting Bows. They are actually in their inventory, but they're flagged in their inventory as unplayable (which means it's invisible to you in any inventory and cannot be equipped by you. Their infinite Iron Arrows are the same way). Patch 1.9 supposedly fixes a bug with followers getting another of the follower Hunting Bows on re-recruiment, which have weight and clog up their carry weight. They're still going to be unplayable and you're still going to probably have your bow usage problem, but at least their carry weight won't be screwed up.

If you do have the PC version, you can actually fix this problem. If you have the Unofficial Skyrim Patch (supposedly any version), they mark the follower Hunting Bow as playable, which means you can remove the the thing. This should will remove the infinite arrow exploit (seems to be quirk of unplayable items and NPCs that actually expend ammo), but you should have your followers equipping your bows correctly. If you don't use the USKP for some reason (don't know why though....), you can always use the Creation Kit to mark the offending items (0010e2dd in Skyrim.esm for the Bow, 0010e2de in Skyrim.esm) as playable in a mod of your own or you can remove the items ingame in the console using the IDs I provided (no need to have the first two hex digits for placement of file 00, which is almost always Skyrim.esm). If you use the console, you might have to remove the items every time you recruit the follower, but at least you should have them using the correct bow.

I hope this helps you. If you're not on the PC, I'm sorry to say that you might be mostly screwed.

I happen to be on console. Specifically I play on Xbox 360. This bow problem is annoying and I already figured that there is no way to fix this. However, a friend of mine has PC Skyrim and is able to transfer Skyrim save data from other platforms to his PC. Do you think he could put my save on his PC, use console codes to rid my followers of these random Hunting bows, and then put my save back on my console?

From what I've heard, Xbox saves can be transferred and loaded on the PC version with little hassle (never tried it though). However, make sure your friend has the same version of Skyrim you do and only loads the DLCs you have. You always will need to load Skyrim.esm and Update.esm. Depending on DLCs you have, he will need to load Dawngaurd.esm for Dawnguard, Heathfires.esm for Hearthfire, and Dragonborm.esm for Dragonborn. Make sure he loads no other mods whatsoever when he uses the console (Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, Hearthfires.esm, Dawnguard.esm, and Dragonborn.esm should be the only files your friend loads at most when working on your save). Skyrim goes to hell when you unload files previously loaded (mostly the scripting system destroys your game at that point assuming the mod used scripts, but other things happen as well). Your friend's saves should be safe as long he does not load his own saves while working on your save. I also recommend once this happens to stick with one follower for the rest of the game (the one he would work on) and never dismiss them. That way you shouldn't have to have to deal with those Hunting Bows with them again.

Failing this, you might have to restrict yourself to the Dark Brotherhood followers or give your followers Dragonbone Bows (which I hear might circumnavigate the bow issue. Don't know if it's true or not though). The DB followers use a different follower quest and system from the normal followers and are not given Bows by default. That way, you might be able to give them what you want.

Sorry that I can't be of much help. PC is where you fix these problems permanently using mods and/or console commands. Consoles do not have that luxury by default

Well thank you for trying. I know consoles suck in just about every way compared to PC save for their exclusive games but I just don't have a good PC to play games on. So console is how I go. Thanks though.