Transplanting bamboo

I have been offered some giant bamboo from a friends yard in the Bay area. Is there any magic in transplanting it? Thinking that shovels and an axe to split the base apart. Any new knowledge would be helpful.

A back hoe, or at the very least a small excavator like a Kubota.

This is how I look at it :
Rent a Kubota for an hour or two and pay about 125 hr. . and get the job done in that amount of time.

Use shovels, picks, pry bars and axes and get the job done in 6 to 8 hours.
Then factor in a following day for a massage therapist at about 70.00 an hour.

To me it boils down to what I value my time at and what I have to do to ensure my health so I can continue to work efficiently.

Do the world a favor and do not plant them in the ground. Try a container if you must have them. Very invasive and destructive!

Not all of them are invasive--the running bamboos absolutely shouldn't be planted in the ground, but the clumping bamboos are OK.

true! I assumed since it was a giant bamboo that it was a runner. clumpers are much less of a problem.

We have transplanted many clumps of Bamboo... it's not fragile.
My husband used a sawzaw (I don't know if that's how you spell it)
They sawed right though the rhizome, dug it up and plunked it in the ground.
If you want you can use grass fertilizer on it.
You may loose some of the stocks near the cut, but it will send up new ones in no time at all.