From the research articles I’ve been reading, it is possible but challenging. First, there’s a lot of genetic variation and some clones are more likely to succeed than others. Second, it seems to work best if those shoots come from root suckers (which gets back to needing access to the ortet). The reason for this is because the root suckers are in a more juvenile state physiologically than the branches. It might be possible to induce this juvenile state using etiolation techniques (let shoots start growing in darkness, either by covering or by somehow getting the branch buried) and then root those etiolated cuttings. I plan to try this at some point. The bigger point is that it may be possible, buut there are so many hoops to jump through and still get a low success rate. So it just doesn’t make economic sense compared to grafting.
Edit:
From the abstract of this article:
The clone genotype had a significant effect on the rooting rate, which ranged from zero to close to 100% in the various clones examined. Cuttings collected from different positions on the mother plant shoots did not differ significantly in their rooting rate, suggesting that juvenility does not play an important role in rooting of D. virginiana cuttings. Collecting cuttings at the early stage of the growing season yielded the highest rooting rate, which gradually decreased as the growing season progressed.
So juvenility might not matter as much as genetics. If genetics is the #1 factor, your results are going to vary wildly from variety to variety.