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Thread: Using a sling

  1. #1
    Senior Member postman's Avatar
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    Default Using a sling

    Was goofing around with my kids today and we all made slings and practiced hunting pop cans, and let me tell you those cans have absolutely nothing to fear. Holy crap am I useless at using one of these things.LOL. I think I hit everything but the cans including myself twice. My 15 year old daughter kicked my but. Anybody ever use one of these things and if so, got any tips?


  2. #2
    Senior Member Sparky93's Avatar
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    I messed around with one a while back, I found a few good videos on how to use them on youtube. You might check those out. I suck at using them but there are a couple different techniques from what I gathered, you can just spin it over your head or (I think it was called the Apache technique) start with the sling on the opposite as the hand you are holding it in, quickly kind of straighten out your arm getting momentum on the sling and then spin it one rotation one time (if your holding the sling in your right arm then spin counter clockwise, vise versa for if you are a lefty) this king of whips the sling and builds momentum really fast. On the release point your index finger at the target and hopefully that is where the projectile will go. I didn't practice enough to get very good with accuracy but I could get the rock to go in the direction I wanted it to.


    Hope this helps, it definitely takes a lot of practice to get good with one of these though.
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  3. #3
    Alaska, The Madness! 1stimestar's Avatar
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    No but I think I will try it out this summer.
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    I have fooled around with slings in the past but would not want to depend on one for gathering food! What I found was having the ammunition( stones or what ever) as near to equal in weight made for more consistency in where the missle hit. I also determined (don't ask how) that a projectile form a sling has LOTS of impact energy! Now I understand why early armies had slingers! In addition to stones , I have used large machine nuts, fishing sinkers of several ounces in weight, and large steel ball bearings. If you practice enough, you can certainly kill small game at reasonably close rang. Personally though, I would prefer a sling shot over a sling.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Thaddius Bickerton's Avatar
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    Never going to be a main thing for me but I made several from home twisted cordage over time, and found that a bag of those large marbles (bout an inch diameter) from the dollar store make nice ammmo of cheap and consistent size.

    A fellow I know who digs into old stuff like that tells me that there were professional people who made "bullets" for these slings when they were part of life. Made from baked mud through stone.

    Apparently if there was running water they would have a large stone and put small ones in a a hollow in the large stone so the water kind of spins the small stone in the larger one rounding it off. Took a lot of time, and those stone projectiles were not wasted.

    I used a cold chisel to make me a pocket in a river rock once and put a few smalish stones in the hole with a fast stream. A week later I had me a semi spherical stone marble. Still slow process with limited possibilities for manufacturing, but a fun tid bit of knowledge for playing around with.

    My suggestion is marbles.

    Also I used to think the ammo was like small but golf ball size is about the typical size older historical examples I have seen.

    Understand this has never been a main focus of mine and stems from few sources, limited discussions and a few artifacts seen in museums and such. Never really bothered to research it on the internet as I just felt any time I might spend on a sling other than as a toy would be better spent making a arrow and a bow.

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