Slingshot anyone?

I like .45 caliber lead musket balls for slingshot ammo. Absolutely deadly on small game, and enough to ruin a two legged pest's day as well. I find it good practice to walk along the dirt roads near where I live and shoot at random targets of opportunity like discarded cans, etc. Beats watching TV.
 
Slingshots just don't work for me. I've hit squirrels, rabbits with them. The squirrels just get knocked off whatever tree they were on then climb back on later, barking at me. They don't seem any worse for wear after being shot. Rabbits got knocked tumbling, then got back up and kept running. One raccoon just sat there and looked at me like an idiot while I shot it again and again, and the steel shot just bounced off it. Small birds worked, but they were hard to hit. If I couldn't get a handgun, I'd go with the snares. Or maybe a pellet gun. Could you get one of those? Power is probably about the same, but much more accurate, so you'd take a lot more birds.
 
x39 said:
Lead RULES. Try it. I won't even waste my time with steel balls anymore.
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VERY TRUE!!!!!!

Check out ebay or other sites on the web for molds, you can pick up a used round ball mold for cheap and make your own balls out of wheel weights or other scrap lead for pennies, I like 45 caliber also.

Hit a rabbit or bird with a 45 caliber lead round ball out of a modern wrist brace style slingshot with tapered bands, and I bet you it will not run off like nothing happened, cotton tails have a habit of getting in heavy brush and "hiding" I have put a lead ball through and through a rabbit from fairly close range 15 yds or so. Chris
 
I remember Elmer Kieth talking about slingshots in his autobiography. He said when he was little, he'd get a fair amount of quail and rabbit with a home made one. The balls would go right through quail and almost all the way through rabbits (and through them completely sometimes). He was once attacked as a kid, and used his slingshot to knock out his attacker's front teeth, and then thumped him a couple more times.

I have come to believe his slingshot was simply far more powerful than any I've ever used. The Wal-mart specials have a low draw force. I shot a couple critters with them including coon and possum, and my shot always bounced off whether I was using lead or steel. (Always have a good supply of ball bearings from broke down farm equipment.)
 
Elmer Keith is one of my personal heros, and you cleaned that story up a bit, in Elmer's day they weren't as PC as we are today. :D

Try some tapered bands, I really like them, also coons and possums are a lot tougher than a little cottontail. Chris
 
I had a slingshot (wrist rocket) for a while. I pulled back on that baby lined up my target and whamo!!!!!!!!! one of the rubbers came loose and slapped me in the face. Jeeeezz that hurt. It went directly to the trash can and I have used a nice little 22 from that time on. that was about forty years ago and it stilll hurts when I think about it. Be careful---------
 
runningboar said:
...also coons and possums are a lot tougher than a little cottontail. Chris
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This is a valid point in and of itself, but in the broader sense of using a slingshot to forage small game in a survival scenario, it doesn't make much sense to me. What's the point of carrying along an extra piece of equipment that can only be used on rabbits, squirrels, and birds? Especially when you could just get a more powerful one capable of taking whatever small game you come across, including coon and others? Think how many squirrels you'd have to get just to equal a 20 pound coon.

Agreed on Mr. Keith, though. He was a gentleman from another era.
 
I do not doubt that you could get a half ounce of lead moving pretty darn fast with one of those things .

Hey Possum I have heard the name Elmer Keith before . Who was he ? What did he do ?
 
x39 said:
I like .45 caliber lead musket balls for slingshot ammo. Absolutely deadly on small game, and enough to ruin a two legged pest's day as well. I find it good practice to walk along the dirt roads near where I live and shoot at random targets of opportunity like discarded cans, etc. Beats watching TV.
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Yea, what doesn't beat watching TV these days.

I'll have to try lead balls.

:)
 
Here's one that my Dad made me for Christmas last year, I'm 30 years old :D . He had me and my brother shooting them since we were about five, or old enough to get a beatin' for shooting the dusk-to-dawn light out, whichever came first :D . We're pretty good, not as good as him as his brother though. They can hit a soda can about 7 out of every 10 shots from around 20 - 25 feet. They use to shoot squirrels(spl?) with them when they were in their early teens. Every once in a while they'll sit up some targets to remind us who the masters are ;) .

DSC02484.jpg
 
Silas said:
Here's one that my Dad made me for Christmas last year, I'm 30 years old :D . He had me and my brother shooting them since we were about five, or old enough to get a beatin' for shooting the dusk-to-dawn light out, whichever came first :D . We're pretty good, not as good as him as his brother though. They can hit a soda can about 7 out of every 10 shots from around 20 - 25 feet. They use to shoot squirrels(spl?) with them when they were in their early teens. Every once in a while they'll sit up some targets to remind us who the masters are ;) .

DSC02484.jpg
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NIce blade there....

MS or LMS?
 
the possum said:
This is a valid point in and of itself, but in the broader sense of using a slingshot to forage small game in a survival scenario, it doesn't make much sense to me. What's the point of carrying along an extra piece of equipment that can only be used on rabbits, squirrels, and birds? Especially when you could just get a more powerful one capable of taking whatever small game you come across, including coon and others? Think how many squirrels you'd have to get just to equal a 20 pound coon.

Agreed on Mr. Keith, though. He was a gentleman from another era.
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Possum,

I agree totally, if you look back to my original post I pretty much said the same thing. A slingshot is not a piece of gear you throw into your kit or BOB and forget about, it takes regular practice and maintenance or it is next to worthless. I think learning to snare or trap is a much better endeavor than getting proficient with a slingshot, for what it's worth I would rather have 2 conibears in my pack than any slingshot that has ever been made.

I have a ruger 22/45 with a Tactical Solutions aluminum upper that lives in my pack with a couple of 100 winchester dynapoints. Very light, very accurate and very effective. Here is a bad picture of the pistol but it gives you the idea, I was actually taking a picture of the stock. Chris

 
Accurately shooting a slingshot or ANY 'primitive' weapon not only takes practice, but also proper 'form.' One thing I have found that most people with accuracy problems have in common is the lack of a proper ANCHOR POINT! You need to pull a slingshot or bow back to the same anchor point for EVERY shot!

When shooting bows I anchor my MIDDLE FINGER in the corner of my mouth.
When shooting slingshots I anchor my THUMB in the corner of the mouth.

I shoot purely instinctively, this means practice is mandatory, esp. early on with a new setup in order to 'reprogram' the brain and muscle interaction. The first time I learned to properly shoot a 56# recurve bow instinctively, I shot DAILY for over a month and was able to CONSISTENTLY put every shot into the vital area of an ELK out to 40yds by the end.

When shooting instinctively, be sure to CONCENTRATE on the smallest possible spot you can see, burn a hole through it! Draw your weapon back to your anchor point and 'feel'/'see' the projectile go to your spot in your mind. The release will take place 'naturally', don't force it, 'will' it. :) This is the 'essence' of instictive shooting.

If you think about how to shoot instinctively, it is like throwing a ball or pointing your finger at something. You just 'do it.' There is no conscious effort to 'aim' the brain acts as a ballistic computer and does faster than you can actively think about it. Hence the practice involved to 'reprogram' your computer to what 'feels right!'

The basics:
Concentrate on a spot!
Get a solid and consistent anchor.
The support arm should be solid, it is what actually adjusts for elevation and windage without being looked at or thought about.
Use your BACK MUSCLES! Don't try to muscle the weapons with your arms. Squeeze your shoulder blades together, even with slingshots!

Good luck!
 
Kevin-
Elmer Keith was a famed cowboy, hunter, writer, and gun nut. He wrote for Guns & Ammo magazine and several others for many years. He did lots of experimental work with all kinds of guns, and was a world class marksman with rifle and pistol. He may be best known for his work with heavy revolvers, and was instrumental in the development of the .44 magnum, among others. His bullet designs are still extremely popular today, and I've seen several of his excellent articles reprinted in gun rags today because the info is still just as valid. Here's a short bio: http://www.sixguns.com/bunkhouse/elmer_keith.htm
If you care to learn more, some googling aught to turn up a thousand pages. If you'd even like some interesting reading in general, I highly recommend his autobiography, called "Hell, I was There." It's a collection of highly "colorful" events from his life, including guns, hunting on several continents, childhood mischief, and cowboy life in a western town in the early 1900's.

To tie this in to Plainsman's post, the writings of Elmer Keith inspired me to learn instinctive shooting with a pistol. I burned through 500-1000 rounds a week with Dad's old Ruger Single-Six, but by the end could pick the heads off clover at 3-5 yards and put every round through a soda can out to 10 yards, shooting from the hip or intermediate positions. I could throw a piece of pea gravel in the air and hit it 5 out of 6 shots. Unlike Plainsman though, I did not really use an "index point" when shooting. My whole purpose was to be able to put a bullet wherever I wanted it to go, from whatever position I found myself in. This came in extremely usefull when I started hunting coons at close range with a .45. I'm pretty rusty at it now, but just 2 weeks ago my brother was down trying some new loads in his .44 mag. I got out dad's old Ruger again, and made a poor showing with the first cylinder, shooting from the hip at a piece of wood. Every round from the next cylinder went into a 3" group.
 
but I just started playing around with the sling. They're fun and they'll throw some serious rocks but the learning curve is steep. On the plus side all you need is paracord. The down side is you would need to throw hundreds, if not thousands, of stones to be able to hit small game reliably.

Frank
 
Nothing wrong with having both snares and a slingshot. Snares are meat getters. Slingshots are fine on rabbits, but will not do much to a squirrel other than give it a good thumping. If I were really wanting to be into primitive weapons, I believe the bow and arrow are the way to go.
 
22-rimfire Slingshots are fine on rabbits said:
Quite a few squirrels I've encountered in the course of several decades might disagree with you on that point. That is if they were alive to do so! ;)
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The best reason to have a slingshot is just good cheap fun.

If I had to rely on one for survival, I'd be in a world of hurt. One thing about modern slingshots is that they tend to rely on latex tubing/rubber. As mentioned, it isn't the most durable of materials and can deteriorate without being used at all. What did they use in the old days?

Oh, and I'm still curious... what's a "shanghi" (from the first post)?
 
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