I'd say I like a sling to be in the middle.  For me, that's holding a loaded sling at my side and having it just shy of touching the ground, give or take a bit.  That's the length I'm most familiar with anyway.  I've used shorter slings also, but not really anything much longer.

What is your point for determining whether a sling is long or short?

Oh boy, I don't think I can choose. I have slings of various lengths from really pretty short ones (I have a sling made by Loki that's 56.5cm from the pouch centre to the end of the finger loop) to really very long slings (the longest is a Tibetan wool sling that's 124cm long from the centre of the pouch to the end of the finger loop). I find both can be very fun but it's usually easier to be accuate with a very long sling than a very short one (for me at least).

I got some video yesterday on my phone slinging snowballs with the two Tibetan slings I have (the shorter one is 97cm) and they are really fun to sling. With the super long one, I have to start off with it across my shoulders (in the third clip) as it's just too long to comfortably start from a vertical position.

https://youtu.be/xOTFLp866y0

The length of the sling should also depend on how heavy your ammo is.  A sling is a transmission system that converts strength into speed. If your ammo is really heavy, you need more strength to accelerate it, so you should use a shorter sling. Lighter ammo... longer sling.

walter wrote on Dec 8^th, 2018 at 8:08pm:


The only time you want a weighted sling is when you are intentionally throwing lightweight ammo and can afford to waste energy accelerating the extra sling mass. Otherwise lighter is better because more energy goes to the ammo for the same energy out of your muscles.  It really doesn’t matter much either way though unless you are trying to get absolute maximum performance.  To do that, you’d have to build custom ammo that is matched to the pouch shape and tune the masses and lengths to perfection specifically for your body and slinging style. So far, nobody has taken it to the limit yet, but you’re welcome to try!

For me, it depends what I want it to do. Accuracy, short sling. Distance, long sling.

The longer the sling the more error at the end of the sling plus what u said so two factors are playing in

Logan757 wrote on Dec 10^th, 2018 at 3:32pm:


the error we have when we throw with sling or hand is angular. the permitted errors are all included in a cone with its base being the target and it's tip the release point of the projectile .
Doing a little geometry graph i've concluded to this (see picture below). φ1 = φ2= φ3=θ which means the permitted error is the same. for the same angle θ the longer sling travels a bigger dx(=θ*R) which means the window in the curve which you release should get bigger not smaller.
it's like the extra length of the longer sling is added to the range between your hand and the target which is negligible.

please notice me if you find something wrong with my conclusions.