| My
first recollection of slings was as a three year old.
My father would read me the story of David and Goliath
from the Bible. I was fascinated about the sling he
used and I begged my father to show me how he used the
sling. My father, who was destined to ship out to Viet
Nam for his first tour as a helicopter pilot, obliged
by building a sling almost as long as I was tall. We
went out to a field where my father proceeded to show
me how (or how not…) to use a sling.
First, a short background on my father, he was raised
in the harsh southeastern Utah, near the famed ‘Four
Corners’. He, his brothers and friends would experiment
by building bows, slings, slingshots and even atlatls.
He used to tell me stories about his ‘hunting
expeditions’ with his friends. He became an officer
in the US Army and used his quest for knowledge and
adventure and became combat helicopter pilot. …Now,
back to our scheduled story…
Dad took the sling and had me stand off a good distance
from him. My brother, older by two years and shorter
by three inches and I stood off near the edge of trees
that lined the edges of the field. He had made a leather
sling pouch and used old leather bootlaces to attach
the pouch. If I remember, and this may be where the
problem arose, he didn’t have an anchoring loop
on one of the leather thongs. Dad was near the old green
63 Ford pickup truck with the camper on it. He found
a rock about 2 inches long and an inch and a quarter
thick and placed in the center of the pouch.
He wound up and let go with a baseball style throw.
For about a second, we looked for the rock to whiz down
the field, and then we heard the crack and tinkling
of glass. My fearless father, the great white hunter
and protector of innocents, had hunted his first and
last pickup truck. So much for slings, we were told,
Dad thought it would be better if we stuck to something
safer like tightrope walking or preparing to swim the
English Channel.
And so it remained for 37 years. Oh, I didn’t
really let is sit dormant, I too toyed with slings,
stick slings, bows, and I even tried my hand at an atlatl
like my father. I became intrigued with the English
longbow (self bow) about a year ago and I ordered one
so that I could practice with. While I waited for it
to arrive, I got bored one afternoon and decided that
I’d try my hand at a sling. Taking a page from
my father’s book of life, I built mine out of
reclaimed leather. The pouch is about 4 inches long
and I used twenty-seven inch latigo leather for the
thongs.
I stand at five feet and ten inches and I have a thirty-inch
reach for my arms, (…yes, some people do claim
that I have ape arms, but it helped when I used to box…)
and the sling I made seems to be just about right for
me. I’ve tried the overhand slinging method and
also the underhand throw that Chris describes. They
both seem to work OK, but I’ve found better accuracy
with my overhead slinging (like a helicopter). I can
almost use a ‘point and shoot’ method with
my aiming. If I put throwing arm straight at the target,
I get better than usual accuracy and as for looping
the sling in my overhead throw, I only rotate once and
have found that I get as much power from it as I do
with my underhand slinging.
I suppose that with practice, the underhand throw can
achieve the accuracy that I get with my overhead throw.
When I sling, I try to throw for accuracy, and I’ve
learned that accuracy only comes with practice. At twenty
yards I can hit a fifty-galleon drum that I use as my
target. And when I do hit it, which isn’t every
time, I get the resounding thwang as the missile bounces
off of it. So far, no pickups, I’ll keep trying
though.
- Eric Lyman
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