I just wanted to share the experience and results of the distance competition that we had in Austin, Nevada August 28,29,30. It was a great time. Thank you so much to the gentlemen (and lady!) who took the time to come out. It was a long way to travel and I very much appreciate the effort.

We had four participants myself (IronGoober), swiftcreek, erricrice, and Slinging Rocks.

Surprisingly, we didn't have nearly as much time as I'd hoped. We only got to 2 do categories, "Unlimited sling, <100g (stones)" and "Unlimited sling, Unlimited ammo"
I was hoping to have a short sling and heavy ammo category and a "natural sling+natural stone/clay" category, but finding the projectiles took a long time.

I brought a net to keep people safe in case of slip outs and it served a nice dual purpose for warming up with tennis balls.

We each warmed up, then threw 10 of one type of projectile each. After throwing we went out and looked for the impact. For many of the shorter throws impacts couldn't be found, so we just used the projectile location. 


Lessons for next time:
1. Putting lines on the ground or flagging an area that you have to land in would have helped a LOT with finding projectiles.
2. I thought that painting the projectiles wasn't that much of a help in the past, but I think with more people looking, it actually would have sped things up quite a bit to have them be painted. The salt often sticks to the outside and obscures the paint but most is still visible.
3. More structure is needed in the day to get through more categories.
4. Having the net farther away from the archers so we can use it as a backstop would have helped warming up.
5. Warming up takes a decent chunk of time with each person.
6. Warming up in the same area as the competition spot makes finding landing points for the competition much more difficult.
7. Each time an area is used the landing points have to be marked so they aren't counted again the next round.
8. Flagging distances and marking out the entire slinging zone in advance would greatly speed things up.

Here's a picture of everybody and the types of projectiles and slings used.

During the competition, I believe we had a 10mph tailwind with stronger gusts.

The results are in this graph.

Best throws:
Stones:
IG: 386m, 52g (impact)
SC: 381m,71g (impact)
SR: 297m,65g (stone location)
ER: 286m, 63g (stone location)

Lead (50g biconicals):
IG: 475m (impact)
SC: 399m (impact)
SR: 217m (impact)
ER: 199m (impact)

Thanks everyone, hopefully we'll all see each other next year.  It's always the weekend before Labor day, so it will be the same dates next year (August 28-30)

How about swiftcreek hitting 400m(dang near!) on his first time ever slinging lead?!!

Here are some of the best throws with lead biconicals.
https://youtu.be/_tntPPRj8ng

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Thanks for sharing and congratulations to everybody. Those are some great numbers. All of them. The 450 m claim that is on the welcome page of slinging.org is definitely backed up by this competition.

When I do distance slinging, I don´t search for impact points. Not because I get higher distances when measuring to the location where the projectile is laying, but because it is nearly impossible to find the impact point on a harvested corn field (where I do most of my distance slinging).

@IG: At what distance was the lead projectile found, that hit the ground at 475 m?

And another (slightly related) question: Was the David Engvall throw from 1992 mesured to the impact point of the projectile or to the place it was found?

Wow!!!  I can imagine how difficult it is to ensure safety when throwing live bullets like that. Unintentional and accidental collisions of a sliding lead bullet are very dangerous, especially when throwing in such thin and long sleens that can reach very high speeds. You're just great guys for thinking about the protection of the nets. The leaderboard results are amazing!!!  It's so cool that people can gather in one place and do what they love!!

@FF The main reason we go to this location is because finding the impact point IS possible. Nearly everywhere else I've gone, it is nigh impossible to find the impact.  One issue with such hard flat ground though is that some stones rolled a long way. One stone, we're pretty sure, rolled ~100m (after impacting at 306m).  We found one of swiftcreek's clay glandes at 416m, but couldn't locate the impact. Most clay verified impacts were about 350m (the longest was 376m), so even those were prone to roll quite a way.

Another interesting thing to note is that with all of the throws and found projectiles (10s of impacts), we can now say conclusively, that biconicals reorient in flight like an American football (nose-up to nose-down).

As far as I know, both Larry and David's records were measured at the point of impact. Larry explicitly said that in one of his posts that I found and said that he had conversed with David regarding the record (because Larry wanted to go back and claim it, especially given that David's wasn't with a traditional sling) so I believe they were done the same way.

My glande was a few meters farther, I don't recall exactly, but it was likely beyond 477.1m. We were only marking impacts. Find the projectile, pick it up, find the impact, place the projectile by the impact and flag it (we had serial numbers on the projectiles).

In hindsight, I should have got a more official/accurate measurement. The flight archers have a surveying laser range finder (AKA 'Total Station') that is much more accurate than mine (used for hunting).  But we have at least 3 people that measured it and we measured with 2 different range finders. I got 475m, and the other range finder got 474m, so I took the higher number.

This competition was a blast! Thanks again IG for putting it together (especially for the first two years before you had any takers)!

Despite coming in dead last, I'm really glad I came. I worked out one major issue with my distance technique and have two more that I have well defined and just need to iron out - I'm confident I could improve my distances by 30% or more once I get those figured out. Now I just need a place to practice ;D although I got some great advice from Goober that tennis balls do a pretty good job of representing technique with rocks/lead despite typically traveling <100m.

And camping out on the lake bed was also incredible on its own! My wife joined for that and some awesome photography on the lake. Any slingers that enjoy camping should consider coming for both reasons ;) and if you don't there's a motel in nearby Austin, so no excuses!

Seeing the flight archers was also amazing, and one of them broke a couple of long-standing(1997) world records! That was really cool to experience. The archers lay claim to probably my favorite single moment in the competition: despite being in the middle of the lake bed with a mile or more around us in all directiions, one of the archers said: "No, we can't set up that direction, I don't have enough room." And that wasn't a boast, he holds the current world record at 1868 meters!!!

And then, of course, lighted glandes!

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erricrice,    I work at a shooting club as a traditional archery coach. Here is the latest data that has been published. I haven't seen any other data yet.  The record was set by American Harry Drake on October 6, 1979, for a bow whose string is pulled with his feet (foot-bow). He shot an arrow at a distance of 1,410 meters (87 centimeters). This result is registered by the official World Archery resource. For block bows, the officially registered range record is 733 meters. It is very interesting to see the new data in official sources.

....Your photos are fantastically beautiful and they are mesmerizing...

@Serg I believe Alan's is an official record, although it happened only last year so printed record books probably don't show it yet. Alan is part of the worldwide organization and had a representative there for it. I'm not familiar enough with archery to point you to the official resource, but there are lots of news articles about it that reference beating Harry's 1971 record. But yes, Alan's bows are also foot bows, and his arrows fletched with razor blades! Incredible stuff.

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/20/beaverton-alan-case-breaks-archery-record/

EDIT: To clarify, the record broken while we were there this weekend was not Alan - it was a man from Hungary(seen with the tradtional hat/boots in my photo of the archers). It was not an "anything goes" category, it was a specific traditional bowmaking category I believe, although I don't know the details.

Thanks to Iron Goober for organizing the event and for everyone who showed up. I learned more in one day of hanging out with these guys than I have in the last 6 months of scouring youtube for new information and tricks. And the learning continues even more as I review video from the event.
- Props to erricrice for being the most hard-core slinging practitioner you will meet for enduring an odyssey-like experience to be there
- Props to Swift Creek Slings for having the coolest throw technique I have ever seen (even cooler in person than in his videos)
- Props to Iron Goober for throwing distances that seem impossible and for putting this together

Until next time, slinging amigos,
Slinging Rocks

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This was a wonderful opportunity and Im so glad IG took the time, energy, and money to make it happen. It was great meeting other slingers and seeing them throw in person. I learned so much from everyone involved. The flight archers and their sport is fascinating as well. I cant wait to come again next year and hopefully see some more new faces!

For the clay glandes and stones I used a 48" distance sling that Primal sent Goober. It worked very well for me. We were worried about slippage with the lead so i switched to the netted design for that.

Heres the 71g stone and sling i used

And also my favorite attendee, Sage, one of the archers puppy

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Also heres what a lead impact at 450m looks like

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Overall, it's cool!


IronGoober wrote on Sep 1^st, 2026 at 12:53am:

How about swiftcreek hitting 400m(dang near!) on his first time ever slinging lead?!!

That too! I think that might be a reason to get nervous. :D

IG it looks like you did a great job with the organization! Thanks for sharing! And thank you to everyone who participated.

The net is a very good idea.
I dont see any chrono. We should develop a low cost open source DIY version

I'm 100% with you on that. Like an open source version in both hardware and software? I like that idea.

Great write-up and all the pictures are awesome!  I'm glad you finally got a crew out there IG.

Those distances are amazing guys.  Great job! :thumb:

IronGoober wrote on Sep 1^st, 2026 at 9:31am:

Another interesting thing to note is that with all of the throws and found projectiles (10s of impacts), we can now say conclusively, that biconicals reorient in flight like an American football (nose-up to nose-down).

Good to get some reassurance on that one. A few weeks ago a friend threw a biconical clay glande and I stood about 20 meters beside him. The throw was not that powerful and only went about 80 meters, but I could clearly see it reorient in flight. But I also have seen some clay ellipsoids that were overstabilized and bellyflopped. I am not sure what to think about those ones. Because not only american footballs but also rugbyballs do reorient in flight. Maybe the the angle of attack was too high when launching?

I plan to collect some data on this topic. Give me a few months. :)

It would be great to make a bulletproof transparent protection for the camera to make a slow-motion video of the flight of different projectiles. In this video, there is no protection and a leather biconic ball flew very close to my phone. But this time I was lucky, I didn't hit him.

https://rutube.ru/video/f944c5fa587aff7b3f04e3884f7c5832/

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Wow looks like a great time! I hope to join next time.

It looks like all the lead ammo was biconical? Have you ever tried the more flattened almond shape that seems to have been common in Roman times?

I remember reading an account that those fly further, though the writer had no idea why. I can attest that they fly well, but I've never been able to throw them in a place that had a chance of finding where they landed.

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No, I haven't tried them. I've been meaning to though. There's still lots of experimentation that could be done.

Yeah always. You're doing great work, keep it up

Wow! Thanks for sharing. A lot of effort to make this happen. Much appreciated. Wish yo join you guys one day!

I've been away from the forum for a few months and didn't notice this post.

As I understand it, you all tried the netted design?
How did those slings perform?

I would also like to know how that Primal long range sling performed? It looks beautiful.