The english slinging team have established a secret training camp.

More later :-)

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Good to see the bag in use :D

Looking good guys.  Could this be the year the English take the title?  :)

Argh, shame I missed this!

Morphy wrote on Feb 19^th, 2017 at 6:12pm:

Looking good guys.  Could this be the year the English take the title?  :)

No.
lol

While I now have a sling the right length for the range, and I know what i need to do to hit the target.
I'm going to need a helluva lot more practice till it's ingrained in my muscle memory.
My sole aim this year is to try and get at least one hit in each competition. David's is to hit something, anything :-)

We did put a couple of nice dents in the metal disc, and the clay ammo works really well and is safe for other users of the field and won't bollix the grass cutting machine up.
You get the same satisfying thump and clang as with stone and the balls do break up in a very visual burst of clay dust and bits.  David says he's got some good video of this happening (slow motion of course, not sure his phone takes normal speed video any more :whistle: )
Started with 60-70 balls, and were down to about 9 by start on sunday. 
Might be a couple left as we shifted to a combination of sock wars and tennis ball target throwing for the last couple of hours.

I will be taking the makings for a large number of sock balls to mallorca.
Dying to see Jaegoor and Luis in a sock war, fast draw standoff !

Was a Good weekend. My dad came down both days and the friend of ours who owns the field.
They were both extremely good !
They do tend to sling most days with tennis balls for the dogs.

The 10 metre, tennis ball, all england, amateur pairs slinging competition was easily won by team Johnson. With team Morris-Colter being let down by the colter part of the partnership ;-)
David was totally done-in by the point of the weekend. He's got absolutely no stamina at all.

So next, and after this years meeting, will be to find somewhere to set up a permament or at least semi-permament range.
It's much easier to build a free standing target that doesn't have to fold away for ease of transport. Just need some land with a secure building to store it when not in use.
Plus I need to buy a lot more clay.

If we did it at sarah's field, the general consensu is that it would either go walk-about or just get trashed by the locals.
Think the level of criminality you get in the average inner city slum area, but in an innocuous looking tiny english village.
I'm damn sure I found a meth lab hidden in the woods :whistle:
And it's not totally out of the question :-)

We actually left the target there overnight. Fortunately that was still there sunday, but some theiving sod had stolen the string marking out the 20 metre throw line.
Good job they didn't look under the target or I'm sure the aluminium disc would have gone the way of the string !

Pop some pics up later, got to work now :thumb:

@judop: we're definitely going to have some sort of event in the summer. And if we can get a permanent range setup, you're always welcome to come down for a play.

Kick wrote on Feb 19^th, 2017 at 7:23am:

Good to see the bag in use :D

Bag works brilliantly !

Pics below:  Home comforts :-)

And sarah and my dad about to sling tennis balls.

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Action shot with clay ball in flight. Fairly slow shutter speed accounts for the elongated ball :-)

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Looking at people in England coming together and slinging. I love this. I really do. I feel like we are seeing the rebirth of an ancient tradition.

well we're starting to get there.
Sarah has got a lot of the hunting/shooting/gundog group locally using slings to throw tennis balls for the dogs.

So with luck, in the summer we'll not only have some of them - but also dogs to retrieve the ammo :-)

I was thinking of  having a stall at the gamekeeprs fair as well - but have to see what that would cost. 
Plus I can't find any mention of the gamekeepers fair either on the catton hall website or on the basc website either.

Mind you the bushcraft show at beehive farm is only a couple minutes away.
Have to think about that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9haAwNGDISI

Now 'all' I have to do is replicate it in mallorca :-)

Great shot!

Sock war?

I'm totally inspired to make slinging more popular here in Canada!

the best way to start is with tennis balls and dog walkers.
And children and sock balls.

And yes drakolith: sock wars.

Roman from guam has a video of me making a sock ball, said he used them at a school recently :-)

Basically to get kids into slinging, forget target shooting and ranges. They much rather prefer to sling at each other.
So I invented the world's safest sling ammunition: sock balls :-)

Once they've got into slinging, then you can start clubs and target shooting. And braided slings (not me I have no traditions to uphold - I'm starting from scratch to create new slinging traditions for the uk and i don't see braided slings as part of that) if you want to.
But to start you need paracord and butterfly pouch slings.
Easy, quick  and cheap to make and effective.