Ok, most of the scurrying feet I hear when slinging is due to my brother ducking for cover on a misfire.   But I have also been curious as to whether anyone has tried hunting with a sling. 

Historically, it seems to me that I've heard of birds and small mammals being hunted.  Larger animals were normally just scared away from areas (such as lions from herds of sheep).  I would suspect that the whirling motion of a sling would scare game away before you could hit it...but I really have no experience.

I've personally never hunted with it seriously.  My accuracy is nowhere near good enough.

Slings first were developed for hunting purposes.  It’s certainly one of the most ancient projectile weapons, probably predating the bow.  I saw an image of a supposed Neanderthal cave art image from a site I have since forgotten (anyone know the address?)  That puts slings right back at the dawn of man, during the stone age some 7000 years ago (5000 BC).  I can’t verify the accuracy of such a claim since it’s from a single unconfirmed source, but I think it’s very plausible (I have an anthropology background).  Jim Burdine's page mentions a prehistoric sling find in Lovelock Cave possibly dating back before 700 BC.

http://digilander.libero.it/tepec/prehistoric_warfare.htm
This site goes on to suggest the sling emerged as early as 12,000 BC! 

Slings are still used today to hunt small game, although mostly by children.  I have also read that slings were used to hunt large game in some cultures.  I would imagine that special projectiles (not stone unless they were shaped and very dense) would have had any deadly effect on animals bigger than a dog.  Slings were and still are used to scare animals to or from people.  For hunting purposes, you might sling a rock to overshoot the animal and push it closer towards yourself, or maybe scare smaller game out of distant brush to capture them, etc.  Shepherds carry slings to scare off wolves and other predators to protect their flocks.

Buckshot (loading a handful of pebbles into the pouch instead of a single rock) would be effective against birds.  It’s basically an ancient shotgun.  It’s defiantly effective and has a good dispersal.

The sling is a deadly weapon; we know that from hundreds of accounts from the Assyrians, Sumerians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Aztecs, and scores of other cultures.

Chris

People are always raving about the bow, but the early bows were terrible.  They required great skill to fabricate.  Good materials were not readily available in many regions.  Early strings were not strong enough for heavy draw weights.  Arrows were primitve, hard to make, and were far from accurate. 

A well trained slinger with fairly common rocks (perhaps just river or beach stones) could be deadly.  And a sling is easy to make and replace! 

Check out that site in my previous post.  I think it mentions a few things about the slings advantages over early bows.

It has been a long while, but I used to hunt four things with my sling on a regular basis: squirrel, rabbit, coyote, and birds.

Squirrels were easy enough, they would cuss you out instead of getting out of the way.

Rabbit was different, those you had to lead unless you were fortunate to spot it before it spotted you. Unfortunately, they don't sit still long anyway. However, anyone who's observed or hunted rabbit knows that they tend to run in a set, looping pattern. So, to hunt them, I'd use a dog, an untrained dog actually, that just loved chasing things. Take the dog out in the field, spook a rabbit, and off the dog goes. I'd wait where I was, sling slowly rotating overhead. As the rabbit came back around, I'd gauge the lead and fire. Usually the dog was making enough noise that the rabbit didn't hear the stone coming and made no attempt to avoid it. (Dog was small enough not to be able to actually catch the rabbit, or at least never did, but could give it a good run for it's money.)

Both of these could be taken with 1/4" to 1/2" bearings or similar ammo.

Coyote was different. You could take one with 1/2" bearings if and only if you hit it right. The problem is they're very clever and intelligent animals. In my case, hunting them was more to scare them away or just chase them. (I was a kid at the time.) I never did manage to hit one, which is why they were so much fun to "hunt".

Birds I usually hunted with the shotgun method: a handful of 1/8" bearings or shot near that size in a pouch. Effective enough, but you had to be quick sometimes. Some birds, like sage hens, will just sit there until you either get them or give up in frustration. Others take off, and you have a limited window in which to sling.

Sneakiness is a definite need so to get close enough, especially when hunting birds.

However, I've also been able to approach to within slinging distance with the sling rotating over my head. The key here is to move forward only when the game is not looking at you. Apparently, the rotating sling overhead doesn't spook them that much but the movement of the hunter will. Out of curiosity, I've approached deer this way with success, but for obvious reasons have never tried to take such a large animal with the sling. I have approached and fired at a tree or some such off in another direction just to see what would happen. The results were mixed as described below.

As to noise produced by the missle, I can't address that as I'm completely deaf. But I have noticed that with bearings the animals wouldn't spook when the missle was loosed. The same was true of the smoother stones. Instead of spooking, they'd actually look towards the sound in curiosity. Rougher stones, though, did seem to sometimes spook them, more often than not if I recall correctly, but here again it could go either way.

That was then, this is now. Animals change, too, as man encroaches into their territory, so I don't know if hunting with a sling near human habitation might not be easier now than before or the opposite is true. Up in the wild, I think animals are still very wary, but not as unused to man as before. I believe that they have a sense of hunting seasons now, so the time of the year could also be a factor.

Bill B.

HELLO EVERYBODY IM A NEW MEMBER AND INTERESTED IN SLINGING.IT IS VERY INTERESTING LISTENING TO YALL
TALK ABOUT HUNTING WITH A SLING BECAUSE HUNTING IS THE REASON I GOT INTERESTED IN SLINGING.i HAVE TRIED HITTING SQUIRRELS WITH MY SLING WITH '"BUCKSHOT"  AND I CAME REALLY CLOSE TO HITTING IT. i THINK THAT USING A CUPPED SLING WITH "BUCKSHOT" MIGHT BE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN WITH AN OVAL OR LOVELOCK POCKET. BRENT

Yes, I think your right Brent.  I've tried loading buckshot into my leather pouch with no success.  My pouch is not cupped and the buckshot will fall over the edges before I really get a chance to swing.  I was thinking of sowing leather at 90 degree angles on the edges of the pouch to create a kind of edge so the buckshot won't slip out.  I'm guessing, however, that these edges will grap on larger bullets and lead to less accurate throws. 

Maybe I'll make a sling especially for buckshot.


Leon

if you guy's made a wad like a shotgun it will propably work. I have made them for my slingshot but not my sling. What i did was take the shot and wrap it in toilet then ty it. Most of the time when it was released the toilet paper would tear and the shot scatter. Almost just like a shotgun. If you had proplems maybey a different type of paper could be used.