IronGoober wrote on Jan 3
rd, 2018 at 9:49pm:
Morphy wrote on Oct 16
th, 2017 at 7:53am:
With the changing weight maybe there is some possibility you can adjust, (maybe?), especially if you practice a lot at it. With poorly shaped ammo, its virtually impossible.
Not sure why it took me so long to understand that as a slinger, but once I used a really good, consistent set of ammunition for awhile and then switched back to poorly shaped ammo, it became apparent real fast how badly it can affect your accuracy.
Im convinced people who dont see a big difference arent slinging at small enough targets for it to matter.
It's interesting that you mention this. Because, I actually don't notice a massive difference in accuracy with changing ammo. And I like small targets like cans.
Actually, the best accuracy I've ever achieved (and this is completely subjective, no hard data) was one bow-hunting season about 5 years ago, when I got my deer on the first day, so I had lots of free time. I started off by missing a grouse like 10 times in a row, until I ran out of nearby rocks, and it still just sat there. After this I was inspired to improve, so I would sling for like 3-4 hours a day. By the end of the week, I was hitting 6" trees from about 20 yards away 1 out of 5. It felt amazing. i felt like I could actually hunt something. But I never saw another grouse after that.
Anyway, during that period, I was just picking up weirdly shaped and inconsistent rocks from the forest and along a dirt road. Didn't seem to make any difference.
Maybe there was a difference and if I had consistent ammo I would have been even better. I dunno.
Who knows. I know I've had some slinging sessions where it didn't seem to matter but over all when slinging every day and keeping track of my hit percentage it made a big difference for me.
I could see if the stones were fairly heavy and not overly weirdly shaped. I've not had that experience with jagged and otherwise poorly shaped ammo.
I would say though, generally speaking, that I would be asonished if it made no difference simply because we don't know of any other weapon where imperfect ammo doesn't make a difference.
Some of the things I've noticed are changing drag (affecting elevation), planing into the wind, inconsistent release timing (very slight but when rotational speed is so high and the target so small even a fraction of a second can be a miss) and maybe a few more things that I can't remember off hand.
You are probably not alone in this though. I find myself being an outlier on a lot of my target slinging views. Strangely enough, as much as we have debated over the years, I find myself agreeing most with Jaegoor. But I'm open to being wrong on this one. In fact I really hope I am. Sure would make life easier.