Thread: slingshot becomes sling bow

Was debating about putting this into the Archery section or not but thought it might offend some our archers, and its more of a gear thing I suppose - it just also uses arrows, (mods move if need be).

So its a marksman slingshot, which is a fun enough toy on its own, great for silently eliminating sparrows and thrushes from your tomato plants, you can use stones, ball bearings, lead balls, or for the eco friendly people out there, ice cubes! This particular model has a fold out arm brace, making it a tad more stable, although also making it a tad bigger and slower to mount.

From there it has been modified (I bought this from the pathfinder school pre modified), first the stock bands have been removed and replaced with 40 pound jobs - you can also get 50 pound ones, which do make it an effort to pull, but I suspect that you could use a mechanical arrow release with this, which I intend to try once mine arrives...



The leather bowl that normally cups the stones has paracord looped through it allowing you to both nook the arrow and pull back on it to aim and loose/fire, in addition as you pull back the leather wraps tightly on the the nook/shaft and allows you to shoot either uprightly, or to cant the sling if thats your style.

The sling bow then has a round plastic insert that you screw into place that cups your arrow, its essentially an arrow shelf, big enough for the fletching to pass through, you need to remove it if you are flinging stones though, then where the screw tightens there is also a round plastic bobbin type thing that allows you to attach fishing line (clipped to the base of the sling bow), if you are shooting at fish.

With it I got three breakdown carbon arrows with fletching, nooks and field tips (I need to get some broad heads at some point), and one breakdown carbon fishing arrow, that came with a harpoon head, the fishing line, nook and a slide thingy that you attach the line to when shooting fish.

With fish I suppose you get as close as need be to be able to aim without scaring them off. If you are after actual game (birds, goats or deer, maybe a pig if it was small) then the actual effective range, with a broad head going for a shot in the engine room, is probably about 10 metres maximum, not a massive distance but then this thing is not going to be traveling as fast as a big bow. Means you have to stalk.

So whats it for then, well I think of it as a back up tool, it weighs very little and packs up small, if you are going off shooting with a bow and arrow you could easily pack this along and it could act as both a back up tool in case something went wrong with your main bow, or if you came across a pool with a fish in it, it could shoot the arrows you already had, or you can get the pack down ones, which, being carbon, are very light. Or if you are gun shooting you could take this with the breakdown arrows for the same reason, at least with arrows you might be able to use them again, not so with spent bullets unless you take a reloading kit with you...

All in all its a cheap and fun tool, useable as a slingshot, a bow for game, a bow for fish, or just as a bit of fun.

Shelley