A spare power band is a small, cheap, lightweight survival item that could be easily fashioned into a working slingshot and tip the balance in ones favor in a survival situation.

I have had slingshots since I was a kid, and I carry one one in my backpack today, and many a puffball and dangling walnut have fallen prey. With all that practice, I can't come close to this level of skill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ieWrWLjii0

Good skill to have, and abundant cheap ammo, but it's not as easy as it looks, especially for catching game. Practice. Practice. Practice.

This gentleman is freakishly accurate with a slingshot! And doing it with a point-shooting style to boot.

With skill like that, birds and other small game are certainly a reasonable source of food. Compact, quiet, virtually unlimited ammo. I'd put this guy against Goliath any day!

Colour me skeptical. I like slingshots, but small game takes a lot more killing than you might think. They are tough and resilient little buggers. IMO, if you want to eat, you pack a single-shot .22 and/or a bunch of mouse and rat traps.

Here is an interesting idea where a knife or axe with a lanyard hole can be used as a handle for a small slingshot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aRXxp9HAPM&feature=watch_response

Well-said. Here is a guy who does just that.

The last half the video documents actual game kills, so avoid if you don't want to see that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXASb6V0O8U&NR=1&feature=endscreen

I agree with the comment that it's not as easy to be accurate as these YouTube videos make out. I've been using a standard commercial slingshot against a dartboard (target) from about 7 yards. The shots are going wider than I would like ... they're all on the dartboard, but by no means on the bullseye. I'm thinking right now that to improve accuracy I should shorten the distance between the prongs on the slingshot, and maybe lengthen the bands a bit. This should reduce the angle of error for each shot. We'll see.

I didn't check the YouTube, but if it's that slingshot guy in Carolina - that man is simply amazing. :-)

Doug's comment about difficulty in killing small game might be right for critters like rabbits. A slingshot would work well for small birds, and probably squirrells as well.

Pete2

I have harvested rabbits and squirrels with my hunting slingshot (I have small backpack model, a mid-sized folder, and a big extended-fork hunting model), but to everyones point, I have missed some too.

The trick of aiming is to select a draw point with your right hand (if you're right-handed) and always keep it there. That might be near the right jaw or cheekbone. You aim with the slingshot hand, using the center of an imaginary line between or slightly below the top of the forks...practice will dictate. The bands must be of equal length and power (sometimes one band will develop thin areas near the fork, especially when used in cold weather). Keeping the slingshot facing square to the target, using spherical ammo, and keeping the ball centered in the pouch are important.

And like Bacpakjac says; practice, practice, practice....

I wanted to see if I could stun a fish in a shallow creek with a heavy 12 mm steel ball. I went out into the woods this weekend and found a stream with 9" creek chubs, but I blustered up to the creek and they were extremely skittish and fast and I didn't get off a shot.

http://www.catsdomain.com/


slingshot with red dot site.

available option for shooting multiple shot- up to 50.....

still 1/2 price of a reasonable airgun.

illegal in CA and NYC....

Actually, they are legal here in California. A lot of shippers are no longer sending stuff here because of the internet sales tax law (AB 28). It requires medium/large out of state internet retailers to collect sales tax on items sent to CA.

As far as proficieny with a regular cat goes. I can land about 85% of my shots on a paper plate at 10 yards using paintballs. The distance goes up when I switch to steel or other amunition with a better ballistic coefficient. For those wanting to make an arrow slinger, the Trumark RR2 (heave black bands) pull in the low twenties for your average adult male. Your average "kids" arrow (25 lbs spine / 28" length) will shoot fine out of these. My only caveat is it takes a fair amount of strength to hold onto the pouch without a "bulge" to slip your fingers around.