Hunting Slingshot and Slingbow for Survival Hunting and Defense

A hunting slingshot bears the same relationship to a home made slingshot as a Fifth Avenue restaurant meal does to a McDonald’s. A slingshot dedicated to hunting is a powerful weapon that requires practice and training to make it useful. However, you should consider it as part of your survival arsenal as it requires no electrics and no specialized bullets meaning that you can use it in any apocalyptic scenario.

Key Features of a Hunting Slingshot

Knowing what to look for will help you find the best hunting slingshot for your needs, skills and experience. You can spend anywhere up to a couple of thousand dollars on the top end models, but unless you’ve got an extensive background in self propelled ballistics, you should aim for a more modest slingshot with the following features:

• Aluminum frames – aluminum strikes the ideal balance between sturdy and flexible when it comes to the forked frame of your slingshot. You’ll find some models made from a titanium alloy, but these will require a lot of strength and can be over powerful if you’re only planning on hunting small game. Aluminum will bend a little as you shoot to give you a helping hand but should last for years with good maintenance.
  

• Hollow rubber band – as a general rule of thumb, the thicker your rubber band, the more power and longevity you’ll get from your weapon. However, if you can find hollow rubber bands, you’ll get the same power without the weight and they are much easier to fix as and when they start to break.
  

• Soft grip – the feedback from hunting slingshots can be extreme, especially with more powerful models. Like a baseball bat, you can run the risk of damaging the skin and tendons in your hand from over use, even with hunting gloves. Buying a slingshot with a soft grip will give you a comfortable and sustainable hunting experience for the long term.
  

You should also invest in plenty of spare parts, especially the rubber bands and frame spokes, as these will be almost impossible to replace in a survival situation. Missiles will not be a problem, as the thickness and width of the pouch in hunting-type slingshots means that you’ll be able to fire anything smaller than a tennis ball with lethal power and accuracy.

Slingbows

If the idea of hunting with a slingshot doesn’t appeal, then you may find yourself more at home with a slingbow. The slingbow is an interesting cross between a slingshot and a longbow, where the drawstring of the bow has been replaced by the rubber of a slingshot.

The slingbow is shot horizontally, rather than the traditional vertical stance, and while you can use any sort of missile, it is designed to fire sling arrows. These look like regular hunting arrows, but have two feathers instead of three meaning that they are directional when you place them on the slingbow.

You can expect to be reasonably accurate with a slingbow over a much greater distance than a slingshot, but as the arrows are specific to the weapon, you’ll need to make sure you buy them in bulk ahead of time and that you collect spent arrows once you’ve shot them.

As with any part of your survival arsenal, you should make sure that you emphasize the point that the hunting slingshot or slingbow is not a toy and should only be used by people who have been trained in its use. The last thing you need is someone breaking it through misuse or by playing around with it as it may become one of the only sources of food and protection available to you in an apocalyptic scenario.

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