Dear Mr. Shepard,

    I stumbled into your website yesterday, and I was impressed(overwhelmed) by your collection ! I'm so happy to find out that there
are people like you who actually take time out to promote this fascinating hobby. From where I come from (Philippine Islands), locally mass-produced wooden slingshots and powerbands (flat bands of various widths) are readily available from many open-air markets over here. On my family's last trip to the northern highlands (Baguio City) this year, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that magnum-sized slingshots were being sold. These monsters come with extra-large (by our standards) wooden forks, and powerbands so thick that I could hardly pull them .
    It seems that slingshots are a way of life with many of these mountain tribesmen and adults need not feel shy when perusing through the stalls that offers them for sale. You might be surprised to find out that some of our local thugs use slingshots for killing people. These "Combat Models" or "Panas" (in local jargon) are designed to launch heavy, barbed, 5-inch nails (with chicken feathers for fletching). I used to have a newspaper clipping of a person hit by one of these things in the back of the head (or was it the neck ? Can't remember ). Except for the dart sticking out of his back and the bloody mess, he seemed quite calm and composed. Hmmm.. no stopping power ?
    By the way, I was wondering if those sickle-shaped slingshots in your collection are difficult to use. First time in my life to see such things.
    Lastly, do you know where I can get an original WHAM-O Sportsman slingshot (the original wooden one) ? I lost mine many, many years ago and sorely miss it. My mother probably threw it away.
    Thanks again for such an excellent website !!

Sincerely,
Nathan James (Binky) Yu

Dear Nathan,

    Thanks for you kind words about my website. I am just starting to work on the Jul/Sep issue of Slingshot the Magazine. I should have pictures of my entire collection online before long.
    The sickle-shaped slingshots work quite well. They are held with the handle horizontal to the ground.
Maybe we can make a trade on a Wham-O slingshot. The slingshots you mention from the Philippine Islands are some that are not in my collection. I am trying to get a set of trading slingshots that I can use to increase the size of my collection.
    I would like to run your letter in the Letters to the Editor section in the Jul/Sep issue.

Please share my website with your friends. I'm looking for subscribers to my magazine.

Aim High & Shoot Straight
Kent

I was relieved to find your site. I've become interested in slingshots lately, because they take me back to my early years. At the end of the reminiscences to follow is a question, by the way. My dad helped me make my first slingshot. We found that old inner tubes and I believe tractor inner tubes had the right rubber compound.
Here's a little story for you.

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This occurred around 1972, while living in the center of a small town in rural Manitoba. My older brother Irv and I decided to make a two person, magnum slingshot. So we cut a hefty fork and long rubber strips, and went to a large cleared lot across the street from our house for testing. The lot was about 90 yards long, then came our street, then a row of houses (ours was among them), an alley and then more houses, followed by a street. Well, we went to the far end of the lot and loaded a stone. I pulled back the pouch while Irv braced the stock. Our angle was about 20 degrees from horizontal, and the stretched length of the bands was at least 3 feet. But the test ended as a disappointment. On release, the stone sailed off at a high rate of speed and disappeared from view. We expected it to hit before the street. The behaviour of the magnum was a red flag that this was not a good test method, as we didn't know where that stone landed. After a little head scratching over where that stone had gone, we decided to halt testing. It just so happened that a few days before, our next older brother El had chastised us for being careless with our slingshots and had confiscated them. The same day as our test, El was in back of our house in the alley, shooting with the confiscated slingshots at our burning barrel. The day after the test, our neighbors (the parents of El's best friend) from across the alley complained that one of the windows on their garage was broken. I recall a stone had been found in the garage. Suspicion fell on El, who was known to have been shooting a slingshot in the alley the day before. Of course, he denied it. But we had enough sense to keep our mouths shut and he was presumed guilty by all and in due course apologized for the damage, which we certainly preferred. And, after all, if he hadn't played "big brother" and confiscated our sling shots, we likely would never have even thought of making a magnum version and breaking that window. And if he hadn't been hypocritical and played with our slingshots after taking them away, the blame would have surely fell on us, the more usual sources of pranks and shenanigans, and not prone to lying. Besides, how much more fun it is to tell someone years later the "rest of the story".

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Now here's a question for you.

I would like to buy a slingshot. But I don't want to buy a few before finding the best one. So I need a starting point. Slingshot designs have radically changed since my old days. I just know I loved the wrist brace. Now I'm confused. I've seen some very exotic designs on the internet. Here are a few. Marksman Laserhawk Adjustable WR-3,  Marksman Laserhawk Stealth WR-4, Barnet Cobra. I want a slingshot that is currently available, and offers the best combination of accuracy, power, and features for a lefty. As you may expect,  I want the most power I can get. I would like the option of using bird shot or even arrows (if arrows are more than a novelty in a slingshot). To enhance accuracy, I would like some sort of sighting system. I would like this slingshot to be useful for survival conditions. I don't want to spend a small fortune.
Can you recommend anything in particular? Any assistance would be appreciated. Also, I have toyed with building my own, as I have access to some tools and supplies (i.e. surgical tube, etc.) Are there designs available that could be followed?

Thanks for building this site.

Hi Larry,

Asking someone who has over 400 different slingshots what the best slingshot is can be an impossible task. I would recommend any of the 3 you mentioned plus Trumark and Saunders slingshots. Crosman has the Powerstorm slingshot that I haven't tried yet, but I have had a couple of reports on it that say it is a good slingshot. I have an article coming up in the Jul/Sep issue of Slingshot the Magazine that tells about me shooting the above slingshots. We haven't put any pictures in yet, but you can check out the websites to see the different ones. I've not had much experience shooting multiple shot. You will just have to try it and let me know how it works. At the present time there is not any arrow-shooting slingshots on the market. In the past, there have been a few different ones. The best were inventions of Robert Blair. He had models that shot full length arrows and some that shot a short arrow. I have a couple of his models that were experimental. At one time Beeman carried a couple of his models that shot the short arrow.

I think it would be a great idea for you to design your own slingshots. That would give me an opportunity to add to my collection. There aren't any designs available that I am aware of at this time. You can look a the models on the market to see what they have done.

Aim High & Shoot Straight,