Deluxe slingshot vs. pellet gun for hunting/pesting

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delooper

delooper

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Jul 7, 2020
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Duncan, BC, Canada
Any strong feelings about the difference between pesting with an airgun vs. a slingshot?

There are nice "conversion kits" that turn bows into "barrelled" slingshots with red dot sights. These are pretty heavy-hitting things, shooting 15mm carbon steel ballbearings. They appear to give good-enough control for 30yd pesting.

On the plus side 15mm carbon steel ballbearings are pretty environmentally friendly. Carrying a bow around the yard raises less eyebrows than a rifle. And it's quiet.

But it doesn't quite have as fine aim control as a scoped rifle. And steel ballbearings are more expensive than pellets -- typical prices I'm finding are in the $0.40 per BB. And there's probably far less thermal devices that would work on it.

When I get the chance I'll put the device over a chronometer and see what kinds of speeds I'm getting. 15mm carbon steel ballbearings are around 14 grams (216 grain) each.

Here is one of the kits I'm referring to:

It's basically a combination of magazine and barrel that you strap into a bow. Search ebay for things like "Launcher Magazine for Repeating Compound Bow Capacity 16 Balls Newest" and you will get a pile of variations, with different projectile sizes. These are variations of Jorg Sprave's Fenris bow magazine idea.

Screenshot from 2023-10-05 21-09-00.png
 
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I grew up with a Wham_o Deluxe slingshot in my back pocket. I was very good with that thing. But, on my best day, I was nowhere near the lethality of any decent pellet rifle. I doubt there is any add on that will allow a bow shooting balls to hit bird size pests unless they are extremely close. Good luck and let us know how it works.
Check out Temu for slingshot ammo.
 
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Well so far it's not all that encouraging. The unit is hunting-accurate for 30-yard (30-meter) hunting, and fires at about 280 fps. So it hits really hard. The problem is my unit came with a faulty trigger.

The problem with the trigger is it sometimes lets BBs between the string and the string-holder (trigger assembly) during a shot. So the BB interferes with the string being grabbed by the trigger mechanism. You have to disassemble the unit to fix the problem, which largely negates the purpose of the magazine.

I suppose I see two novel features of this magazine 1) it's easier to maintain a higher accuracy than with a traditional slingshot and 2) reloading in principle should be really fast. This trigger flaw negates (2).

Replacing the main spring in the trigger assembly went a good-way to fixing the trigger issue, but I still encounter problems occasionally. The spring the trigger came with was a little too weak. A stronger spring helps, but if you make the spring too strong, you can't get the trigger mechanism to close on the string. So I'm not finding a happy medium.

PXL_20231129_075335298.jpg



Here is the trigger unit, and its internals.

PXL_20231129_075436650.jpg


I'm beginning to think the solution might be a combination of a slightly weaker spring with more pre-compression, or maybe the primary metal item in the picture above, the little "arm" it has, that keeps BBs out of the "barrel" when the string is loaded, perhaps that needs to be a little longer, as right now it doesn't take much for the BBs in the magazine to push through that.

Needless to say, when I bought this item I didn't think I'd need to re-engineer the thing.

The original main spring appeared to be about a 20mm long, 0.4 or 0.5mm thick, 5mm diameter (cross-sectional) spring. As I went up to a 0.7mm thickness spring, things improved and I could get about 3 consecutive shots off. 20mm length seemed a bit short, so I tried 25mm in length, but that spring couldn't compress. So I tried cutting a 25mm spring down to 23mm and that worked about as well as the 20mm spring. Hmm. It seems like the reason the 0.7mm thick springs eventually fail is they start to deform, i.e. they don't spring back to their original length after a few shots. Will see if I can find some better springs.

I know some people have been having better luck with these units, so I'll see if I can get a look at their trigger mechanism.
 
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Berserkeley Mike said:
A magnet to hold the BBs?
Click to expand...

Yes, it uses a magnet to hold the BBs that are in the "barrel".

The problem is it's letting BBs past the trigger at the wrong time. The magnet works well. Part of me wonders if it's maybe working too well, helping to pull BBs past the mechanism that should lock excess BBs in the magazine.

I'm going to try one other type of spring (on order) and then maybe start modifying the trigger mechanism more substantially. Also waiting to see if people who have functional triggers can show what's the difference between theirs and mine.
 
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TC724 said:
Slingshots can be great and perfectly ethical but they have their limitations and legality limitations. Pellet guns offer more range and lethality however you can easily kill small game within reason with a sling shot. I don’t know anything about conversion kits but using good technique with modern slingshot bands you can achieve success.
Click to expand...

No slingshot restrictions here, but airgun restrictions are steep. There's even pretty steep archery restrictions here.
 
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I replace the entire magazine unit. It looks like the manufacturer has been continuously changing his design. The top image (original post) is one of the earlier designs. This new one appears to be the most recent revision (pic below).

PXL_20231218_210307525.jpg


It also appears to be the one Joerg Sprave reviews in his video:


So far this unit has worked flawlessly. I'll try running it through the chronometer tonight. My arms got exhausted playing with it last night. Need to build up my bow-draw stamina.

Other than actually working (my first version did not), this unit does have a downside, that it doesn't have the little "finger hold" on the front. My first unit had one, and it helps keep you relaxed when the unit is drawn. Maybe later when my stamina for bows has been built up it won't matter, but right now when I'm a little weakling, I tire more quickly than I'd like. I'll see if I can retrofit the other finger hold unit to this one.

Perhaps the (main) unfixable downside to these units is you have to take a lot of care of your bowstring. Right now I re-wax every time I reload. Hopefully I can get by with less waxing, but I've noticed that if you let the bowstring go dry it'll burn up. My impression is this is a feature of the system. Since there's no barrier between the bowstring and the BB, the bowstring is going to try to sneak around the BB during launch. That will cause some friction if the string is dry. With a waxed bowstring I've made it through one load (10BBs) without any damage.

One other mild criticism is the magnets that hold the BB in place once you have it loaded in the barrel (with the string behind it), these are a tad too weak. They do their job most of the time, but if you load the unit with the barrel pointing straight down, sometimes the BBs slip out. This should be easy to fix. I've ordered some magnets that should fit perfectly to boost the strength of the current magnets.

In case anyone is curious, if you search for these units on ebay, a search like "Archery Rapid Bow Shooter Steel Ball Launcher 20-70lbs Compound Recurve Hunting" will find it. At any time there's about 4-8 distributors for these units, some are selling old stock. Probably the best (current) distributor is "qme-archery". My impression in Sprave is trying to make a distribution deal with the manufacturer, to have a "Joerg approved" version for sale on his gogun website.
 
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With the new quiver I'm still getting around 280fps (85m/s) on shots.

Waxing the string on reloads seems to be keeping my bow string alive. Maybe it's too early to tell, but right now it looks like the string needs re-waxing about every 20 shots. Maybe that number will go up as the whole system gets a wax coating.

I haven't shot my bow in a long time. Will probably take me another week to get comfortable doing strings of 10 shots.

So it's consistently working well now. It does occasionally have loading problems when the magazine is near empty. And if you put a BB in the barrel with the barrel pointed down, sometimes the BB falls out. That should be fixed soon with a stronger magnet.

This will probably be a "day time only" pester as I don't have an appropriate thermal optic to mount on it. And it's hard to tell if there's a BB in the barrel at night -- dry firing compound bows isn't a great idea.

Altogether, these BBs at 280fps are hitting just a smidge harder than my .22 cal PCP hits targets, using light to mid-weight pellets. Usually I have it tuned to shooting around 850fps to 900fps. Here "hard" is energy levels. In principle I could tune my PCP to shoot heavy pellets at exactly the same energy level as this slingshot, but in .22 it might take slugs to get to the appropriate mass (if I don't want to fire supersonic).

The plus side of the slingshot is it's legal almost everywhere, around where I live. And it's less scary looking, so it won't freak people out as much as carrying a gun would. It's plenty accurate for the pesting distances I need. It's nice and quiet. The main drawback is it's not as small and packable as the Leshiy 2, and you have to keep on top of the string health.

edit: I notice that when you start buying BBs in bulk -- like packs of 1000 or so -- the prices really drop. I've been buying BBs in the $0.05 per BB, recently off ebay. So it's more expensive than Crosman .22 pellets, but less expensive than some of the more deluxe pellet brands out there.
 
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