Issue five is at that last-features and then ads stage… and to that end, I was messaged by a Chinese manufacturer who had seen the website and magazine’s presence online, which is gratifying. Going by the the Western version of his name, Mr. Jack Zhang, we have had some hilarious translation issues and yet we get along like a burning barn, talking late into each other’s evenings. The time difference to China makes it seven hours ahead, about to be eight, this weekend coming.
He was eager to get into the magazine and yet the classic business model of buying advertising really doesn’t exist in the same way in China. What they do is send goods, and that can work for me. I have been obsessed with wanting to somehow ‘take’ a mullet from above the surface, after an experience as a teenager, when I admit I shot one through the surface at a depth of nothing with my big Wham-O Powermaster, only to see the poleaxed fish spiral off into the depths. I had done for it, but that flapping tail remains flapping after insensibility, as anyone who ever bashed a trout with a priest can attest. So I never got my prize and I never admitted that crime before! In mitigation, I was 16.
So my urge for this kit is strong.
Jack sent me fully ten sets of this awesome stuff. Truly well designed from the point of view of safety first, with a patented articulated armoured leather glove for your shooting hand. Then, the closed-face fishing reel, a very cunning bit of design especially for sling darting and free running line, which is a quality braid and is preloaded. The engraving laser etched onto it shows a line from the sling shooter figure to the ornamental carp being shot (like a tattoo carp) but yet somehow, the figure is shown with his slingshot at full draw!
They even have a cool branding. GONG NIU TRIBE and a logo… but the translation was awful and can be seen translated as ‘Bow Cow’ on one Facebook page. Jack suggested his translation was BOW OX, but I hadn’t the heart to tell him that sounded literally like ‘bollocks’. He was happy for my version to be the one.. so meet the SLING BULL TRIBE dart fishing rigs – on sale on the Slingshot World shop, and don’t get caught shooting trout or salmon with them…
