Hello! My name is Adam Rayner and I am a slingshot addict.
Being British, we call it a catapult. I started, aged twelve with the classic thumb pad DeadShot frame and square elastic. First three sixteenths, then the mighty Goliath in quarter inch. My right thumb is deformed – bended-back at ninety degrees, as a result of these formative years’ pressured-bone abuse!
I’m a lifer.
There’s something wonderful about human-powered weapons. The somehow ‘naughty’ image of the catapult and their deep association in the British psyche as the weapon of the ne’er do well and rascally poacher has always appealed to me too, if I am honest.
Indeed, I confess to some of my youth being misspent in certain ways that had me lying to the cookery teacher at the posh girls’ school next door to my lads’ one, where I did ‘General Studies – cookery option’. “It’s rabbit, Mrs. Flashman…” (It was pheasant.)
But that was long ago and in that time there has been a step change in rubber technology. The crazy flat gum rubber the Yanks used and which gave rise to the very concept of high power and even hunting slingshots, was never on sale in Europe. A week or two on a boat, a month or three in the shops and it was as gone off as cheese.
No, it was Rubbertown USA that changed stuff.
Akron Ohio and The Hygenic Corporation (sic) making modern ‘Theraband’ resistance rubber for physiotherapists is what changed the slingshot world. In eight coloured grades, their golden best will stretch over fourteen times its resting length and lasts and lasts versus pure Latex sheet for slingshot-bandset use. And stone me, it’s fast! Or rather don’t, as stones are illegal for hunting…
What Theraband Gold has meant is a new world of catapultry. The old primitive squares turned into thick hollow latex tubes in the late Seventies. Nowadays though, you can get different power, tapered and premium dipped natural latex tubes which have also quietly turbo-charged the Barnett Black Widow you almost certainly shot back then. (Bet you still have it if you are old enough and reading this!) And in a circular way, you can now get modern square extruded elastics (as against the old cut sheet) and many brands of new super-specialist rubbers made just for catapult bandsets, from folks in the Far East.
Catapult and Slingshot associations are appearing all over; we have two national ones in the UK, (UKSA and ESF) one in Eire (ICA) and in twenty-three other nations as far as I have just barely checked. We have the Welsh Warriors, The Surrey Slingshot Association, The Clan club in Scotland and the North East catapult Club. There’s even World Championships held regularly in Italy. Seething forums and YouTube channels abound. Folks are pulling off Annie Oakley shots like you wouldn’t believe. We should really call these shots ‘Rufus Husseys’, though.
Google “The Bean Shooter Man”. Rest his soul.
Yet there are no print/virtual actual magazines about the passion, the craftsmanship, the makers and their skills and the camaraderie of the shoot meets. Nothing about the tech and technique. No images of cattys you covet, framed for your Man Cave. Nothing about the primitive satisfaction of hunting for the pot with only native skill and cunning, along with a Y shaped stick, some mad elastic, a ball of steel or lead and one tiny scrap of leather.
Until now.
Welcome to website belonging to the very first Slingshot World magazine