MontieGear Y Shot Slingshot - FULLY LOADED!

In our very first Slingshot World review online, I thought that the lunacy of my new Y Shot catapult might entertain you. For I admit that in my youth at school, I was influenced by a writer called Denys Watkins-Pitchford and a book called Brendon Chase. In which schoolboys ran away to the woods and lived ferally, by hunting and fishing. There was some stuff about catapults in it and they sold lethal-looking metal catapults by Milbro and ‘DeadShot’ at my local tackle and airgun shops. Both of them, in fact. And while Young’s of Harrow is long gone, Woody’s of Wembley is very much still in business and still has a window stuffed with glorious lethality!

My school was also next to a Pheasant reserve.

I was told in cookery lessons, taken over in the girls’ school, that I aughta go to Switzerland to catering college, so skilled didst the teacher think I was! I hadn’t the heart to tell her that my ‘rabbit’ was corn-fed semi-wild pheasant. Very fresh, too and lead pellet free. ‘Rabbit’ casserole, ‘rabbit’ pasty, and ‘rabbit’ terrine. All poached like a feral little herbert in the reserve next door, during any moments I could bunk off, which ranged to entire field days once I managed to create a cover for my nefariousness! Nowadays, my tech world has had a major influence, so when I saw this picture, below from the Montie Gear website, I nearly died! How tech was THAT!

I figured that I could at last use that telescopic sight I had kept from when I sold my 6ftlbs legal limit BSA Scorpion air pistol back to the tackle shop back in 1978! He hadn’t wanted to give me any extra for the ‘scope, so I kept it. And had picked it up and looked through it every now and again (at arm’s length perforce for it is for pistols) through the years. I have no interest whatsoever in those replicas that look so terrifyingly real, so Lord knows why I kept it.

But kept it I did and like the man who found a button and had a suit made to go with it, I decided to get a Y Shot. And fit my ‘scope.

I had already got back into catapultry with a vengeance and bought some superb examples of fine craftsmanship from Romany Custom Catapults and another maker who specialises in modern prototyping composite materials. I have one in orange and black G10 glass-epoxy composite. A material used for heavy duty precision prototyping in industry. It’s called UltraTiger and looks awesome.

Meanwhile, what follows is the full Rayner review on an item that will either make you marvel, or realise that I have lost the plot completely….

In A Nutshell

A modular catapult system that starts with a last-forever frame wearing a replaceable paracord wrap handle and which can be nestled in an initialled horse hide holster. It can end up with a cluster of accessories mounted to it, limited by your daftness or needs. This one has a laser sight with remote squeeze-switch on a curly lead; a dot sight that can show four patterns of reticule in two colours and at three different levels of brightness; an old 1.5 x 15 Webley & Scott pistol scope and a ‘tactical’ torch with a monstrous CREE led that can be switched via pulse or toggle, using a double pressure switch, to select high beam, low beam or assault-flashing, also via a curly lead pressure switch, paracord-bound back to back with that of the laser. The fitted wrist brace has been fully paracord woven to add four more protective areas against ammo strikes to the hand. On the top of all of it, a brand new action cam brand, ACTIVEON, have been in touch and their CX Gold camera is mounted to the torch. It also has the heavy duty 35lb draw weight double bands fitted.

Mine may well be the most accessorised slingshot in the world! I want to apply to the Guinness World Records to see if it is worthy!

REVIEW RATINGS

Build Quality 10 Simply stunning, including steel lined threaded inserts.
Appearance 10 Mean, rugged and kinda ‘Tactical’.
Ease Of Use 10 A bit of a knack needed to handle the assembly and re-banding is all.
Effectiveness 10 It all does exactly what it says.
Value For Money 8 Like a Maserati is expensive, this is HEIRLOOM GRADE!
Overall 9.6 STATE OF THE ART

Product Details
Manufacturer: Montie Gear™
Website: http://www.montiegear.com
Price as assembled, around £600, see bottom for breakdown and full specifications

Editor Review : Montie Gear Y Shot Catapult
The only thing I didn’t buy was the thumb brace part or the ‘whisker biscuit’. This last is a device to mount and shoot arrows and I reckon that I will HAVE to invest at some point! There’s even a holster for the break-down arrows available… be still my heart!

How Is It Made?
With a bonkers water laser. It is just squirting water, yet so hard it can cut through half inch sheet aluminium plate! The handle is made of half inch, the other parts of mere three-sixteenths. It is hilarious, the poor Americans having to work with imperial fractions. The aloominumm, as they say, is powder coated and I gather that Montie Gear have also supplied them naked as well. The handle is wrapped in paracord – the magic string made to military specifications to have a half tonne breaking strain. And it all arrives in kit form. You assemble the bands with side plates that screw into place into tapped holes in the ally handle.

And here is where it gets geeky-cool, for the maker wants you to be able to bequeath this thing to your descendants in years to come, even if it is on its tenth paracord wrap! Those threaded holes are lined with steel, so as to make them adhere to their slogans of “Heirloom Grade” and ‘Troublesome Gap Tough”. The latter being a rugged place in North Carolina, beloved of the maker, which sounds like it was named by the pioneers on the way through. The intent is for this to last for ever. So, it is utterly rugged. Modular, too, for there are many add-on parts that can be bolted-on to the Y Shot.

And this is just one of a family of products made by Montie Gear, mostly for hunting and camping. Although they do make an EMP-resistant ‘preppers’ box that made me feel odd. For I live so close to the most vital military control centre in Northern Europe, that such efforts would be hysteric and pointless. Nowhere to run to on our rock.

Just have a look at this thing, fully loaded….. it is somehow beautiful in its overkill of technology….

How Well Does It Work?
Now this is a human-powered weapon. Thus, the variables are many, for the old adage that the weapon is only as dangerous as the operator holds good here. However, my shooting technique is not only still there from my youth, but has come on leaps and bounds after reading “Slingshot shooting” By Jack H. Koehler. Now, after three or four shots, I can dial in most any of my frames to be able to plink a pop can at ten metres. That varies from natural wood forks, to aluminium cast catapults and billet-cut chassis ones, as well as the old classics I have re-banded with the material that has changed everything.

I am dangerous!

Made for physiotherapy, resistance bands of high natural latex content have become king in catapultry. They have four or more strengths of resistance but the best is Theraband Gold. It makes the old square stuff look silly and means that the power of a modern catapult is liable to be way greater than that of any non-FAC air weapon.

And this loaded Y Shot is a beast. You can fit pretty much what ever band suits you and Montie Gear can also supply a special side plate that allows use of high latex tube elastic from the Theraband people or the stuff from China. For the catapult is a popular thing in China and a company called Dankung make the best, as well as the best tubes. But while there are daft things with springs in, the Chinese have nothing remotely like the Y Shot!

I have used the single bands and currently have the double (35lb draw weight) set fitted. This is enough to steady the absurdly high mass of the now huge catapult. Despite the crazy, asymmetric assemblage of ordnance bolted on, the centre of gravity is not too far off the handle and when drawn, the system holds like a rock with the mad mass acting as the biggest inertia-weights any catapult system ever had! And in future, I shall be making my own bands, with the Theraband purchased by the roll, a self-healing cutting mat and a roller cutter. All backed up with instructional YouTube videos.

I just counted. There are 32 different bolts or fixing adjustments on the system….

The laser has elevation and windage adjustment and is made for rifles, so I am pushing the adjustments to the limit to collimate the beam to the impact point at ten metres. This is because the line of travel of the bullet (a 9.5mm unhardened steel ball from The Bearing Warehouse from as low as under a tenner a thousand if you collect in Worthing or Sheffield) is not only parabolic but also starts from as far as three inches off the axis of the laser generator. As it is thus with the dot sight. So, for that tech, you have to choose a distance for ‘convergence’ and ten metres is the standard start for competition shooting.

I have adjusted both the beam and the lovely circle-in-a-cross-with-a-dot reticule, in red, such that both cover the same spot at ten metres. It looks truly cool through the lens of the dot sight. That is held in what’s called ‘Gangster grip’. So named after the sideways grip on hand weapons favoured by the baddies. This puts the reticule and the green laser in the same place.

I admit that I need the practise to put the ball bearing through that over-illuminated spot in the video you want to see next. But I wanted to get the product review out. Also, that pistol scope needs to be used the opposite way around, so I will be drawing upon my slightly rooted-in-a-tad-of-dyslexia ambidexterity and trying left-hand gangster grip! The camera has a nice wide angle of view so doesn’t care and the torch not only has a beam that can zoom bigger or smaller by a long ways, the pressure switch has two parts! One, is a click-toggle and each time it on/offs, it cycles through BRIGHT, flashing-like-a-bastard and dim. You cannot select which you get next. Or, you can squeeze another part of the pressure pad on the end of the curly wire and it lights only while you are squeezing it.

Bizarrely, while the grip on the two pressure switches, also called Tactical Switches, is by way of slipping them between two fingers, I can actually choose to impulse-light the laser on its own, the torch on whatever it’ll do next – on its own or else mash both at once and get the pool of light with the green laser right through it like a ruddy lightsabre!

This is awesome engineering. And I shall be making videos with the ACTIVEON (pronounced like it had a hyphen, “active – on”) to show you how I am getting on.

The holster I simply had to own is lovely thick horse hide, monogrammed. It is only fit for use with the frame with no extras fitted but like the the catapult, will last for ever I think. Getting the weaver rails the Americans are not allowed to export was easy. Explaining to a top end air and shot gunsmith quite what I wanted done with them and the application was hilarious.

I have enjoyed building the rest of it and now will enjoy finding out if I can get target-precise.

Be warned, if you fancy this, these are expensive and UK import duty is a pig!

And lastly the boss, Montie Roland, is an utter gentleman and a pleasure to do business with. He hand wrote ‘ENJOY!” upon my invoice!

All daftness aside, the Y Shot with just one sighting product mounted, might make more sense. This, I did because I can and it amuses the hell outta me. But the point is, this really is Heirloom Grade and while I yet live and can pull a physiotherapy elastic back, I can arse around and reconfigure it to my hearts’ content and then one day, take it to a tournament!

Price Breakdown:

MONTIE GEAR Y-SHOT SLINGSHOT FRAME $129.95
MONTIE GEAR Y-SHOT SLINGSHOT HOLSTER (monogrammed) $54.95
MONTIE GEAR WRIST BRACE $89.95
MONTIE GEAR ADAPTER PLATE $24.95
MONTIE GEAR FIBRE OPTIC SIGHT MOUNT $79.95
DOUBLE BAND REPLACEMENT SET $12.00
Thumb Screw Sets – extra long for use with multiple plates x3 $19.90
SHIPPING (I did incur two sets of this by ordering in two parts) $44.50
US Dollar subtotal {$456.15 = £322 approx}

IMPORT DUTY (also incurred another slice of this with order two!) £51.62

ACCESSORIES:
HAWKE SPORT OPTICS UNIV. WEAVER RAIL X2: £18.99 EACH £37.98
http://www.hawkeoptics.co.uk/universal-weaver-base.html
(unbranded) ELECTRO DOT SIGHT £39.99
HAWKE SPORT OPTICS TACTICAL GREEN LASER £49.99
Webley & Scott 1.5 x 15 Pistol scope (£4.95 in 1978!) £49.99 for similar
Dovetail-to-Weaver adaptor for pistol scope (pair) £6.95
Three-Mode CREE LED tactical torch with remote pressure switch £25.00
ACTIVEON CX GOLD action camera system (inc mounts) (£94.99 Press Gift)
subtotal £304.89

Total Price £626.89

Remove approx £150 for camera I will be ‘paying for’ with work and the pistol scope I have had since the Seventies! I have actually spent just under £600 roughly, as there was a small amount of cost for the gunsmith (Hello DAVE!) at Woody’s of Wembley to mount the Weaver/Picatinny rails to the sight plate and accessory plate in turn.

Wondrous shop… amazing, patient staff. Coarse, fly game, BIG GAME, cane fly rods and cane coarse rods. Airguns, crossbows, shotguns, clothing, bushcraft products, specialist hunting knives, co2 airsoft products and even night vision equipment and chronometers to measure projectile speeds! http://www.woodysofwembley.co.uk/

This is why you cannot order that small rail piece from the USA – it counts as a piece of the arms trade!

Note for Potential Purchasers of Picatinny Rail Option
ITAR Product – If you select the version with the Picatinny rail (does not apply to the fibre optic sights only version), you confirm that you understand, acknowledge, and agree to the Export Policy. I am a U.S. Person, and I do not intend to export this product.

This product is also available without the Picatinny rail, which we CAN sell outside of the US. To purchase the sights without the Picatinny rail, please select that configuration. (lol, I DID!)

Full Specifications

Y SHOT CATAPULT FRAME:
1/2in water jet cut aluminium frame
16lbs pull weight with 28in draw tapered Thera-Band Gold band with leather pouch assembly
35lbs pull weight with double 28in draw tapered Thera-Band Gold band with leather pouch assembly
550 paracord wrapped handle
Easy band replacement with removable side plates
Fires up to 1/2in ball bearings
Rugged powder coat or anodised finish
Stainless steel fittings
Available with brass thumbscrews for tool-less replacement of bands
Made in USA – Troublesome Gap tough

Weight & Dimensions
6 ounces
6.75in x 3.625in x .5in (L x W @ forks x D)
3.5in handle length
2.25in inside fork width at centre

Y SHOT WRIST BRACE
3/16in water jet aluminium frame
550 paracord brace
Easy band replacement; Replaces side plates on Y-Shot for easy swapping
Rugged powder coat or anodised finish
Made in USA – Troublesome Gap tough