David, the young shepherd boy, stepped forth and said he would face the giant Philistine on the field of battle. They laughed at him. But since no one else was willing to go against Goliath, they sent David out and he slew the champion Philistine and prevented further bloodshed on both sides. His weapon? A sling, made of two long strings of leather and a leather pouch fashioned to hold grape-size stones. Beware of a kid who watches grazing sheep day and night and owns a sling. There is plenty of time to practice slinging stones.

    From the ancient sling evolved a weapon used by boys in the days of my youth; the slingshot. Back then you didn’t buy a sling shot. You didn’t buy much of anything. You made your slingshot.

    What you did was find an old tire inner tube. This was no small task because an inner tube was not discarded until there were so many of its patches leaking that its patches could no longer be patched. Red rubber inner tubes were the best. They had better stretch. Remember red rubber inner tubes? They were made of real rubber; no additives.

    Using Mama’s sewing scissors, you cut two foot-long strips from the inner tube. The strips were cut just over a half-inch wide. Next you found an old shoe. From its tongue you cut a piece of leather an inch wide and four inches song. In each end of the leather strip, you made a vertical slit just under half an inch long through which you pulled the ends of the rubber bands. An inch of each band was tied back onto itself with whatever string was available. Next came the fun part; searching for just the right Y-shaped limb from which to fashion a stock.

The right shape

    Some of us were satisfied with the typical limb which had a secondary branch, sort of like a little “y”. But I always searched long and hard for the rare limb which forked with identical branches, like a capital “Y”. Few trees have this perfect limb, and to this day, some 60 years since my childhood slingshots,  when I look at a tree my eyes search for that perfect fork. And I must restrain myself from collecting the flawless ones.

    With the stock cut to a six-inch handle and two four-inch forks, you moved to the final stage, affixing the rubber bands to the stock. You cut a groove around each fork, a half inch from the ends. Folding the ends of the rubber bands over each fork, you bound them tight with string, or, my preference, thin strips sliced from the inner tube. You now had a slingshot, carefully crafted by your own hands. Your slingshot.

    In those days it never occurred to me to take my sling-shot to school. There was nothing I wanted to shoot at in school. Besides, it wasn’t what you did at school, shoot at things. There were mostly people at school. Only our soldiers protecting our freedom in Europe and the Pacific could justify shooting at people, and not even then but for the actions of a single madman in Germany and a greedy one in Japan.

    My slingshot was for shooting mostly stuff in the wilds, the wilds being any place outside our house. There were targets of every sort around: occasional discarded tin cans or bottles, stumps, birds.

Growing up

    My first bird was a robin. Later in life I visited that tree from which the robin fell. It was easy to find because it, and the lesson I learned beneath its branches, were so firmly fixed in my memory. After a perfect shot, what I had in my hand was a dead robin. Holding it and assessing the situation, I felt a stimulus which nudges us from youth toward adulthood; responsibility. We didn’t eat robins. And a live robin, flitting around in the trees, was worth more than a dead one, I reasoned. I didn’t shoot any more robins.

    There became more appropriate targets there in the wilds. Certain dead limbs became crouching leopards, stumps became charging lions, a tin can became a keg of gunpowder. A perfect hit on the keg with a smooth stone would detonate the powder. The resulting explosion would shower the wilderness with smoke and debris, providing a screen near the band of charging headhunters which allowed me to escape.

    Then came BB guns, then the teens and girls and the slingshot was no longer. But for most boys, and I suspect some girls, the slingshot never has really left us.

    Some years ago, I gave in to the nagging urge and made myself a sling shot. I used the excuse that I needed one to shoot stones into thick Colorado draws to flush out mule deer bucks that hide there during the day. But I haven’t used it for flushing bucks yet. There is a boy inside me who just needs to own a sling shot. He likes to make his own and shoot at stuff with it. And his sling shot makes facing the perilous things out there a little less scary.