Using A Shepherd's Sling (Tutorial)

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey it's Helder here I'm out here in one of my favorite places just enjoying nature and playing with a new toy of mine this is actually a shepherd sling that I picked up from survival life and shepherd slings have been around forever nobody even really knows truly when the origin was there mentioned in biblical times with David and Goliath all the way up to modern-day armies that are still using them to be able to propel grenades at longer distances I became aware of the Shepherd's sling as a young child not only through the Boy Scouts but even before that with my ancestors that are from Portugal and they explained to me how the Shepherd's out there would use them to keep the Wolves away wild boar away from their sheeps and even goats and things of that nature and even use during skirmishes against the Moors so what I want to do today is just basically share a little bit about its application this one's already pre-made which is a nice saves you a ton of time and know that it's done well but as always especially as a people focused on preparedness always a good idea to familiarize yourself and know how to make these out of paracord in a pinch but first today's tutorial I'm just going to show you how to utilize this one so let's get started alright so as I mentioned earlier this shepherd slings already pre-made but what we're looking for is basically a wingspan length or your arm span length so you can tell this one's good to go pretty much goes side to side and not what you want to do or what I did is went ahead and tied a two half hitch to one end and an overhand knot on the other end now what I do here with this two half hitch is it cinches down and I want it to be able to cinch down around index finger right behind the knuckle and I like to cinch that down a bit once again I used to a half hitch taut line hitch whatever hit you want to do as long as it cinches down I seem to feel that that seam that works best for me once again this is all about sharing my opinion there's other people out there that want to use different fingers you want to use different knots that's great that works for them you need to find what works for you the purpose of these tutorials is to explore and kind of get an orientation or a basic starting point then from there you need to own it and make it yours so use other people of other people's opinions to get started and then make sure with your experience you're able to form your own so for this purpose I'm sharing with you what works best for me so let's continue on with the tutorial now as far as the projectiles okay or your ammunition we're out in the field rocks are all over the place of course an emergency situation whatever you have on you depending on the mission and how important whatever you're trying to do with your sling is to you because a lot of times we don't want to go into our gear and start using our fishing weights so on and so forth and then when we need to fish we might not have them so for the purposes of today's tutorial we're using rocks so what I found out here I'm kind of limited but I really like these round ones that are smooth they're more aerodynamic they'll work better with you but unfortunately out here there's more of this type of gravel for what I've been using today so once again use what's in your environment and be careful also what you leave out there I've seen a lot of people using golf balls and things like that and then they end up leaving these golf balls on out here on beautiful trails which is which is definitely a no-go always remember to leave no trace and leave it better than you found it all right so let's light little disclaimer for today so what we're doing here is basically in this little saddle of your Shepherd sling you're going to go ahead and put your projectile right in this case being this rock and that's really what we're looking for here from there we have our hitch that's tied up on top and the overhand knot that I'm holding with my two fingers here on the bottom want to make sure that everything is kind of loose and keep in mind now that there are various methods just like we spoke before all right some people like more of a figure eight some people are kind of lassoing above the head and throwing it for me I kind of just like some all-mountain there and go with my natural motion since this isn't something that I do every day but I have thrown a baseball I have thrown a football considerably so if I could work with that natural movement it's going to bode better for me to be able to acquire this skill then once again trying to completely change my biomechanics to move like someone else so it's a lot more efficient to try and move like me all right so once again just demonstrating what I was just talking about always remember to warm up all right once again caused a lot of tension you'll throw out your arm in no time and then really get not get that much practising all right so get that little warm-up in loosen up your shoulders loosen up your elbows and once again I'm just pinching that end and what I'm kind of doing is almost 80 aiming just like if I had a firearm all right just kind of sighting in closing one eye aiming it on to the target you kind of get the idea now the figure eight motion which doesn't work really well for me but I've seen it work incredibly well for other people all right and what you're really doing is just kind of getting that centripetal force from that figure eight motion and then from there letting it go what I would utilize this for is if I am launching something we spoke about earlier some armies use it for launching grenades right so if I do want to throw if I try to throw what my arms not going to go very far with this one I could probably get 300 feet you know maybe 300 meters then who knows depending on the weight we want to make sure that these projectiles ideally are kind of the size of a golf ball maybe a little bit smaller and also that same amount of weight the lighter it is the the worse it's going to bode for you okay so for practice purposes practice what everything because you never know what you're going to find or have available during an emergency situation but for ideal practice kind of follow the guidelines that I stated earlier [Music] eight [Music] [Music] so we have our target here you could tell we did get a few little key hit not too shabby so never as easy as it looks and just think about it this wasn't an emergency not hungry I'm not scared I'm not cold and still wasn't an easy task once I got warmed up a little bit I was able to hit a little bit more accurately but definitely had a skill said that I would count on for a survival situation not yet but uh knowing that I will definitely get out there and practice and hopefully this enlighten you a little bit or shared some experience to guide you into your personal practice as I mentioned earlier just like any other skill this needs to be practiced and needs to be maintained for it to be effective once again this is Helder I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial

Channel: undefined

Views: 108,682

Rating: 4.6809211 out of 5

Keywords: ntc method, coach helder gomes, shepherds sling, shepherd's sling, tutorial, paracord

Id: oumI9ZBOWfw

Length: 8min 46sec (526 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2017