Handier than a pocket on a shirt

Guns Magazine, August, 2004 by Sam Fadala

Happy hunting memories with No. 47, my favorite custom 54-caliber ball-shooting muzzleloader, play merrily over and over on the cinema screen of my recollection--except for one thing--carrying that rifle in the Rocky Mountains. Trespassing on its handsome and historic Pennsylvania lines would be travesty. And so it went sans-sling, cradled in my arms over countless miles.

I could have attached, I suppose, some sort of temporary strap. But I didn't. On one especially long backpack trek I cussed my beloved friend as I labored under the load of my pack while switching the heavy long gun from one arm to the other. There may be an excuse for No. 47 going without sling or strap, but no such allowance can be made for any other rifle type, including the modern muzzleloader. As famed gun writer Jack O'Connor put it, "I wouldn't have a rifle for hunting that would not take a sling."

Essential Accessory

To me, a hunting rifle without sling or strap is like a mountain horse without a saddle. You can tote and shoot that rifle in the field. You can also ride that pony. But neither situation is ideal.

The origin of rifle slings and straps remains shrouded in the fog of history, although Europe was, once again, leagues ahead of America in this regard. I suspect the first ones were attached to military arms. One of my favorite old books is Sport with Gun and Rod, 1883, edited by Alfred A. Mayer. Among its 892 pages and many illustrations I find no hunter carrying a slung rifle.

Ezekiel Baker goes to great pains describing proper rifles in his 1835 work for the King of England. Slings and carry straps are not included. The fur trapping "mountain man" of the far west went mainly on horseback, and so his rifle required no sling or strap. I find none mentioned in Frank Mayer's account of his 19th century buffalo hunting days.

Straps and slings are also glaringly absent in early American factory firearms. "Note the original sling and sling loops," Brophy points out on a Marlin Model 1881 rifle depicted in his Marlin firearms books. A factory sling on a rifle in that time frame was indeed noteworthy.

If It's Good Enough For Tom ...

In later years, Marlin provided a few rifles with slings and straps, including the Tom Mix Special .22. The famous B Western cowboy actor saying, "Every boy should know how to handle a gun ... and so should girls." To make ownership easier, the sporting goods store collected a dime a day until the full $5.95 amount was collected for the Tom Mix "military type" rifle with "adjustable sling strap and swivels."

A dictionary of firearms terms would have to include several entries for straps and slings. Sling is generally separated from strap because its design is for carrying and shooting a rifle. A strap, on the other hand, is mainly for carrying, although I find it highly valuable in field shooting with the "hasty sling" hold. Another difference: a proper sling has adjustment capability, while the simpler strap does not.

Shotguns and handguns may also have straps, but our present interest is the hunting rifle. Dozens if not hundreds of sling designs have surfaced over time.

Select For Your Needs

For example, the Latigo allows speedy adjustments for carrying, shooting, even storing the rifle with straps brought up close and tight. It has no sling hooks. A sling hook, sometimes called a frog, is used to connect the roost ends. The frog allows for length adjustment to accommodate different shooters as well as shooting postures. There is also a sling keeper. That's the little leather (normally) loop that retains the two different straps of the slings together.

The traditional military sling has adjustment capability, while the target sling can be hooked onto the hand stop of a target rifle, the off-end tightly encircling the upper left arm of the right-handed shooter for steadiness. Colonel Townsend Whelen, grand old man of shooting, had his Whelen sling adapted from the military version as a single piece of leather nominally 52-inches in length with a claw hook on one end only.

I can do no better in explaining the formal use of a rifle sling than the words (abbreviated here) of Raymond Camp, author of The Hunter's Encyclopedia and later in an abridged form as The Standard Book of Hunting and Shooting edited by Robert Stringfellow:

"The upper or forward half of the sling is called the 'loop.' When you stretch the sling along the bottom of the stock the loop should be adjusted to such a length that it will come to within about 2 inches of the butt-swivel. The rear portion of the sling. called the 'tail,' should always be so loose that it will never be stretched tight when you are in the firing position. To place the sling on your arm, move the hand between the entire sling and stock just in front of the trigger guard, and then bring the hand and [left] arm back through the loop."

The Hunter's Sling

The end result is a loop of sling wrapped snugly around the left arm of the right-handed, shooter for a significant bracing effect. I'm a hunter, not a target shooter, nor is this the forum for a tutorial on target sling use. So how does a hunter benefit from rifle sling or carry strap?