I have been meaning to make a gourd shot gun sling for some time. I came up with this because I tried a large soft pouch sling to hold a handful of pebbles. but it just didn't work very well.
The flap is soft leather with two attachment points. The width of the flap hinge is about a third of the circumference of the gourd. Don't make it too big or too small.
Use a whipping knot to connect the two leather attachment points with a leather cord. Find the center of the leather cord and tie a sheet bend with another piece of leather cord. This cord will have the release knot. The leather cord connected to the two attachment points let you hang the gourd around your neck loaded with pebbles.
I tied the flap on the gourd with waxed linen twine. The pebbles will fall out of the leather flap.
Gourds are a bit fragile, so I poked a hole through each side of the gourd end and slipped a looped cord through with a folded piece of soft leather inside under the loop. This distributes the stress from the looped cord.
Then tie another loop, at the right length, to the end of the looped cord that is attached to the end of the gourd. You can load these slings with a handful of pebbles or one large rock.
The shot pattern is pretty good at 15 yards. One of my hunting buddies killed a spruce hen with his shot gun sling. I use the under hand throw or modified helicopter with no more than one full circle swung around my head. My first shot gun slings were made with plastic drink bottles, but you could use bark or almost anything to make a basket or tube. You don't need a bottom on the plastic drink bottle sling, but it does make carrying ammo or blueberries easy.
Email your comments to "Mike Richardson" at fiddler49@hotmail.com
Mike Richardson resides in Anchorage, Alaska.
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