Hunting rabbits with this slingshot gadget

I'm new here but i searched "hunting" and i searched "weapons" but found no results. So forgive me if my post is misplaced and i'd appreciate a link to an appropriate thread.

Permaculture, sustainability, i don't see how hunting does not fit in with this. I'd like to keep rabbits but if you have a farm, isn't that often redundant? Why keep them when rabbits surround your lush oasis anyway? So, hunting rabbits...

I ran into this cool new contraption: the Pocket Shot Slingshot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGMSjDyy8pk
Shoots at twice the speed of a slingshot but fits into your pocket and looks like a toy. Costs $ 25
I (unfortunately still) live in an apartment and cannot keep rabbits. At least not humanely. I certainly have neither time nor funds to feed them properly. But there are dunes nearby where one finds hundreds hopping around in the early hours. Now if i walked around with anything larger than the Pocket Shot Slingshot i'd probably get arrested. Yeah, i'd get arrested if someone caught me shooting a rabbit, too, but avoiding that is about being careful.
This device could also be used as a humane way of dispatching a rabbit you wish to slaughter.
Sustainable: check
Healthy: check
Humane: check

Where's a thread on hunting or why isn't anyone talking about it?


P.S.: i ate vegetarian for 15 years, of which 2 years as a vegan. I'd like to get back to that but there's my current limitations of lifestyle and there's also the considerations i have concerning survival situations.

We have a wilderness section with a hunting and fishing subforum.

I've moved this thread there for you. Enjoy!

ha! I was going down the list of form topics and stopped at COMMUNITY, thinking i wouldn't find was i was looking for after that. Only now do i see how doggarn many forum topics there are. LOL
To be fair, i'm not talking about 'wilderness'... but thanks for the link and the proper placement of my post.

Socrates Raramuri wrote: Only now do i see how doggarn many forum topics there are. LOL

Hehe - there are rather a lot!

There's a lot of overlap between them, too, and often a thread belongs in more than one forum. The moderators can make a thread show up in any relevant forum - for instance I've just added this one to 'gear' in the homestead section. If you're not sure where a thread belongs, just put it in the most appropriate one, then hit the 'report' button and tell us which others you think it might belong to.

In general trapping is more reliable and more efficient for harvesting small game like rabbits, certainly up until you start using rifles and scopes. You can use simple snares, but when harvesting from your own land something like a drop trap is probably the best. In ten minutes you can walk and set a dozen traps on a fence line and harvest say 50 rabbits from them depending on population. Hunting you could go out for two hours and not get any.

Trapping is more time and energy efficient, freeing you up for other tasks. In a survival situation this might be more foraging, securing shelter etc...

If you are culling rabbits to protect your crops drop traps are again better - they work even when rabbit populations get low, where as hunting gets harder as you thin the population.

I second the idea of trapping rather than hunting small game. The main problem I've seen with trapping is that it's so efficient it can severely deplete populations with relative ease if people are not conscientious (for instance, I haven't seen a mink here in nearly two decades--used to be plentiful).

As for snares...maybe I am just the world's least skillful snarer (is that a word?), but out of the probably several hundred hours of time I spent as a kid making and setting snares I caught exactly...nothing. I can more easily throw myself physically on top of a rabbit or squirrel and get it with my bare hands than I can catch it with a snare (although, admittedly, snaring is probably less likely to result in some sort of horrible zoonotic disease). Obviously not everyone is as terrible at it as me, or snaring wouldn't be a thing, but I definitely prefer trapping or even hunting to snaring.

A strategy that I use at my place is to provide shelter, and nesting sites, and food to all kinds of wild animals: birds, lizards, snakes, squirrels, coyotes, deer, insects, etc... I'm not currently eating many of them, but they are there if I ever change my mind...

Hey man,

I think I'd have some concerns about making a quick, clean kill on a rabbit with that gadget, unless you made anything other than a perfect headshot. The manufacturer says it gets "up to" 350 FPS velocity, without providing the weight of the projectile. They're selling, and recommending, 1/4" and 5/16" steel balls.

A 1/4" steel ball will weigh about 16 grains so at 350 FPS that gives you 4 Ft/Lbs of energy.

As a reference, my bow, with a 175 grain steel blunt on the end of the arrow is bringing about 41 Ft/lbs. A .22 Long Rifle shooting a 40 grain bullet @ 1235 FPS gives you 135 Ft/Lbs.

You'll find plenty of cultures, both past and present where people hucked stones at rabbits in the hopes of stunning them long enough to pounce on them and bash their heads in. I have zero problems with doing that as a matter of survival, but when I'm hunting voluntarily, I have a strong desire for it to be lights out for the bunny before it ever knew what hit it.

Food for thought.

In a perfect world... Unfortunately we are forced to talk about such things in light of legalities and walking around with a rifle is not legal where i'm at. I will be needing to look into the matter in Morocco. Hopefully i can just go out and do what i like. God knows that country isn't all stuck up with rules (yet) like over here.

Yeah, my interest is mainly in survival issues. Tomahawk without a handle is good because it fits into a backpack better and the same goes for the Pocket Shot. Similarly, one might carry this Pocket Shot with one all the time, for the rare occasion of needing to hunt or just shoot at something (like to scare it away). What shooting contraption can claim as much? It's so light and small, you hardly know you have it with you.

I'd hate to stick around while someone was lobbing ball bearings at me containing 4 Ft-Lbs of energy.

And what a great device for discretely lobbing seed-balls into vacant lots.

And with the pocket slingshot, if they ask you what it is you can just tell them it is a reusable condom...

The MO department of Conservation has some great box trap plans. The one with the door that drops straight down is almost identical to the way my grandfather taught me to make them when I was ten. He had a better trigger design though.

Trapping is much more efficient, but sometimes it's not about efficiency.

When I used to go hunting I called it "camping with a gun" (although when I went camping I always brought a gun, in case of bears or two legged predators).  

Hunting is mostly an early morning or shortly before dark activity because that's when everything seems to be moving the most.  Coincidently, the nicest time for a walk is early morning and just before dark and if you're going for a walk, it ads a little spice if you bring along a weapon, just in case.  You might get lucky.  When I'm hunting I find I'm much more aware and I feel more 'connected' to everything.  I realize that isn't everyones experience, but I guess I'm just an old omnivore.

I'm not real impressed with the tool you showed.  I've played with things like that before and I'm not sure which slingshot it's more powerful than, but not the ones I'm familiar with.  A collapsable wrist rocket can be easily carried in a back pocket, easily concealed, quiet and could be explained away as "I just shoot at cans with it".  There are different strengths of bands and very different quality levels.  I had a band that survived decades of use.  Thats good quality.  My kids and I occasionally paintball with wristrockets and the last time I bought a bunch of bands from Walmart and they were absolute crap.  They didn't survive an hour or so of paintball before breaking.  

If you decide to use a slingshot or something of similar power, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!  Get Good!  Use ball bearings, because rocks are irregular and it will vear off course.  If you hit it in the guts, you have to be fast or it will run away, hide and die, which is a waste.  Carry a stick for the coup de gras.  The half second while you look for a way to grab it without getting bitten will let it get away.  Bring a plastic bag to wrap the bloody corpse in and a bag or backpack to put the plastic bag in.  A rabbit butchers out in about a minute.

Anything but a head shot probably will cause suffering.  In my own experience, when I have been really badly hurt, the pain isn't that bad after the first flash, the body starts pumping out stuff that masks it pretty quick.  The worst part is knowing you've been badly hurt, but not knowing how bad.  I am going to assume an animal has a similar experience.  The nausea from shock is actually the worst part in the few experiences I've had.

If you're hunting invasive varmints, like rats (I have a narrower definition of varmint than some), just push the body into some bush so we don't offend the easily offended.  In that case, you're really just trying to whittle the numbers down anyway.

I should tell the story of how we ended up being tested for worms after killing a rabbit. It's pretty hysterical. Anyway, as we are absolutely surrounded by 9 million rabbits I can say we don't eat them. We tried once. Hence the worm story. We kill them now but we do not butcher them.

Put it vertical and the mouth on a stone, with any nut inside. Nice tool to open nuts without sending bits and pieces around! And you will not smash the edible part!

I have just bought a slingshot, in the hope I can use it for rats, but i will have to become very good at it...
More over I do not want to use man made iron balls, only stones.

I believe traps are best though. For rabbits with worms, well, with a good long cooking... Here we also eat pigeons, always in boiled soups.

elle sagenev wrote:I should tell the story of how we ended up being tested for worms after killing a rabbit. It's pretty hysterical. Anyway, as we are absolutely surrounded by 9 million rabbits I can say we don't eat them. We tried once. Hence the worm story. We kill them now but we do not butcher them.

I actually kind of wish you would, perhaps in a thread for that purpose, if you ever find the time.  I'm curious!  There are the usual cautions for handling and prepping wild meat to avoid parasites, but if they failed you, it's probably an educational and useful story.

Like pork, well cooked meat should be safe.  The danger is you have your hands in the animals innards while it is raw.

When I was a teenager in the western US I was taught that summer  time was an iffy time for eating rabbits because they were more likely diseased then.  There were a few times when I opened a rabbit up and things didn't look right.  I got up, walked away and found water as quick as I could to clean up.  I'm not sure why hot weather made them more disease prone, I just listened and followed advice.