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Originally Posted by swaghauler
I've used both paracord and leather Shepherd's Slings as well as Slingshots. Modern slings often use ball bearings as ammo or you can use a SMOOTH rock around 100 to 200 grams in weight. Lead fishing sinkers (200 grams) for ocean rigs are also used. These almond-shaped projectiles resemble historic lead sling bullets. The first mistake many novice slingers make is using too light of a rock. You need some mass to keep that rock in the sling for the windup. The leather slings provide much better control while the paracord slings generate more velocity due to their "elasticity." We used a radar gun to measure speed and our stones and ball bearings ran between 30m/s and 50m/s out of our shepherds' slings. The Slingshots were definitely slower at around 30m/s but you can actually shoot arrows from a Slingshot. Dave Canterbury (of dual survival fame) has a couple of videos on this.
On the range and accuracy side, these are just like bows. The POINT ACCURACY is much harder to achieve than lobbing rocks into a skirmish line and ranges are shorter for point targets than area targets (just like bows). The true irony is that optimum accuracy occurs at a slower release speed than most people anticipate. The modern slingers compete at around 40m and I would say this is into a Long range band for Twilight2000 V2.2. So I'd say a base Range of 10m to 15m is about average. The range for a Slingshot is around 10m, but even with the toughest rubber band you can buy, a Slingshot will not match the range of a Shepard's Sling.
The Slingshot is easy to get accuracy with. You center your target between the "Y" arms of the Slingshot with the arrow or ball bearing located in the rubber pocket just under your dominant eye. You then center the ball bearing so it covers half of the target and release the rubber band. At longer ranges, you hold the ball bearing OVER the target to hit it. To give you an idea of the Slingshot's accuracy, people hunt SQUIRRELS with them.
The Shepard's Sling requires LOADS of practice to get hits with. You must time your release of the end of the cord with the stone's alignment on target. I was given this tip which does work... "when the string wrapped around your finger 'tugs' on it, release the knotted end." This does work and you will be in the vicinity of the target. I'd say the DIFFICULTY for a Shepard's Sling should be at least a DIFFICULT if not a FORMIBABLE test of skill. The Slingshot would be an AVERAGE test of skill.
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Just to provide a point of comparison, Jorg Sprave has gotten over 100 m/s with a slingshot. Despite that, he was only getting around 130 joules because the projectile mass wasn't all that high.
The current world record for distance from a sling (not a slingshot) is 437.10 meters using a 52 gram projectile from a 129.5 centimeter sling, back in 1981. Effective ranges would of course be lower, and as you mentioned would vary depending on whether one was firing at a single point target or "just" flinging projectiles in the direction of a massed block of opponents. I think 15m sounds fair for point targets, since it puts the maximum effective range as being roughly a football field.