The Gunsmithy Blog: Slings, the Holster for your Rifle

So for this week's topic, let's discuss an often underrated attachment to a rifle or a shotgun, the sling. A sling is commonly refered to as the holster for your rifle and it is pretty valuable for anyone that is using their long gun for something other then static range training. It is important to choose the right sling based on the job you intend on doing with the long gun, much like choosing the right firearm for the job in the first place.
There are three main types of slings found across the firarms world, traditional, hunting and tactical slings. Traditional slings are typically found on accuracy competition rifles, hunting slings are usually made for comfort and tactical slings are in the middle of the two.

A traditional sling is usually very slim and does well to stay out of the way of the shooter. Many of the worlds top accuracy shooters will also use these slings to halp stablize their rifles when shooting unsupported. Often these slings are very no-nonsense and are made primarily out of leather. Their lack of comfort is overlooked as the people that generally employ these slings are not using them to carry around the long gun for hours on end.

Hunting slings are usually quite larger then the traditional slings. This is primarily to accomidate padding to make the carrying the long gun less uncomfortable. The sling is usually not used for a support strap, as the hunter can usually use a piece of terrain or vegitation to stabilize the shot. 

The third catagory is the tactical slings. These tend to drift between the other two catagories as soldiers will use them to stabilize shots but benifit from a comfortable means to carry their long guns for hours on end. There are an additional 3 catagories within the tactical slings as well the common two-point sling, the super tactical 3-point sling and the practical joke single-point sling.

My preference is the 2-point sling, good ones being made by V-Tac or Magpul. These slings offer a good amount of stability and fast adjustment straps. I have personally put 2 V-Tac slings through a few levels of hell and they neither broke nor failed, one did start to fray at one end. 
3-point slings seem to be alright, and there have been a few times that I have used them. My issue with them is that the extra sling on top feels like clutter and I would rather not have it as a potential for getting in my way. A single point sling seems really cool and high speed, but something in them magnatizes the long gun to your tesiticles. It seems like no matter what you do you are getting nut tapped if you use a single-point sling.