There is a clip for you to watch at the bottom to show you just how accurate they can be.
If you are looking for a backyard precision target discipline that genuinely tests your accuracy, the usual advice points you toward a cheap beginner air rifle or an entry-level re-curve bow. Both are great hobbies, but both come with a catch: the "cheap" option rarely stays cheap, and backyard ranges quickly outgrow what a budget setup can teach you as well as legalitys,
After trying all three, the one that actually satisfied my itch for pure, repeatable accuracy was the simplest one of the lot—a compleate slingshot setup built in the garden for around £50.
It sounds almost too simple until you see you can hit a 12.5mm plastic spinner at ten metres three times in a row.
The Problem with "Budget" Rifles and Bows
When you buy a budget air rifle or starter archery kit, you quickly run into hidden costs and space limits:
Air rifles need pellets, pumps, moderators, targets, a safe backstop, and often optics just to make a budget barrel shoot consistently. Worse, shooting a PCP air rifle at ten yards in a back garden gets old fast—once it is zeroed, the gun does most of the work.
Archery demands proper arrows, arm guards, tabs, a dense foam boss that stops pass-throughs, and plenty of safety clearance behind the target.
Slingshots strip all of that away. There are no sights, no triggers, and no mechanical crutches. Every hit is 100% down to your anchor point, your release, and your consistency.
How to Build a World-Standard Range for £50
Ten-metre target shooting is blowing up right now, and the biggest reason is the barrier to entry. You do not need a club membership, a specialist range, or hundreds of pounds of kit to practice at the exact standard used in international competition.
Here is everything you need to get started in your own garden:
Item What to GetApprox. Cost
The Frame A natural tree fork or a purpose-made target frame~£20
Bands & Pouch Quality flat latex bands cut for target ammo £10
Ammo100 steel balls (reusable indefinitely)or clay biodegradable ammo £8-£10
Targets leather spinners ~£10 you can get 40mm to 80mm on ebay or amazon
Catch Box A sturdy cardboard box with an old t-shirt hung loosely inside with a 3 inch gap between the t shirt and the back of the box Free–£5
Hang that old t-shirt loosely inside the back of the cardboard box so it absorbs the impact without bouncing steel back at you. Set your spinner inside. Start at 5meters and work back to 10 metres, step back to your firing line, and you are good to go. Because the t-shirt traps every shot cleanly, those 100 steel balls will last you months.
Same Rules as the World Stage
Here is the kicker: that £50 garden setup complies completely with World Slingshot Association (WSA) regulations. to be precise set it 140cm off the floor. Yes that natural tree fork or that cheap Leightons cattys off amazon is good enough to win a world title, (the UK UKSA members who is the vice European President only shoots naturals.)
You are not playing with a toy version of the sport—you are practising on the exact same 10-metre distance and shooting at the same size targets as the top competitive shooters in China and across Europe who take this discipline deadly seriously. When you step up to a 12.5mm spinner with nothing more than a piece of rubber and a steel ball, there is nowhere to hide. Every tiny flinch shows up immediately.
Simple, Cheap, and Seriously Addictive
Whether you are looking for a quiet, low-cost garden hobby, cross-training your hand-eye coordination, or wondering if pure 10-metre target shooting is more rewarding than plinking with a rifle, give a catapult a proper look.
It costs less than a single tin of premium pellets and a cheap scope, takes five minutes to set up in the garden, and scales all the way up to world-level competition.
Watch it in action below: hitting that 12.5mm spinner at 10 metres three times on the bounce.
