This thread got me to thinking about my boyhood prowess with a John Milligan slingshot, which I found tonight in a catchall drawer, and one thing leading to many others, I see that slingshot shooters the wide world around still hold Milligan's skill with his cast aluminum slingshots in awe. Milligan was an acquaintance of my father, who had hunted with him some, including a notably amusing crow hunt at an Ypsilanti, Michigan dump, a tale not suitable for this forum. But, reporting another incident, my father recounted that Milligan, never without one of his slingshots and some ballbearing ammo in his pocket, was on one of the upper decks on a car ferry, crossing the Straights of Mackinac, before the iconic Mackinac Bridge was built. The ferries were always hounded by whirling flocks of seagulls, as passengers tossed out popcorn and etc. to attract the birds.
As the story goes, Milligan watched a middle-aged couple on a deck below him toss popcorn into the breeze for a while, gulls would swoop in to snatch the fluffy bits before they hit the water. Milligan slipped a ballbearing into the leather pouch of his slingshot, and silently centerpunched a gull just a few feet in front of the astonished couple, who watched the bird collapse in a puff of feathers, and tumble into the icy waters of the Straight.
The wife turned to her husband and uttered, "My God, George, I knew birds die, eventually, but I had no idea it happens like that."
