In every profession or hobby, skills die out over time as technology offers easier, better solutions. But some skills are worth retaining, because you never know when you might need them, and when you need one, you typically really need it. Using a rifle sling to steady an off-hand shot is something a lot of hunters don’t practice nearly enough, but they should.
So many of us grew up with Red Ryders and fantasized about slinging lead off-hand like we saw in the movies. An afternoon watching old westerns with grandpa led to cans set on fence posts to catch the full mass and velocity of a fired BB. We transformed into John Wayne, and each can morphed into a mounted bad guy looking to run off with the cattle and the women.
“Get yourself a steady rest,” grandpa would say over the kid’s shoulder. A rest? There’s no time for a rest. There are bandits everywhere! And what fun is it to rest your gun? BBs flew, and mostly missed the can bandits.
There’s still at least a little of that kid in all of us. It’s hellish fun to whip your rifle up and let it eat. Sometimes it’s necessary.

These days, instead of plinking cans, we’re hunting. A buck walks out at 60 yards while we’re nowhere near a tree or fence post, the brush is too high to drop to one knee, and there’s no time for shooting sticks; there’s no choice but to shoot off-hand.
The problem is, unless you’re an expert off-hand marksman, there’s a solid chance you’ll send the full mass and velocity of your bullet screaming anywhere but into the deer. Adding a little stability to this — the most difficult rifle-shooting position — goes a long way toward filling your freezer and adding some new bone to your wall. That stability comes from using your rifle sling as a shooting aid.
Every rifleman should learn to shoot their hunting rifle off-hand with a sling. It makes you a more versatile hunter and gives you the confidence to make an accurate shot when you can’t rest your rifle. We’ll walk through how to do it with speed and proficiency, starting with stance.
And no, none of this really works with a single point sling, and you shouldn’t be running one of those anyway, and if you are, are you okay? Do you need help?
However, some of these skills will be transferable to shooting with shotgun slings, which can sometimes come in handy during turkey season and if you still chase deer on the ground with a shotty.

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Dial in Your Off-Hand Shooting Stance
There are variations in every person’s shooting stance, and that’s to be expected. Everyone tweaks their stance for comfort and preference — once you learn the fundamentals, if a tweak works for you and you shoot well, it works.
Most of those fundamentals are designed to achieve the same end as using your rifle sling to shoot off-hand: stability. It’s the crux of precision and accuracy. Just as you can’t fire a howitzer out of a jon boat, you can’t accurately shoot a rifle without a measure of stability.
These are the rifle shooting stance fundamentals that I was taught, and they’ve worked well for me in my hunting career. Take it, practice, and allow for your own variation.
First, stand like a shotgunner. Watch a shooter good at breaking clays and you’ll see a little sink at the hips, some bend at the waist, and most of the weight on their front foot. This stance creates stability, manages recoil, and sets the shooter up to pivot if necessary. You can also call it a relaxed boxer’s stance. It works really goddamn well.

There’s a little more to consider about your off-hand stance for a rifle — namely the angle of your feet.
Set your feet at a roughly 30-degree angle in relation to the target. This slightly open stance sets you up for the best natural point of aim from the off-hand position. That means your rifle points naturally at the target when you shoulder it.
The 30-degree angle also works with the bend at the waist and forward weight transfer to manage recoil while also giving you room to pivot should the animal move or should you need to send a follow-up shot.
The real world isn’t perfect and you won’t have time to think of all this when you’re hunting. So, it’s important that you drill this so it just happens when you raise your rifle on an animal. You want to commit this to muscle memory.
Once your stance is set, it’s time to incorporate your rifle sling.

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Using Your Rifle Sling to Shoot Off-Hand
Before we walk through procedure, let’s understand the goal: Use the rifle sling to create tension, which in turn, creates stability. The sling becomes a tension strap you use to seat the rifle butt deeper into your shoulder while also holding the forend steady. This isn’t a loosey-goosey kind of deal. Wrap your arm tightly in that sling. You almost want it to hurt.
Start by resting the butt of your rifle on your back hip while holding it at about a 45-degree angle. This makes it easy to get your arm through the sling without your muzzle wandering all over the place (the tenets of gun safety always apply).
Then put your support arm through the sling so it makes contact just above the elbow. After that, loop your hand back through the sling so there are contact points just above your elbow and just behind your wrist.
You should feel tension just from putting your arm through the sling and looping back through before the gun leaves your hip. If you don’t feel tension, your sling is too loose.

Raise the rifle to your shoulder once your arm is looped through the sling. If you did everything correctly, the rifle will feel more stable than with a regular off-hand grip. Now manipulate the tension by lifting your elbow away from your side. You can pull back a little bit too. The rifle sling will tighten around your arm and the gun will press deeper into your shoulder pocket.
This is good. We like this.
Play with your elbow position until you find what feels best and most stable to you.
You might notice this tension cants your rifle a bit; you’ll want to fix that. Adjust your elbow until your rifle is level. In most cases, it requires you to gently torque the rifle toward your body.
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Getting Your Sight Picture: Trust the Wobble
The reason shooting accurately off-hand is so difficult is because it’s the most unstable position, and that’s why we’re counteracting that by using a rifle sling as a stability aid.

Yet another problem some hunters have is they’ll shoot their rifle from a bench, on a shooting bag, on a backpack, on a fencepost, on a bipod or tripod, and on shooting sticks — and then expect to be accurate when tromping through the woods and cracking a round off-hand at a deer on the run.
They end up like a young fella during his first trip to the strip club, they don’t know what to do with all that wobble. Get your ass off the bench, get off the ground, and get on your feet.
Wobble is the movement of your reticle or sights on the target. The goal of any shooting position, especially when using your rifle sling to shoot off-hand, is to reduce wobble as much as possible. Reduce, yes. Eliminate, no. Whether you’re wielding a scoped rifle or one with open sights, your sight picture will move. Nobody knows this better than bowhunters, and good bowhunters know how to lean into it.
My friend Phillip Velayo has a saying: Trust the wobble. Velayo is a former Marine scout sniper and the cofounder of Modern Day Sniper. He gives this advice to shooters shooting from field positions and off tripods, but it applies in this context. When shooting off-hand, trust the wobble.

What does it mean to trust the wobble? It means going through your shot process and pressing the trigger without trying to time your shot as the sights move on the animal.
Trying to time your shot as your sights cross an aiming point leads to target panic, which leads to pulled shots, misses, and gut shots.
Create tension; reduce the wobble; then trust the wobble and shoot.
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Rifle Slings Are More Than Just a Shoulder Strap
There’s a Red Ryder–shouldering, off-hand-shooting kid that lives in all of us, only now we’re playing for keeps when a buck steps out in the cut. When he does, wrap your arm in that sling, lift your elbow, and trust the wobble.
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