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Boonie Packer Single Point Sling (080829)

Boonie Packer Single Point Sling

While the general preference of the day appears to be the two-point sling, I find that I prefer a single-point for a lightweight, short barreled, AR carbine. To that end I have been running a Wilderness Slings single point on this particular carbine up until now. I have also used the padded Troy Industries One Point in the past. See below for a comparison of the Wilderness sling to the Boonie Packer.

In email discussions with the owner of Boonie Packer, he relayed the following:

"Rather than cater to the civilian and police market, my designs are primarily for military use. Civilians and police rarely "live with their rifles" and usually don't require a lot of versatility. The civilian will use them for hikes and casual shooting, sometimes competition, and the police will use them only for short term operations.Infantry, even mounted infantry, often have to negotiate varied terrain over long periods of time. This is why I place little emphasis on the single point, believing that it is primarily a swat team-vehicle use sling. They are not ideal for long operations and extensive walking. So I have a much greater selection of outstanding 2 points and two very excellent 3 points."

In spite of this, and largely due to the nature of the current projects I had going on, I chose to run the single-point sling first with reviews of the two-point versions to come later as future projects unfold. (my "Basic AR Carbine" article is one such example where I intend to make use of the Boonie Packer two-point slings)

It is also important to note the price of the Boonie Packer 1P sling; $14. That's right, only $14 INCLUDING shipping. That is an extremely competitive price in the ever-increasing priced market for combat slings, with some heading north of $60 and even approaching $100. You pick the sling for $14, and then select your required attachment point, with the attachments running between $4 for the Soft Connector and $6.50 for the Steel Hook Mount. This way you wind up with a sling that is, at most, $20.50 shipped to your door.

First Impressions

The sling is made up of two widths of material; 1.5" which makes up the portion that rests on the shoulder, and 1" which makes up the portion that attaches to the rifle. The transition from 1.5" to 1" is made up of two reducing buckles at each point. These buckles, as with all hardware but one slider on the sling, are made of plastic. The webbing material of the 1.5" section is sufficiently stiff as to prevent rolling but soft enough that it does not bit into the neck on first impression. The 1" sling material is of the more slick variety and is capable of rolling, but since this is not the portion of the sling that rides on the shoulder this is a non-issue. There is a Fastex buckle in the loop which allows the sling to be quickly removed if needed. There are two D-rings which serve at the attachment point to connect the sling to the rifle.

There is adjustment at either end of the loop via sliding buckles. This adjustment allows the end user to tune the resting point of the rifle in relation to the wider 1.5" webbing material to ensure that this section winds up resting on the shoulder and not the 1" webbing or the reducing buckles. There is plenty of adjustment length available, and I chose to simply tie off the excess material until I get the fit fine tuned. At that time I will either trim the excess or secure it with elastic bands.

There are three methods of attachment included with the sling. The first is a snap hook for use in connecting to an HK-style ring. I would prefer that this snap hook be of the locking type to avoid the unlocking of such attachment devices are capable of. The second is the "standard soft connector" which could be used to attach the sling to a slotted receiver endplate. The third is the "QQC Type Soft Connector" which used a metal slider and plastic D-ring to attach to a sling swivel.

I chose to use the "Standard Soft Connector" to attach the sling to my Colt 6933 short barreled rifle. I have a Daniel Defense QD Receiver Endplate installed on this rifle, and used the Standard Soft Connector to attach a QD sling swivel to the sling, and then plugged the QD sling swivel into the receiver extension.

The attachment method lends itself well to the single-point style of sling. I like a single-point sling to have a slight tail to it rather than the loop connecting directly to the rifle itself. Think of it s an "O" vs. a "Q", with my prefernce being for the "Q". The Wilderness sling that I have been using on this carbine is a "O" type, and as such I prefer the Boonie Packer version. However, there is a lot to be said for the simplicity and lack of buckles on the Wilderness version.

The Wilderness Single Point is made up entirely of 1.25" webbing with one Fastex buckle and two sliding buckles. Contrast that with the Boonie Packer Single Point which is made up of both 1.5" and 1" material, a single Fastex, four reducing D-rings, two sliding adjustment buckles, and two D-rings for attaching to the rifle. Add to that the various attachment methods, and you can see the contrast of the simplicity of the Wilderness version as compared to the Boonie Packer.

Dry Run

I got the sling set up in approximately the best fit for me. In running through some dryfire drills I would prefer that the 1.5" webbing material were approximately 2" longer to allow a little more leeway in the adjustment of this section. I found it hard to adjust the sling to such a setting as the reducing buckles stayed clear of my collarbone. Beyond that the sling hung well either directly in front or to the support side.

Having that 1.5" section is, however, a perfect compromise between the 1.25" webbing of the Wilderness sling and the padding of the Troy version. The 1.25" can begin to bite in a bit with a heavier carbine left slung for long periods of time. I had initially purchased the Troy version to try to alleviate this, but found that the padding was too bulky and created problems of it's own. I am finding, more and more, that the solution in cases like these is to go to a slightly wider and slightly less stiff strap material rather than to go to a bulky pad. Eagle used this same logic when they changed the design of the M4-FB chest rig that I use from a padded narrow shoulder strap on the old design to a wider un-padded on the current design.

It also lent itself well to transitioning from shoulder to shoulder, the area where the single-point shines, in part due to being of the "Q" variety vs. the "O" that I was used to. The added tail definitely aids in getting the loop of the sling out of the way of the pistol grip when switching from shoulder to shoulder. The "Q" style single point also hangs differently on the body when transitioning to pistol. This is the trade off, as I find that the tail allows the rifle to hang a little lower than a version without the tail and requires that the rifle is dropped the last few inches when letting the rifle hang quickly.

Shooting

I used the sling initially on one of our local carbine drills nights that I run. I intentionally set the drills for the evening to revolve around transitioning from shoulder to shoulder. We performed drills that involved firing while walking both left and right, with a transition to shoulder when changing the direction of motion. Some find that when moving to the support side it is easier to fire from the support shoulder than to try to rotate the hips at an awkward angle to the target. We also ran drills involving shooting from both sides of cover (in this case a Bianchi Barricade) and transitioning from shoulder to shoulder in between.

I found that the sling excelled at these shoulder transitions. The issue that I previously thought I had found in dry-running the sling with regards to the reducing buckles making contact with my collarbone disappeared when actually running the gun and focusing on the target. I would still like another inch or two of this material, but in actual use the current design appears adequate.

While running these drills we kept pistols hot and ran the carbines dry, transitioning to the handgun when needed. The "drop" issue mentioned above was noticeable but manageable. The Wilderness sling does not require the same amount of drop, but it may be possible to mitigate the issue found with the Boonie Packer with further adjustment and fine-tuning of the sling.

The shortcoming of the single-point in general did show itself during these drills. This is the instability of the slung rifle when the rifle is slung and hands much be completely free. I do find that if the rifle is slung to run vertically down the support side of the body, under the armpit, the interference with admin and other tasks requiring two hands is greatly reduced.

Conclusions

In conclusion, I think this sling is an extremely good value at the retail price of $14. Many people get carried away with the money spent on tactical accessories when lesser cost items would certainly suffice. Even the Wilderness Single Point which was my standard single-point up to now retails for $25 and that is a much less complicated construction with about half the hardware. Which, brings me to my suggestions regarding the design of this sling:
1) I would like to see 1-2" of extra length in the 1.5" webbing material. I believe that this would allow a bit of leeway in the adjustment of the sling in order to ensure that the wider webbing is the load bearing area of the sling and keep the plastic hardware off of the collarbone.
2) I would like to see a slightly less complicated design. The nature of the two widths of webbing makes for a necessity of complication in terms of hardware. I like that there is some redundancy in connections at various points, but there is a lot of webbing and hardware for a sling of this type.
3) I would like to see an integral QD sling swivel connector. While the method I used works fine, the standard QD sling swivel is 1.25" and it would be nice to have a webbing option of this width for this type of sling connection.

I would still heartily recommend this sling, and in fact have suggested this very sling to more than a few of our match shooters looking for a good value in a single point sling. While it may have one or two personal shortcomings for me, it is hard to find fault with a sling that costs less than $20 and works very well for it's intended purpose.

Followup

Dave from Boonie Packer graciously accepted my critiques, and has sent me a sling that has incorporated some of the concerns I have. I will be updating this review with my impressions of the revised design in a short while after I get to use it a bit.

Everything that came in the package