Niggeloh ruck-sling
The concept behind the ruck-sling is simple. First, imagine a normal rifle sling. Now imagine someone has split that rifle sling in two lengthways, that is to say from one sling swivel to the other; you’re now left with two skinny rifle slings both attached to the top and bottom sling swivel on your rifle. Each of those skinny rifle slings goes over a shoulder the same way rucksack straps would, thus turning your rifle into a rucksack.
The ruck-sling is made out of a mixture of leather, heavy duty nylon webbing and neoprene. The use of neoprene means the straps don’t exert much pressure on your shoulders. All of the components are connected together with reinforced leather patches. I must admit that it’s not often you pick up a rifle sling and are impressed by the build quality – this is certainly a product that is built to last.
Benefits
When I first put the ruck-sling over each shoulder I noticed two immediate benefits: first, the ‘felt weight’ of my rifle was less – that is to say my rifle felt lighter, which makes sense given its weight was now distributed over both shoulders rather than one. The second advantage to the sling is that you’re hands free. With one strap on each shoulder your rifle is secure, won’t slip off and you can crouch, crawl or climb without having to re-secure the rifle.
The same result could be achieved with a normal rifle sling if you looped it over your head, but that doesn’t make it easy to get the rifle off quickly if you want to take a shot. I hazard that most of you will have a similar
concern about the ruck-sling – that once you put it on, you’ll struggle to get it off. Well, Niggeloh has thought of that too: each skinny sling has a quick release buckle at the bottom, so all you need to do is release the buckle on one side and take the rifle off the same way you would with a normal sling.
Adaptation
If you want to use the ruck-sling as a normal sling then the two skinnier slings can be attached together with a Velcro strap that comes pre-attached. The principal purpose of this strap is actually to go around the pistol grip of your rifle to make the rifle more rigid on your back. It is definitely worth attaching this otherwise your rifle can feel like a sail flapping in the wind.
I did find there wasn’t a huge amount of adjustment in the length of the shoulder straps – I had them as tight as they would go – but I do wonder if that is deliberate because if they were tighter, it would make it more difficult to take off. If you have a large bulky bipod permanently attached to your rifle you might find the sling pushes it slightly into your back, but a regular sling would be doing the same to your shoulder.
Overall, I found the ruck-sling simple and easy to use. It’s well built, lightweight, and has genuinely transformed my stalking – no longer am I walking around like Quasimodo trying to stop my rifle sling from slipping off my shoulders. Result!