5 minute project: Setting up a Quick Adjust Sling on a Bolt Gun

I wrote last year about the Defensive Hunter concept. In that article I was using a Ruger American Ranch chambered in 6.5 Grendel. In that article I was using the Magpul RLS sling, and while it is a good inexpensive sling, it also lacks any way to adjust it’s length easily in the field. This was a bit of a safety issue since at times I needed to sling the rifle to use my hands to climb with or for other uses, and it didn’t want to always ride where I wanted it. This forced me to have to adjust the sling in the field, which isn’t really something I want to have to do.

I’ve been playing around with some different slings and I’ve recently replaced the sling on my “go-to AR”. That left me with a Magpul MS1 that I wasn’t using, and since it is a two point quick adjust sling I thought I would see how it fit on this rifle. I’m very pleased with what I have now, although I doubt the engineers at Magpul had this in mind when they designed it.

To start off with the sling has a few parts we need to identify. Towards the front there is a tri-glide, behind it is the adjustable section with the sliding buckle. Then at the back there are two more tri-glides.

I started with about a 6 inch tail on the front and ran it through my front sling swivel. I only want to use the bare minimum of webbing here to make this connection so that I don’t waste any since this is the same webbing that is used for quick adjustments.

Ensure you properly route the webbing through the triglide so that it is secure.

With the front connected now time to do the back. We can save a lot of time here by starting with an approximate length that is close to what we will actually need. I know that I want to be able to sling my rifle over my shoulder, strong side muzzle up. This requires a fairly tight sling, so I make sure that the adjustment buckle is as tight as it will go then layout my sling as pictured below. Notice on the front how the sling comes out from the stock at about a 90 degree angle then angles to the rear swivel. This is roughly how it hangs on your shoulder. This will be a good starting point.

I fed the sling through the rear swivel then I used my Triad Tactical Down Under Support to measure to make sure it had enough clearance. This is a handy part to have on any precision gun to use in place of a rear support like a sand sock. I’ve shot this rifle to 600 yards using it and it works great.

Once I made sure that there’s enough room for the rear support I threaded the webbing through the first triglide. This was good enough to temporarily use the sling to ensure everything was the right length. I grabbed my kit bag and put in on and then did a bit of dry fire from standing, kneeling and prone to ensure everything worked the way I want. I made sure I put an empty magazine in as well to ensure there were no clearance issues.

Once everything was adjusted good I finished feeding the extra webbing through the second triglide then rolled up the extra and taped it. You could certainly cut it as well, but I don’t really like to cut my slings if I can help it.

So not only do I now have a sling that can easily be pulled tight to sling over your shoulder, or loosened up to sling over your back (the two main positions I carry my rifle if it’s not across my kit bag) but it can also be used as a shooting support.

With the adjustment buckle all the way forward this creates a loop, and by placing our weak side arm through this loop, preferably above the bicep muscle, and then sliding the buckle back so it cinches around our arm we now have a loop sling. Now we just have to cross our arm over the top of the sling, and using the Vee grip that I teach in class (and I’ve taught to hundreds of Marines as well..) we can shoot really well. Nothing gimmicky, no extra hardware or unhooking the sling, just a simple and easy solution.

I looked at a lot of slings and I was prepared to spend good money on one but I’m really glad I decided to mess around with this one because it does everything I was wanting it to do. While it’s not the high speed square range sling, I have one of those on my AR, this sling has a different purpose for a different rifle. It needs to help me control the rifle when crossing rough terrain and it needs to help me shoot the rifle in field conditions. It needs to be light and simple, yet rugged.