Back in 2008, it was simply shooting a slingshot that bridged the gap for John “Chief AJ” Huffer. AJ picked up a wooden slingshot and shot 1,500 flying targets in a row using paintballs as ammo. There was a crowd of witnesses at the Big Red Barn in Tuscola, IL for the two-day event and the exhibition picked up the interest of 3 local television stations.

As 6-inch disks were tossed into the air, AJ would splatter a paintball on the center of the bullseye, which was in the air for only 1.5 seconds.

Now this gap is the area between a small dying farm town in the Midwest and Hollywood. That exhibition of marksmanship got AJ noticed for Top Shot, which is a show on the History Channel devoted to expert marksmanship. AJ did so well on Top Shot that he was invited to appear on the National Geographic Channel, where he won a shoot-off against a fully automatic, laser guided machine gun.

The GAP!

From a “flyover” farm town to being known nationally, that 2,000-mile gap was not a physical barrier.  Doing something unique bridged the gap from being unknown in the Midwest to a slingshot shooting star!

It was then that AJ realized he could bring slingshot shooting national and to the world!  He tried putting stronger bands on a wooden slingshot but the frame broke.  So he had Ray Priest in Texas build him a metal framed slingshot which gave the strength needed to allow him to hunt pheasants. After the successful pheasant hunt on Anything Wild (a hunting show on the Pursuit Channel), AJ realized that with an arrow rest on the slingshot frame he could take down big game.

On the first attempt, with full-length hunting arrows tipped with Muzzy broadhead points, AJ bagged a deer at 30 yards in Ohio. AJ put this on his website which caused Tony Reaves to order one of AJ’s slingshots. Four days after Tony got his slingshot, he harvested a deer.

Now, 6 years later, after AJ established a World Record for shooting 1,500 flying slingshot targets, the all-metal “Elite Sling Bow” has been developed.  The forerunners to the “Elite” and the “Elite Sling Bow" to date have bagged bucks, does, white-tailed deer, black and grizzly bears, turkeys, a 450-pound red stag and a 210-pound gator garfish.

On May 5, 2015, Chief AJ & Tony Reaves were invited to do an “Elite Sling Bow” hunt for the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ sent a reporter to see if AJ’s Elite could harvest big game humanely. The WSJ sent a former US Marine Corps combat officer by the name of Bin Kesling to report on the hunt, no matter which way it went.

Tony & AJ both bagged hogs weighing over 200 pounds each. This was done in front of the WSJ reporter and video cameras. The whole world read about the successful “Elite” hunt on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2015. 

So from a dying small farm town in the Flatlands of Illinois, Chief AJ 
developed the “Elite Sling Bow” which is now being shipped worldwide!