Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
The only weapon where I've seen it hold moderately true is the sling, which requires stupidly huge amounts of training and then enables you to slightly outmach bows under 150 lbs draw weight.
The thing with slingers and the original steppe horse archers is that the stupid amounts of training time were developed in boyhood/young adulthood through hunting. They weren’t proficient in their weapons as a result of explicit military training, more the military application was an outgrowth of the proficiency needed for survival.

In the Inca Empire for example all boys aged between 8 and 14 were sent into the fields with slings to keep birds off the crops. As a result the Inca army was full of expert slingers. There are Spanish reports of Inca soldiers being able to hit raised swords with sling stones from long distance.