We NEED a GOOD short range RIFLE TARGET...

[AustinT]

Anyone ever shoot a hockey puck?

[Bryan 45]

An egg is a little on the small side, but would be cheap. Although it would make a mess on match day, I'm sure the crows and racoons would clean it up.

It's a shame ostrich eggs aren't as common as chicken eggs.

[Dwain C. Baer]

An egg is a little on the small side, but would be cheap. Although it would make a mess on match day, I'm sure the crows and racoons would clean it up.

That might have a bad smell also...

[Charles Bond]

Post it notes now come in a variety of colors and sizes, travel well, store well and are cheaper than anything mentioned thus far.

[ArmdCtzn]

Post it notes now come in a variety of colors and sizes, travel well, store well and are cheaper than anything mentioned thus far.

Paper targets in general do all of those things, but one of the primary requirements we're looking for is a frangible or otherwise instantly indicating target. Post-It notes don't even come close.

[sierra77mk]

How about primer trays?

They go in the landfill and have no use once they are emptied.

Has anyone shot them to see if they break apart?

Could be a signup requirement at a match. Each shooter pays the match fee and also supplies the match director with 5-10 empty primer trays.

[rundownfid]

At the York Pa. # man # Gun they shoot a colored drink from Wal-Mart. I believe the name is "Huggies?". They are little kegs about 4" high and perhaps 2.5" at the widest. When hit with a rifle at any close distance they make a colorful mist. One problem was knocking them off the post by hitting the post, solved by saying the bottle itself must be holed. They are apparently just colored sugar water, cheap for a "food" product, a bit messy to clean up as the stuff is god awful sticky. With hollow points you can make a very spectacular mist, FMJ not so much, but still knocks them off and drains em..

[Benelli Chick]

Eric,

I think I have a solution...or will! Through no fault of my own, somehow I let a few of the advanced algebra 7th and 8th graders in my school know about this dilema! In less than five minutes, they come up with a lunch bag full of lime green jello, a pile a black powder with a tiny fuse, balloons, and dummy with a heavy rubber bar inside hanging by a rope that would swing when you hit it, small Izzy cans...well, the list goes on and on. I think "cheap" may have thrown them for a loop...I teach in Boulder.

Anyway, the best and brightest minds of the future and churning on this one...I'm sure they'll come up with something!

Denise

[tripletapjake]

They may be a bit big but how about CDs..... you can get an entire container of them for real cheap now.... hang it by the hole in the middle and they should work great. They will break on anything that hits them.

[Justin]

Why not concrete?

A four inch square target that's, say, 1/2 inch - 3/4 inch thick.

Concrete is super brittle, but not as fragile as clay pigeons, it will hold up regardless of the weather conditions, it's cheap, and if you wanted to, you could paint it. The only downside is that it's not biodegradeable.

I wonder if you could build a mold out of some 2x4s and a piece of particle board so that you could make four or eight of them at a time?

[ArmdCtzn]

Why not concrete?

Ricochets

[Modoc]

Justin,

Taking your idea another step further, Look at using grout or masonry mortar to make 1/2" thick tiles. This may be more fragnable (sp?) than regular concrete.

[CJW]

At the York Pa. 3 man 3 Gun they shoot a colored drink from Wal-Mart. I believe the name is "Huggies?". They are little kegs about 4" high and perhaps 2.5" at the widest. When hit with a rifle at any close distance they make a colorful mist. One problem was knocking them off the post by hitting the post, solved by saying the bottle itself must be holed. They are apparently just colored sugar water, cheap for a "food" product, a bit messy to clean up as the stuff is god awful sticky. With hollow points you can make a very spectacular mist, FMJ not so much, but still knocks them off and drains em..

They are a good target, and fun to shoot---though at the last match, we had a couple of bottles that stayed on the stands, and we were pretty sure we hit, but saw no obvious splash. They ended up being hits. Now, those might have been engaged with bird shot by our shotgunner, but I can't remember for sure.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, when I was in the neighboring bay somebody was hitting those little suckers with something (Heavy Metal, perhaps?) that made the drinks launch like a freakin' bottle rocket! We saw them riding little purple and orange plumes of sugar water up higher than the separating berm...

[ArmdCtzn]

At the York Pa. 3 man 3 Gun they shoot a colored drink from Wal-Mart. I believe the name is "Huggies?". They are little kegs about 4" high and perhaps 2.5" at the widest. When hit with a rifle at any close distance they make a colorful mist. One problem was knocking them off the post by hitting the post, solved by saying the bottle itself must be holed. They are apparently just colored sugar water, cheap for a "food" product, a bit messy to clean up as the stuff is god awful sticky. With hollow points you can make a very spectacular mist, FMJ not so much, but still knocks them off and drains em..

They are a good target, and fun to shoot---though at the last match, we had a couple of bottles that stayed on the stands, and we were pretty sure we hit, but saw no obvious splash. They ended up being hits. Now, those might have been engaged with bird shot by our shotgunner, but I can't remember for sure.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, when I was in the neighboring bay somebody was hitting those little suckers with something (Heavy Metal, perhaps?) that made the drinks launch like a freakin' bottle rocket! We saw them riding little purple and orange plumes of sugar water up higher than the separating berm...

What kind of stand are you using? The trouble I find with most of these targets is that hits on the stand will cause them to fall.

[Justin]

Justin,

Taking your idea another step further, Look at using grout or masonry mortar to make 1/2" thick tiles. This may be more fragnable (sp?) than regular concrete.

That might work better than concrete if it presents less of a ricochet hazard. So, who's going to be the first one to try it out?

At the York Pa. 3 man 3 Gun they shoot a colored drink from Wal-Mart. I believe the name is "Huggies?". They are little kegs about 4" high and perhaps 2.5" at the widest. When hit with a rifle at any close distance they make a colorful mist. One problem was knocking them off the post by hitting the post, solved by saying the bottle itself must be holed. They are apparently just colored sugar water, cheap for a "food" product, a bit messy to clean up as the stuff is god awful sticky. With hollow points you can make a very spectacular mist, FMJ not so much, but still knocks them off and drains em..

I'm kind of conflicted about this idea. On the one hand, shooting bottles of some kind of awful beverage is always a lot of fun.

On the other hand, using beverage containers for 3 gun targets just seems kind of trailer park. I mean, I know it sounds stupid to say that targets for 3 gun should be uniform and/or purpose-made, but that's kind of how I feel.

Edited November 2, 2011 by Justin

[CJW]

What kind of stand are you using? The trouble I find with most of these targets is that hits on the stand will cause them to fall.

I believe they were simply placed on top of 4x4 posts. The stage specifically disallowed engaging a target on the ground, so you did have to be careful about knocking them over with a hit to the stand---an undamaged bottle on the ground was scored a miss. I don't recall the rifle being a problem; at least with .223, the bullets pretty much just bored through the post without upsetting it very much. low shotgun hits were more problematic, but then again you were also more likely to get at least one BB through the bottle even if the middle of your pattern was low on the post.

[1760yds]

At the MGM Ironman and at a 3 gun match in Baker City, OR they had tennis balls on strings. In the Ironman it was a bonus pistol shot at about 20-25 yards. At the 3 Gun in Baker it was a rifle target. I never saw it get shot off the string but you could certianly tell when it got hit as it would dance or spin. It was also fairly challenging to hit especially if there was wind.

[1760yds]

At the MGM Ironman and at a 3 gun match in Baker City, OR they had tennis balls on strings. In the Ironman it was a bonus pistol shot at about 20-25 yards. At the 3 Gun in Baker it was a rifle target. I never saw it get shot off the string but you could certianly tell when it got hit as it would dance or spin. It was also fairly challenging to hit especially if there was wind.

The tennis balls seemed to last a really long time and they are cheap.

[RiggerJJ]

At the MGM Ironman and at a 3 gun match in Baker City, OR they had tennis balls on strings. In the Ironman it was a bonus pistol shot at about 20-25 yards. At the 3 Gun in Baker it was a rifle target. I never saw it get shot off the string but you could certianly tell when it got hit as it would dance or spin. It was also fairly challenging to hit especially if there was wind.

The tennis balls seemed to last a really long time and they are cheap.

SOFTBALLS are cheap too...

jj

Edited November 11, 2011 by RiggerJJ

[Casman]

Here is a simple solution that seems to work really well.

A Finish shooter buddy told me the other day that they had the same complaints about clay birds; bullets poking holes but not shattering the clay. Their solution was to use two clays, fill the cup of one so that it mounds over the rim with sand or gravel, then capture the sand/gravel with the second clay, cup to cup, and run a strip of tape around the seam to hold the two clays together. I tried it out and is seems to work really well. A 223 hit in the center of the clay caused a really thorough destruction of both clays.

After running the idea past EricM, he made the comment that if you had moist sand you could fill both clays and not have any airspace between them, and you might be able to use two rubber bands, at 90 degrees to each other, to hold the clays together. I think this could be the ticket.

I will say that I think it would work best if whatever way the clays are held together, they were done en-mass prior to the match so that shooters were not filling and securing clays together. We all know how activators can be set inconsistently by shooters and cause troubles for a stage. I think consistency would be better if the same people filled all of the clays. More work, I know, but it might be worth it.

The last small hurdle is how to present the two clays. Most of the clay holders, I have seen anyway, are designed to take one clay facing out. For rifle/pistol, and not using steel holders, it’s easy enough to make a little tape tail that can be stapled to a backer of some sort for hanging. This is what I did at the range when I tried the two clay and sand approach. The easy way to do this is to take a strip of tape 6" to 8" long and stick one end of it to the outside face of a clay, starting at the edge of the center flat area, then press it into the contours of the clay to the outer edge, stick the other end of the tape to the back side of the same clay at about the same location and press it into the contour of the clay and out to the outer edge again. Now there is a loop formed in the tape with the clay at both ends, stick the loop to itself and you have a nice little hanger. This works for one or two clays.

One of the nice things about this approach, as I see it, is that we could continue to use a target that we are familiar with from a size and presentation point of view.

Leave it to those Fins to come up with a good solution for this!

James

[ericm]

I think we're CLOSE!!!!

Economical, easy to reset, positive hit indication....yep it seems to meet the criteria.

Dare we call this target a......CLAYOREO? Anyone? anyone?

For a stand, we could also try the soft plastic orange construction cones cut down slightly (or maybe no cut needed?)to nestle the clayoreo face on to the shooter (similar to the cones that held the (naughty name here) softballs at the High Plains Carbine Match last summer. Low hits didn't upset those softballs and I predict they wouldn't upset our clayoreos (just keep saying clayoreo.....it's so....FUN!!! )

ericm

[JRW]

So I am running a 300+ shooter match with 4 stages of rifle and I want to have 8 of these targets per stage. That means I have to make at least 9,600 pf these out of 19,200 clay birds, store and transport them to the match without any breakage...

Seems unrealistic.

Edited December 17, 2011 by JRW

[ericm]

So I am running a 300+ shooter match with 4 stages of rifle and I want to have 8 of these targets per stage....

No, your premise seems unrealistic.

Think, match director, think.

Thanks for the helpful input on the target design, though.

ericm

[NOMADSS]

How about them 5 inch rubber sealing orange balls they sell at Cabela's or they also sell them at cheaper then dirt!!

They are the same things we shot at the RM3G with the shotgun when it had to cross the line.

Safe, and reusable

[ericm]

Remember, rifle (not shotgun) for those orange balls didn't work well...

From my original post.....

Do-All type plastic targets (otherwise know at the HPSC Carbine match as "those #@%^&$* orange balls"): not cheap, can be used mutiple times, EFFECT APPEARS TO BE AMMO DEPENDENT.

Drawbacks: FMJ .223 appears to have little effect when balls are set on any surface that "cups" the ball (it was quickly discovered at the HPSC that Blitzkings, V-Max's, TAP, etc. would indeed "motivate" these targets, but the balls started getting chewed up with that kind of ammo), more shooting/experimenting is required.

.....and an update on the CLAYOREOs:

We made and shot 10 of these yesterday.

Very easy to make using damp sand at the range...just scoop the 2 birds together and twist rim to rim until flush. With this method the 2 birds are 100% full (no void space). We used tape and rubber bands to hold the filled birds together, rubber bands seemed quicker and left less mess at the impact area.

We set the clayoreos on a rubber construction cone and on plastic drink bottles with the tops cut off to nestle the clayoreo in place. .223 hits on the cone and bottles under the clayoreo did not dislodge the target. We shot edge hits to center hits on the clayoreos and always had a POSITIVE HIT INDICATION (spectacular in most cases) that could be seen on 1X at 30 to 50 yards quite easily and QUICKLY. Never had a "burn through" hole that couldn't be seen.

I guess I'm pretty much sold on this target for short range rifle use and will try them in a match setting ASAP.

ericm