Reactive Target Ideas?

[ditto1958]

At the range where I shoot, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings are "old guy" days. A handful of, well- old guys, are usually there when we open, and we get in informal shooting competitions. None of us really like poking holes in paper, so it's mostly shooting smallish reactive targets off the 100 yard fence and the berm behind it.

Problem is, we need ideas for things to shoot. We mostly shoot clay birds with pistols, but we also sometimes shoot scoped .22 rifles, and thinking up targets that are hittable, but also challenging is, well- a challenge. Recently, we have been shooting Tootsie Pops, the plastic wads from .410 shotgun shells, spent shotgun hulls- 20 gauge and .410.

If anyone has ideas for smallish objects we can pin to the fence that will break when we shoot them, I'm open to suggestions.

[Sir Henry]

I like shooting at tennis balls and golf balls. They don't break but they do jump around a lot. We would do this a lot at the pistol range where it is flat and the balls could roll easy. The game was for each person to take ten shots at their ball and the winner was whoever could make their ball go the further.

[JEBar]

I enjoy shooting metal .... both gongs and spinners .... they come in many sizes and built to handle many different calibers

[BrokenolMarine]

Back when I worked midnight patrol, one of my areas was a huge county softball complex. I'd walk around each of the eight fields to check for damage to the fences, and collect the softballs hit over the fences. When teaching firearms, I'd often screw a hook eye in a couple softballs and hang them from a crossbar on the range. They spin and dance when hit, and absorb a surprising amount of lead before coming apart. Paint them different colors, and you can CALL out which they are to shoot or not shoot. Loads of fun.

[BigAl52]

Spoons work great plastic of course.

[roddy]

"old guys" must have pill bottles laying around...fill 'em up with talcum powder, and have at it. Poof! Cheap hard candies like restaurants give you work great too. Lifesavers, tums, aspirin on a golf tee will all be reasonably challenging, and somewhat reactive. Cheap too.

[North Country Gal]

Another vote for metal spinner targets and pop up targets that are resettable. Lots of them out there, as JEBar says.

[Sir Henry]

"old guys" must have pill bottles laying around...fill 'em up with talcum powder, and have at it. Poof! Cheap hard candies like restaurants give you work great too. Lifesavers, tums, aspirin on a golf tee will all be reasonably challenging, and somewhat reactive. Cheap too.

We have to clean up after ourselves and I think that would be too much trouble. This time of year our range should have dandelions. They go poof when you hit them.

[roddy]

In that case, I'm gonna hop on the steel bandwagon as well. We have one of the self-resetting targets with 4 paddles and a 5th to re-set...Ang and I can play with that thing for hours. A portable rimfire dueling tree would be fun too, under $100 and light/small enough to throw in the trunk.

[RanchRoper]

Plastic cups, paper plates, I like the plastic spoons idea, any CD by Madonna, golf balls would blow up pretty good, etc

[Les]

Small moldings or bottle caps filled with plaster of Paris make good exploding targets. You can vary the size depending on the distance.

[Cofisher]

Small balloons on fishing line?

[ditto1958]

Plastic spoons sound like a great idea. And pill bottles full of talcum powder? Now that sounds like a real winner.

We've done golf balls, and they can be fun, but for two problems. One is they are too easy to hit with scoped .22 rifles, so they just get all shot up right away. Second, it is hard to rig them up so that they don't go flying off into space when they're hit. We are working on the second part, though.

I'm picturing big talcum powder explosions, though, and that idea has real possibilities.

[ditto1958]

Small moldings or bottle caps filled with plaster of Paris make good exploding targets. You can vary the size depending on the distance.

That's a great idea, too.

[BrokenolMarine]

Ice. Ice is what I had the kids shooting at from the deck with the pellet pistol. You control the size of the target by controlling the size of the cubes. Big cubes for longer distances, crushed ice or smaller cubes for close in. Clean up is a breeze... Mr. Sun has the duty.

Dixie cups filled and frozen make great targets for long distance, and the targets hold up well in a cooler for a good while.