Please give your favorite targets to shoot. I'm looking for new unusual ideas for fun targets to shoot. We've already tried most conventional stuff.

Our favorite targets are steel plates because you can hear when you hit them or see them move. We also like flour (see below).

A simple target idea we usually employ is to take the cheapest generic 5 lb. bags of bleached wheat flour (i.e. white flour) you can find and wrap it in one layer of duct tape. Then drape a sturdy piece of string a few feet long over the top and wrap again in one more layer covering over the section of string. Tie the ends of the string together and you have a loop to hang the bag of flour from. We use steel flower pot stakes curved at the top to hang it off. Every time you hit it you will know because there will be a puff of white powder. For .38 special it will last for about 50-100 rounds. The duct tape help it hold up longer as a target. Much easier to see that you've hit it compared to paper targets.

For more fun, slit the top of the flour bag, remove a little flour, and maneuver a container of Tannerite to the bottom. Then mark the bag of flour on the outside with a sticker or marker where the Tannerite is in the bag. Use the least amount of duct tape to secure a loop of string to the bag. Hang it. Shoot it. Watch a big plume of white powder.

John
Scoundrel and Ne'er-Do-Well in Training

You just can't beat a tin can.

Rolling pine cones on the ground with a 22 pistol.

Dirt pieces on the 100 yd range on the impact mound. On a dry day you can see the dirt fly. Larry

A friend of mine buys the cheapest pots and pans he can find at yard sales. He hangs them from a wire strong across his back yard range and has at them.

Lot's of fun.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

Especially when it's filled with creamed corn or tomato soup!

When it is filled with old beer on a hot day. This is when you find out how accurate a scoped hand gun really is!!

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S&WHF 366

old out of date fire extingwishers

I have to admit, I've tried the flour and it was pretty fun

My favorites are mailboxes and road signs, but people get mad at me when I shoot their mailbox, especially if it has their Social Security check inside. My second favorite is tin cans on the river bank.

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Why, I aughta.....

I have used paper plates.

I like the spinning steel targets. I was shooting at some at a range with a tin roof. If you hit them a certain way, you would hear the bullet hit the tin roof.

Another favorite is shooting empty shotgun shells with my 1952 vintage K-22 or my Model 17-4 or any other .22 handgun.

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Corripe Cervisiam

Thought about an apple on the kid's head, but it just seemed too derivative.

I like how the sticks got shorter!

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Endeavor to persevere. <><

Ritz crackers are fun with a .22, they break apart nicely when you hit them and the birds get a meal after you leave.

I shot a lot of baloons with my kids when they were young. Now I shoot baloons with my grandkids.

Wingmaster

I keep my old "rattle can" spray paint cans, accumulate a few, take them to my "back in the field" range, and "pop" a few. After the first shot not much action, (but paint still rolls out of the holes when the bullet moves the can).

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gone

Shooting acorns out of the mouths of tree rats with my 10-5.It's harder than you think.

Try a gallon of paint with a 240 grain JHP 44 mag. It's a thing of beauty.

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LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

Cheap golf balls sitting on tees. Close in for handgun or farther back for rifle. Watch'em fly!

sent from my phone 'cause I'm too lazy to walk to the laptop..

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I used to be disgusted..

I ride around the edge of fields in a golf cart and shoot the leaves on bushes and weeds. The leaves are something to aim at and I don't have any trash to pick up. Larry

These have all been pistol targets, and not a thing wrong with that. But for 22 rifles or center fire rifles at longer distances: Cheese-it crackers at 100 yards (much closer without a scope). Dark construction paper with 25 aspirin tablets hot glued to it @ 25 meters (makes small white cloud when hit). For a hard target: light colored M&M's @ 100 for rimfire and @ 200 for centerfire. Use a piece of electric conduit as a Tee with a paintball on it (usually a row of 10). And the hardest that I ever saw: 1' block of 2x4, 10 spaced 1/8" holes with strike anywhere kitchen matches. Now light the matches with your 22, now blow them out, now cut off at the top edge of the block.Start at 25 yards and repeat at 10 additional yard increments. (Works best with no limits on gun or ammo, but establish handicaps with distance) (tip: drill several rows of holes in each block as they hard to get matches out of)

Handicaps and "Classes" can be established by limiting the gun and ammo quality. For example, a stock out of the box semi auto, or Bolt action 22 that retail for a limit. An Ammo handicap could be everybody shoots the same bulk pack of ammo. Scope power can be limited or not.

The whole idea is to help teach people (grandkids) to shoot better, not show off! Tiny targets result in the old adage; Aim small, Miss small! (light colored cardboard make a good backer to see misses, but no backer is for advanced shooters.
Have fun. Ivan

Fill them with water and they make a nice reaction. for my 30-06 I like filling a gallon milk jug full of water and playing 'Taliban'. I always clean up my mess.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Necco candy waffers. Bright colors, no mess, varmints and birds probley love the any chips and they would melt with the first rain anyway.

For a challenge, I have my son launch a marble up in the air with his sling-shot. The bullet shatters the glass marble into a cloud of dust. I've never hit one, but if I ever do, I'll post a picture.

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Why, I aughta.....

You can go on "safari" with animal crackers.

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'Merica!

Many years back a friend of mine who was a chef had two cases of BIG cans, the size of a gallon paint can...full of spoiled/out of date, tomato sauce.

He and I took them out to some forest land the top of Mc Donald pass outside of Helena. We had snow on the ground and put a can on a fence post and got back a hundred yds or so.

A .25-06 with 87 gr bullets at 3K+ REALLY exploded them.

We cleaned up the cans, took them all home and forgot about the day.

Few days later I find out the Fish & Game was investigating the SLAUGHTER of an elk herd up on the Pass! Seems someone flying over saw the red on the snow, and assumed it was BLOOD.

I always think of that incident when I try to get CREATIVE with targets.

I'll vote....STEEL PLATES for my current favorites.

Need a REALLY accurate scoped .22 for this, but a friend had a CZ .22 rifle with a 6-18x scope on it. We pressed #209 shotshell primers into a sheet of cardboard and shot from a rest at about 40 yards.

A good, solid center hit on a primer resulted in a nice small explosion and a ~1" hole in the cardboard. Fun.

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Ret'd LEO
SWCA #2275

we never throw away our empty plastic milk containers, rinse them out and store them in a large trash bag, then on range day we fill them with water and food coloring , little ones are for shooting up close with and the gallon jugs are used on the rifle range.

colored water, and hydraulic pressure always gets a wow factor

ever see a one pint milk jug totally disappear, cap a full one with a 44 mag at 15 yds , i am still looking for the last one i shot

My number one all time favorite target for handguns is a used harrow blade. Spray paint it white using flat appliance paint. Two or three light coats works best. Step back and take aim at the axle hole. Fire away. Bullets that go through the hole simply impact the backstop. Bullets that impact the blade leave a little black/grey splat mark. Photograph the group w/ your cell phone camera. Spray paint the impact marks. Step back and repeat. I've shot thousands of rounds of standard and magnum handgun ammunition into such blades. Over the years I had one, which was rather thin, start to crack from the axle hole. After about 2,000 rounds of .40 S&W, it broke. The next plate I used was thicker. After three years of shooting, it was still in fine condition.

If you want to shot a harrow blade with a rifle, it will probably work out fine as the plate is tempered steel and the bullets are simply lead w/ a gliding metal jacket. I can't say that a rifle bullet will not pierce a harrow blade. Sooner or later it just may break the blade, but it will not likely pierce the blade. For common soft-point hunting bullets, the blade works well. Firing at distances beyond 100 yds., it is quite likely that you will never actually wear the blade out. For smaller calibers such as the 5.56mm round, even loads using a steel penetrator are unlikely to do anything more than merely leave a little smear on the metal.

Another good target is to take balloons and put some water into them, then inflate in the normal way and tie off the bottom. Throw them out on a farm pond and let the wind push them. Back off a goodly distance and try to hit them. Moving targets are always a challenge. Shooting w/ a .22 LR rifle or handgun you'll rapidly learn to allow for wind, movement, etc.

A final suggestion. Take an old tire and put a piece of thin paneling in the middle. Spray paint the paneling tan. Roll the tire down a hill and try to hit the brown paneling. This is a good way to force youself to learn to shoot running deer. Standard issue deer are usually a brown/tan color, and they never come with little bullseyes on their side. If you can get used to hitting the tan center of a rolling tire, you will be well ahead of things when you need to shoot a deer that has turned on the after burners.

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Another good moving target is a balloon attached to a radio controlled car.

For police training I have seen them attach 2 balloons of different color; one is the hostage the other the bad guy. Trying to hit one while not hitting the other is difficult.

You might want to be extra careful with that. My brother was shooting a .22 rifle at a moving target on a pond (muskrat, they were burrowing into the dam and threatening to drain the pond). Two ricochets went through the roof shingles of a house some distance away. Could have been a hell of a lot worse, but the guy who lived in the house was not thrilled.

A .22LR bullet can and will ricochet off water it hits at a shallow angle.

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Oh well, what the hell.

Pretty common but bowling pins are a lot of fun. Depending upon your proximity to a bowling alley they can be easy to come by.

But my very favorite is and old junk car, truck or van. Ideally with all its glass and tires intact. A few summers ago be and my 2 BILs and 3 nephews chipped in 10 bux apiece and got an old Chevy Caprice from the early '70s. No motor in it but it was all there except for that.

One of my nephews is married to the daughter of a deputy sheriff. He borrowed his FILs full auto M-16.

When we were done we sold the remains for scrap. Got 70 bux for it. I call that some good cheap fun. ('Cept for the cost of the hundreds or rounds of ammo we went through)

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Real men love cats!

Call me an old Fuddy-Duddy but I still think trying to tear all the black out of 3" NRA bull at 25 yards offhand with my muzzleloader is alot of fun. There are six bulls on the target, the first is for practice, the rest are shot in series with a best of 50-5X. Thats the easiest way to score but often we shoot five shots at each bull...its a rare day when someone can put five shots in all five bulls...the X is about a half inch across on that target.
The problem I see with putting cans and stuff out for targets is that many people just leave that stuff behind when they are through. I used to like to blow up gallon milk jugs full of water, often you had to hunt around for chunks. I'd have to say that if I had to choose a "garbage" style target I would have to go with the gallon milk jug.

THIS is the important part. It's what you think is fun. It's also what gets new shooters to think it's fun.

For new shooters, I use 9" paper plates. It seems to take a lot of stress away when I tell them all that they have to do is put holes anywhere on the paper plate and it's good shooting.

We can work on tightening up groups if they come back for a second session.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

If you live near St Louis, you might enjoy popping looters tonight !

Political signs picked up the day after elections. Gets trash off the road and serves a useful purpose.

CW

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μολὼν λαβέ

Another one we like during the winter months is 1 gallon plastic milk jugs full of frozen water. A center hit with a center fire rifle gives a good show. Shoot from 50 yards because the ice chips fly a bit.
John
Scoundrel and Ne'er-Do-Well in Training

You are certainly correct regarding the potential of ricochets. When we have shot balloons on the pond, we have always directed our fire away from the houses. There is nothing out beyond the pond except lot of woods and swamp.

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Elections are usually on Tuesday, Polls close at 7:00 or 8:00 PM. Start your harvest at 7:05 or 8:05 PM for the best picking. In 2012 I harvested nine 4' X 8' plastic board campaign sheets. I believe that will last my lifetime.

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S&WHF 366