Moving target?

1911Alaska

New member
Has anyone ever made a moving target to shoot at?

I was thinking about buying a remote control car and the taking one of my human silhouette and putting it on there. Obviosliy I would need like a 4-5 foot peice of thin wood to hold the target up so I am not shooting directly at the RC car or at a 3ft target :p

I was just curious if anyone has done something like this. I think it would be a great idea for self defense drills.

And Yes I would be able to do something like this at my local range. :cool:

Thanks!
 
I have; it works.

I used a fiberglass driveway marker as a target holder. Balloons, cardboard and paper targets are perfect. Target and holder has to be very, very light weight otherwise car becomes top heavy.

A cheap RC car wont handle much. I tried a $50 version before I finally invested in a $200 traxxus.
 
Find an old lawnmower and take the wheels off. Get some pipe for axles and make a platform to mount a target stand on and take turns pulling it on a rope. You can get it to go left to right by pulling the rope around a pipe in the ground or a tree. Here's one my wife is shooting coming at her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8az43aEVvI
 
We use a wagon and dummy to practice charging targets. It would work for side to side too if I could find someone to pull it down range;-). If you set up a pulley system it could work I guess.
 
Just take up Skeet, Trap or Sporting Clays. Much easier than converting a lawnmower into a moving target!:D
 
I designed this one. It was a way for me to have moving targets at a location where I had no electricity. It is best used with frangible ammo, but the target does move in the X, Y, and Z axes and the pattern of movement changes with the impacts. I had different sizes made for use with different guns and at different distances.

The only real difficulty in function is to be able to hang the target from a sufficiently high place to allow more more movement.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6pKmbOXu60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9NylptF1G0
 
We've used a remote control car with helium balloons. Tie two balloons with different length strings. The downside is the cost of the helium and needing to haul around the tank. It was fun, but ended up being a bit of a PITA.
I suppose you could use a thin dowel to hold up the balloons instead?

We've also used a small wide tire (like off a riding lawnmover) and balloons. Put a balloon inside the tire, and place on a small slope. Wedge another balloon to hold it in place. When you shoot the wedged balloon, the tire rolls down the hill and you can try to hit the balloon inside the tire. This also gets a bit tiresome to constantly reset, and needs a very specific landscape to be safe, but it is doable
 
At our indoor league a shooter made a mover array that was awesome. It was a set of tracks, and a low steel "trolly" that held either a steel target or an IPSC cardboard target. It was triggered to start rolling by a pepper popper. The neat use for something like this is to have some no-shoot targets in front of the mover.
 
I've done the RC car thing as well. Attach a 3-4 foot fiberglass rod upright on the car with a 'gator clip at the tip. Attach a balloon (smiley face drawn on optional :D) and you're good to go.

There are bunches of RC car styles out there, and I'm sure a $200. car would be great, if you can afford it. I found, however, that a $50. car works great, IF you choose one with a wide wheel base to keep it from tipping over.

Be sure to bring extra rods and 'gator clips, especially if you bring new shooters ;).

(Alligator clips are easily available at Radio Shack or a similar store.)
 
has anyone ever made there own reactive target? The one im referring to is the one with round plates on each side and when you hit them they swing to the other side
 
Make a raised wooden trough as long as you want to make it for the RC car to ride in and hang the target off of that and run it back and forth
 
Shooting at a moving target

I was at a military range and got to shoot at a mover.
This target was at 600 meters and "walked " for a 8 second exposure.
Had 20 shots at it and hit it 8 times. Tried 3 different leads, don't know which one was right!,

Ps trying to upload a picture, but file size is too big. Have tried compression software, but can't get it to 250k .

Target was a silhouette/ picture of a bad guy.
 
I use too use jackrabbits out in the desert. Best moving targets ever. I don't hunt anymore so all my targets are static.
 
I'm a collector of old shooting books, mostly military.

In a couple of my books there was a lot of info on National Guard Shooters, mainly city dwellers not having access to our door ranges so developed gallery shooting, with light bullets in their service rifles.

One of the books, cant remember which, had a section on moving targets in indoor ranges. They used electric or wind up toy trains with targets attached. The trains would travel across the range at about 50 ft, and they'd engage the targets attached to, about 8-10 inches above the train cars.

The NG also had Daisy Running bore targets for air guns, shot at 10 meters they would work just about in any ones basement. If I remember right they weren't that expensive.

In mid 70s just before I got into High Power, I did a lot of skeet shooting. I was still shooting a lot of skeet and trap when I attended the USAMU Sniper school. We had a session on movers. In that part of the course I was the top gunner. I attribute that to my skeet shooting. I now longer shoot skeet, and when I attempt shooting movers, I can sure tell the difference between now and when I shot skeet.

The actor Robert Stack was a big time skeet shooter. When he entered the army in WWII he was task with teaching skeet shooting to anti-aircraft gunners.

Don't underestimate the skeet gun in learning to shoot movers.
 
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The best version of a moving target I experienced was the mover from a NRA Action Pistol match, but used as a tactical one.
The guy on the controller would speed it up or slow it down and reverse it, without warning.
For an additional challenge, No Shoot targets were added along the movers path of travel.
Very neat, all told.
 
Running game targets used to be a lot more popular than they are today. The local range used to do running deer and coyote. Those days are long past.
 
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