Reactive Targets

N

NightSight

New member
How many people use reactive targets as a part of their training?? Is the extra hassel (lugging steel targets, resetting, etc) worth it??

On a related note:

Has anyone made a home made pepper popper?? Any auto-setting ones??

What about other home made reactive targets??
 
I had a welding shop make me a set of 7 plates that fall backwards when shot. They're a lot like what you see in steel challenge shoots. But the whole thing is heavy and I leave it on the range.
 
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Pepper Poppers are a ton of fun. Yes, lugging them around is a problem, but if you join/make a league there's your labor pool.
 
I save up beer bottles, fill up jugs with water, and occasionally buy one of those large blocks of ice and throw wadcutters at it 'til its gone. I especially like the last because clean-up is nonexistent. I really like the instant gratification of shooting stuff as opposed to paper...
I am thinking about getting one of those spinner targets that has a 1" cup with a .25 cal hole, but I haven't been shooting my .22 much lately as the ejector is broken and pulling the shells by hand is a PITA.
 
My personal favorite and what I originally learned to shoot at is the ole' soda or tin can. For a larger target I like the metal coffee cans. Makes a nice ping and a .22 short on the coffee can, if hit at the right angle, will spin around the inside of the can. And I just finished a whole case the other day so I know what I'm gonna be doing come Sunday :cool:
 
Somebody posted a plan for "reactive zombie targets" a little while ago.
Here's a link to the article.

Basically he hot-glued red paintballs to stickers and then stuck the stickers on the zombie target head at the range. When shot, you got a big pink splatter.

I tried it myself...fun!
 
How do you clean up all the broken glass afterward?
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I bring out an old poncho that doesn't quite keep out all the rain anymore and set up a cardboard box on the center and the bottles on the box. Broken glass stays mostly on the poncho and gets thrown out once I get home.
 
I bring out an old poncho that doesn't quite keep out all the rain anymore and set up a cardboard box on the center and the bottles on the box. Broken glass stays mostly on the poncho and gets thrown out once I get home.
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I'm glad to hear you clean up after yourself like that. There are entirely too many irresponsible shooters who do not and they create a bad image for the responsible shooters by leaving behind a terrible mess. I have seen areas closed to shooting for that reason.
 
Bottom Gun:

I shoot on public land, and most of my fellow shooters are not so considerate. Every time I go I have to wade through a sea of shotgun hulls and surplus brass... it's a gruesome sight and a hell of an ecological impact even considering the site is a former gravel pit. I am worried that it will be closed down by the DNR soon and I will have to begin paying to join the private range. Thusly, I always try to leave it better than when I got there, and take out at least as much brass and hulls as I fire (since it's not always so easy to find your own hulls in a sea of similar super-range red hulls). Now if I learned to reload those bad-boys...
 
Range Cleanup Tip

Large plastic tarps are pretty cheap these days. I lay out a 20x30 one and stake it down with tent spikes so it stays in place and roughly 80% of my brass stays on the tarp unless I move around a lot.

If you have a "range cleanup crew" it also works well to give everyone a "gopher/reacher" and lay a big tarp out in the middle. Just throw everything on the tarp and then you pick it up and hold it so that everything will slide right into trashbags neat and easy!
 
I shoot on public land, and most of my fellow shooters are not so considerate. Every time I go I have to wade through a sea of shotgun hulls and surplus brass...
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Brass can be sold at $.80/lb a gallon bucket filled with old cassings weighs approx. 125lbs. =) I love shooters that dont clean up, they pay for me to shoot more!
 
Brass can be sold at $.80/lb a gallon bucket filled with old cassings weighs approx. 125lbs. =) I love shooters that dont clean up, they pay for me to shoot more!
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Not to mention the personal value of good reloadable brass.
 
I love to shoot at reactive targets at matches and there can be very clever ones.

The most fun and useful for training are:

http://www.dvctargets.com/

You have to hit these just right to get them to fall. Some can be set for failure to stop drills and need something like a Mozambique to go down.

We used them at the Polite Society and something similar at the NTI. If you take your shot and they are still there - OOPS.
 
Not sure how it happened but I was out plinking in the backyard the other day with my 5.45 AK and every now and then one of the cans would get tossed up about 12ft in the air... I kinda thought I might have hit the dirt just in front of the can and caused the bullet to roll into them... not sure but it looked really cool and put a big smile on my face every time (like this :D).

One time when I was probably 8 to 10 or so my grandpaw bought some exploding targets for me to shoot with my .22 chipmunk... those were a lot of fun until one failed to explode, didn't quite know what to do with it so we chucked it in the lake and decided not to buy anymore.

We also had one of those metal resetting .22 targets like this one. It was fun too until my little brother decided to take a whack at it with his .243 ... SP round blew a nice big hole right through one of the steel plates (about .25" thick too). He knows better now, we still use it now but I skip the plate he shot because half the time I try for it I think I'm shooting thru the hole :D
 
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Years ago, when I was still teaching Hunter Safety, we used Necco wafer candies as targets for the BB gun sighting practice. Some of the kids could hit them in the air when thrown. My partner could hit them too; I was not that good. But I learned that teaching kids to shoot on targets that provide instant feedback was an excellent way to train and maintain their complete interest.
 
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