Seasonal "targets"

[WestKentucky]

Easter is near and it's time for me to stock up on my favorite target, the plastic egg. The 2days past Easter are the time for me to horde these by the armload. They work exceptionally well when filled. Colored water is nice, so is ice, but the creme de la creme is fine flour. When hit it makes a wonderful poof that hangs around for a few seconds. Baby powder works too but it's more expensive. Incredibly difficult target for rifles at ranges you can't hit with a rock. Hard for handguns at range you can hit with a rock. Not so much fun got shotguns...oh well. They are a blast with bows and slingshots too. See below, most of the stuff you can do with a soda can be done with an egg. Just buy a cheap bag of golf tees and you have ready made target stands.

What other items do you intentionally repurpose into shootables?
Apples, walnuts, pumpkins...hedgeapples

I occasionally get crates of bad sodas too. Lots of fun when thrown for a shotgun target. Best thing about this is if you watch the can carefully you see where you hit it. Let's you put the most lead into the most feathers when it counts the most. Summer days sodas are nice too. They sit in the sun and get hot, pressurize, and when nailed with a rifle they splash quite nicely. Good practice for a standing Pdog or treerat. Sodas are nice for handguns too, pop the top and hook a string to the pulltab, now you have a pendulum. Good luck, it's small and quick.

I'm starting to think junk soda should be my favorite target...

 

[goon]

During winter, I enjoy shooting at ice. Chunks of ice, ice frozen into some kind of container, sheets of ice pulled off a puddle of water... doesn't matter.

It shatters almost like glass and leaves nothing harmful to the environment. Ice is the perfect target.

 

[9mmfan]

In the fall a group of folks that the wife and I camp with cut holes in the side of pumpkins, put some tannerite in there, and splatter orange goo around.

 

[hartcreek]

Anything that the orchard workers leave that will float works good for dropping in the ditch to get a moving target.

 

[Edster12]

+1 on the Pumpkins and Tannerite. Nuttin left but pumpkin snot!!! BOOOOOOOOOM!

 

[rugerman]

When I was a kid we shot the original clay targets- Dirt Clods. In mid summer when the fruit on my pear trees need thinning the small hard fruit makes great targets. If you drink bottled water save the bottles fill with liquid and shoot them then you can still recycle the blown up pieces. Gallon water or milk jugs make targets of about the right size to test your deer rifles for fun practice at distance and you can tell if you hit them with no trouble (and no walking down range to check your target). A frisbee is a great teaching tool for the beginning shotgun shooter.

 

[km101]

Charcoal briquettes work great too! Perfect for kids of all ages! You get a small black cloud when you hit them, and there is nothing to pick up. They are biodegradable! Any small chunks will dissolve in the next rain. I stick a small orange target dot on them for longer ranges as my eyes aint what they used to be.

 

[Pizzapinochle]

These all sound like fun.

WestKentucky, have you tried tossing the flour filled eggs as a shotgun target? Seems like they would be cool going "poof" mid air.

 

[peeker]

I use water bottles with a bit of water in the bottom with my bow all the time. Use small game heads. Their the bottle out and let the arrow fly. Great practice for archery hunting squirrels.

 

[P5 Guy]

Marshmallow Peeps?
Who eats those things anyway?

 

[Elkins45]

Marshmallow Peeps?
Who eats those things anyway?

You don't shoot peeps...you put them in the microwave!

When I lived in more rugged country I used to shoot icicles off of opposing cliff faces. Some of the really big ones would absorb 30-40 rifle rounds before breaking loose.

 

[SlowFuse]

Elkins what happens when you put them in the microwave? I've always wondered what exactly those things are coated with!

I like shooting 2 liter bottles/milk jugs filled with water and frozen. Makes great crushed ice after hitting it with a decent sized rifle round. But seasonal, I'd have to say pumpkins and watermelons.

 

[Jorg Nysgerrig]

Seems like plastic egg fragments everywhere would make quite a mess.

 

[Elkins45]

Elkins what happens when you put them in the microwave? I've always wondered what exactly those things are coated with!

http://thefw.com/peeps-in-the-microwave-videos/

 

[blarby]

Seems like plastic egg fragments everywhere would make quite a mess.

Given the amount of crap I drag out of local shooting pits after the holidays, I would have to agree.

 

[zdc1775]

Seems like plastic egg fragments everywhere would make quite a mess.

Use real eggs instead. Boil them, paint them, and let the little kids find them in the morning, then in the afternoon the big kids get to find them with bullets. The local animals clean up most if not all of the mess and what's left is biodegradable.

 

[Potatohead]

If you use real ones somebody will come on here saying it's a shame you wasted those eggs..like last Halloween when some fella on here took someone to task for shooting pumpkins.


As for me,
I come from a long line of produce wholesalers which means cheap, cheap, cheap, watermelons (melons of all kinds), and plenty of 'em in the summer.

 

[WestKentucky]

For the plastic eggs, yes they make a mess but not that bad. They typically don't shatter, they end up looking like a shot wad as they spiderweb fracture but not completely come apart

 

[zdc1775]

If you use real ones somebody will come on here saying it's a shame you wasted those eggs..like last Halloween when some fella on here took someone to task for shooting pumpkins.


As for me,
I come from a long line of produce wholesalers which means cheap, cheap, cheap, watermelons (melons of all kinds), and plenty of 'em in the summer.

I'm sure somebody will but what else are you going to do with four or five dozen hard boiled eggs that are covered in paint and sat out in the sun for a couple hours while the little kids tried to find all of them? I mean they aren't really safe to eat at that point.

 

[blarby]

Shoot those.

At least they go away ") Melons, too.

Plastic....not so much.

Sorry to join the rain parade crew... we've lost enough good pits out this way over non-degradeable trash, that i cant support some of the fun stuff.

Believe me... the most exciting thing I ever shot was a spraypaint can. From my bedroom window. When I was 8. Thank god for acetone...

 

[*Kemosabe*]

Unless there is snow on the ground, golf is always in season. So, golfballs are great targets!

As WestKentucky suggested get a bag of cheap golf tees. I think I paid $5 for a bag of 500 and a box of 100 used golfballs with no gouges on the covers for $20.

The next step is to build a saw horse using a Harbor Freight kit ($5 - the kit allows for easy replacement of shot up wood), then drill holes into the top cross 2x4 to accomodate the golf tees. Place the golfballs on the tees and shoot away.

I use a red dot scoped Browning Buckmark .22 -- great fun and you'll get a lot of use out of the golfballs if you use a .22

Not so much with CF handguns and very little use with a CF rifle.

 

[*Kemosabe*]

blarby - "... the most exciting thing I ever shot was a spraypaint can."

Did the bullet ignite the paint and/or the propellant?

Before Walmart tripled the price of their branded starting fluid, I used to place a full can of it at 100 yards with a burning candle behind it.

When it was hit with a CF rifle round it would explode into a fireball. The much more costly Tannerite doesn't even come close to that display!

 

[SleazyRider]

Dollar Store to the rescue!

I was lucky enough to have a dollar left over from my paycheck last week, and squandered it on a bag of 30 plastic toy soldiers from our local Dollar Store. Armed with grenades, bazookas, rifles, and handguns, I arranged my little plastic army on a 2X4, posed to strike. I took up the position of a sniper from about 25 yards and went to town, picking the lil' buggers off with my .22.

Childish? Yes. But fun. And at age 60 I'm allowed to have fun.

 

[Armored farmer]

How about these??
I call it defensive shooting. I think they will take over if we dont defend ourselves.
Zucchini!

 

[MtnCreek]

Around Christmas I'll shoot some mistletoe out of an oak in the yard. It's more about getting it down than shooting. .22 HP's work best in my opinion.