Need ideas for a shoot at my club

[JJB22]

I have been pushing for a black powder match at my club. Background: mostly a shotgun club (est. 1953) with a 25 yard pistol range that can hold 8-10 shooters at a time, a 50 and 100 yard rifle range that can hold 5-6 shooters at a time. The club has gone through some growing pains lately (well, shrinking pains) that some of the members are leaving the club and now days I might see one or two members shooting on a Saturday. The club has also got a real ricochet fear in that the 28 acres that we have has been surrounded by more and more homes in the last few years so no steel targets are allowed now. I guess there is an insurance scare to go along with the no steel thing too.

Anyway, I want to bring some of us old smoke pole shooters out of the woodwork and put together a match. One of our members ever mentioned an ironman type of shoot where one would shoot shotgun, rifle, pistol, and I added that I want to see a muzzle loader component to the ironman shoot.

Please give me some ideas of a shoot, Here in GA there are a few muzzle loading clubs but not in our area and I want to light a fire under our community's butt and club to get them excited about the old BP guns.

I thought a few bench shots and offhand shots with the rifle at the 50 & 100 yard range. A few challenging shots at the pistol range (with rifle) shooting small objects at 25 yards. I think we can get a few deer type targets (paper) to shoot at something besides bulls eye targets.

I love the walk-through concept but I am not sure we have the room/obstacles to have more than a few different shooting locations and the few members that I have seen shoot BP; well they have range boxes, rods, towels, and the kitchen sink that they set up just to take a shot. Well need to stick with stationary spot on each range I guess.
I think if we can get this going, my fellow BP shoots would come out and participate more and we can eventually get the youngins out and get the excited about our shooting sports

Ideas?

 

[paulvallandigham]

Leave the long range shots for another day. Your first priority should be NOT to discourage shooters from trying BP guns. Do the rifle shooting at 25 and 50 yds. No off-hand beyond that for now. Make the Bullseye targets BIG. You can use smaller targets for shoot-offs in the case of ties.

Most people like reactive targets. Soda crackers at 25 yds, or graham crackers at 50 yards are tough targets, but people like to see them explode when hit. I have done shoots with empty pop cans, where the can is put on a dot in a circle, and the winner is the shooter who sends it the furthest from that center point. Shooters get three tries for a $1.00. The trick is to shoot Under the bottom of the can, and let the dirt transfer the energy to send the can flying. Kite string and a stick put in the center hole can be used to measure the candidates. Different color markers can be used to identify particular shooters, marking the string for their long "Kick" ( as in " kick the can").

We have shot clay targets held with rubber bands around the outside edge, and then tied to fishing line to swing from a target stand. We run a single line of fishing line behind the targets, so that the targets stay facing the shooting line, and can't turn They look big, but are not easy to hit off-hand.

We have shot eggs- some empty shells, some raw eggs, with penalties for breaking a raw egg just to make the scoring interesting, and put some element of chance for the usual good shooters. Obviously, you don't tell the shooters which eggs are raw, and which are empty to level the playing field.

If you ask your shooters, you are likely to find that most are not interested in shooting standard Bullseye Targets. So, look for animal targets to use. There are all kinds of these targets to be found on the internet that you can download, and print out yourself.

 

[nkbj]

Axe shoots are fun with ballons or clays. Ricochets aren't a problem whether you hit the blade or not.

Action targets where teams compete are fun. Paper cups full of colored water work well.

Splitting playing cards is always fun. Probably still have my first halfway split card around here somewhere stuck in a book.

Plaster of paris turkey heads are cool if you can hold a turkey shoot. They make nice white poofs when hit.

 

[ohio ramrod]

novelity targets draw more attention than bullseyes. You want targets that "do something" when hit. some suggestions: Suckers, charchol brikets, ballons on a string long enough to move around in the wind, bags of flour, ballons partially filled with flour,golf balls (driving range for distance ), cut the string with any weight hanging from them, cut the card, popsicle sticks, Blow out the candle , popcans of colored water, etc.

 

[JJB22]

All great ideas for you folks. I like to shoot playing cards too so that is in, I like the flour and charcoal ideas as well. I think I have the makings of good match cooking up. Thanks
:thumbsup:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Its going to take a lot of " word of mouth" advertising to get shooters out to a MLer shoot at all. It took my club 5 years to turn out more than 20 shooters for one of my New Years Day Bull Shoots, and all the officers, and I were pleasantly surprised. We split up to talk to individual and groups of shooters to find out what brought them out FINALLY. The most common reason give was that I was offering " novelty" shoots every year, and they sounded like a lot of fun!

As a result of those conversations, some kind of novelty shoot was added to the monthly shoot program thereafter. I fully intend to pass on some of the ideas suggested here. Of all the ones mentioned I don't think we have tried putting flour in cans, yet. And we haven't had a supply of Paper cups to use with colored water to date.

Oh, I wanted to suggest an answer to the problem of lead splatter, and ricochettes when bang plates are not protected. A club near us solved the problem by doing two things:

1. They took our advice and put the hangers on the bang plates down on the sides of the plates, so that the plates tip forward, towards the shooter at about a 15-20 degree angle. This caused even high hits to bounce DOWN into the ground in front of the plate.

2. They built a shelter around and over the bang plate, with sides, and a roof to keep splatter, and ricochettes there near the plate. They began using old Railroad ties to build the sides and roof. Then, later they mounded up dirt in side berms behind the RR ties to give added support, and protection against errant bullets, and increased the height of the back stop behind the bangplate. They have Had NO evidence of bullets getting out of the " box".

Test this by putting newspaper around the ties and roof, and shoot a bunch of rounds at the plate. If the structure is sound, there should be no holes in the paper anywhere.

If someone has a video camera, film this test, and keep the film and the date of testing in your club records.

Some clubs will buy or "acquire" steel plates that are 4 feet by 8 feet, by 1/4" or 3/8", to put on the roof, and sides behind the R.R.ties. They are very effective, but do require occasional painting to keep them sound. A lot of the " boxes" clubs build will have an sloped, or angled roof, that is higher at the front than at the back. This allows the roof to deflect any bullet or ball, or fragment, robbing it of energy and slowing it down further. The sides of Railroad ties are also often angled so that they are wider apart closer to the shooter, than at the back, behind the bang plate. Obviously, to see the plate,you need to build the box tall enough that light can get into the bang plate to give you a good visible target.

Caution: All the stuff described in #2 does not provide complete safety from ricochettes unless the advice given in #1 is followed also. We have had .22 cal rimfire bullets bounce off steel bangplates and come all the way back to the firing line and hit shooters. Those plates were not hung so that they were tilted forward 15 or 20 degrees, however.

Hanging, angled, swinging bang plates are much less likely to ricochette bullets any long distance, compared to those made with based legs to support them.

I hope that helps your club solve its "neighbor problem". On a long term basis, the club should be planning to put up earthen berms along the property boundary between the range and the neighbors. And put trees there to provide some softening of the noise.

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

Novelty Shoots are a really nice addition to a Black Powder shooting program conducted in a league setting. Here's some ideas that I've seen and shot over the last few years:

1. A Wood Chopping competition involving teams of 2-5 people each trying to cut a 2"x4" completely in half with sustained fire. This is done by putting the wood in a target holding pipe in the ground at our Range, but some sort of "holder" could be built to accommodate the lumber. This is where some "outside of the box" thinking could be done involving making different ignition systems compete only with each other OR the Flinters could be shooting against the caplocks, or you could mix it up. Just don't put the best 3 shooters together on the same team.

2. A "Quigley Down-Under" Target consisting of 4 standard size clay birds glued to a cardboard backer and held in a row right behind one another. All you need is a piece of vertical lumber and a small piece of soft wood held horizontally that slots are cut into (similar to cutting playing cards in half). This shot is done with a rifle at 25 yards off-hand with the orage birds facing the shooter. Scoring can be set-up as a hit on SOME of the birds gets only HALF of the points that a hit ON ALL FOUR birds receives. And when you hit them with a hunting charge the birds explode and the cardboard is shredded too! They turn to dust and no bounce-back problems .

3. If you also plan on doing hand guns for this Novelty Shoot, may I suggest something like shooting at various sized targets so that folks at each ability level will be challenged and you'll receive compliments on the set-up. Our League Shoot has balloons and pie plates for the beginners with a lower point value and we go all the way to a lid off of a tin of percussion caps glued to a cardboard backer at 25 yards! Other hand gun targets include wooden animals of various sizes placed firmly onto the berm with pop sickle sticks to hold them up so the wind won't blow them down. Any hit on them at 20 or 25 yards counts as a hit for score.

4. Chalk eggs hit with a rifle at 25 yards like to explode! Ours are hung with a string stapled to a cardboard backer so they're not blowing in the wind too much! These receive a higher point value because the entire target is obscured by using the front sight of the rifle when aiming.

What ever you wind up doing, make sure that someone else that you can trust watches the line of shooters so that YOU can also play! And make sure that you have a scoring sheet outlining the point values for each target, so that each shooter can see his/her progress during the shoot. Also inviting family members to watch (or participate) could help build the League. The more FUN folks have the more it will catch on as a League.

Good luck with your endeavors!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Dave

 

[Billnpatti]

It seems that the reactive targets give the most fun to the beginner. At our club, we have used such things as charcoal briquetts hung by a string, soda crackers, eggs, and have cast plaster of paris in egg cartons to make a dozen targets at a time.

One game that is a lot of fun and a lot of action is to drill 10 holes in a sawhorse and place small lollypops in each hole. It works best if you use two different colors. Put 5 of one color on one end and five of the other color on the other end. The object is to pit two shooters against each other. They must first shoot all of the lollypops on their side. Then they can start shooting their opponents lollypops. They get a point for each of their opponents lollypops. It is a race to see who can load and fire accurately the fastest. It is a fast paced game and everyone enjoys watching the race. You can also use dyed raw eggs set on golf tees but you have to hot glue them to the tee ahead of time so that if someone hits the sawhorse, it doesn't knock down all of the eggs. We also have a game where we place crossed rubber bands on a rectangular frame similar to a picture frame. The rubber bands are placed to form an "X". This is set at about 10 yards from the firing line. If they cut one rubber band, they get one point. If they cut both rubber bands, they get 3 points or 5 points or whatever you want. In order to cut the bands at this close distance, you have to allow for the height of the front signt above the centerline of the bore and aim just above the rubberband.

Well, these are some ideas to get you going. If you need any more info or ideas, get back to me.

Bill

 

[JJB22]

Man, all great sugestions. I have no illusions that it will be a great turnout the frist time we have the match but I want to get it in the club and work on it from there. I think it would be wise to introduce some of the BP shots in the ironman contest that the club is working on. If we get the door to crack a little I plan to kick it in so to speak. I think I will have noting but reative targets to start and then go to a few bulls-eye targets if/when the match grows. I have a lot of work to do but I love BP shooting and hope to get more of the members and the public to come to the datkside. :grin:

 

[BrownBear]

Here's an easy one with virtually no cleanup:

Ice. It just explodes in a white cloud when hit.

Food color some water and freeze it in ice cube trays with a little loop of twine hanging out of each cube. They hang easy and there's no problem with a hit on your target stand knocking over other targets.

If you want larger targets for longer ranges, oil the inside of plastic cups and freeze them, then pop out the targets.

Stow your replacement targets in ice chests at the backstop. Good for summer or winter, but a nice "theme" for winter shoots.