Stake a sheet of butcher paper on the other side of a hay bale or two, and fire away. No reason NOT to know how adequate your backstop will be.
When my club set up temporary ranges for demonstrations in various towns, we tried to get old Railroad ties to use as a backstop. However, there are always gaps between the logs, and some of the old ties can be " spongy" if sitting on the ground for any length of time. That created TWO security/safety issues for us to solve:
1. Light loads( from pistols and revolvers mostly,) would BOUNCE back off the tough, creosote filled, but soft ties;
2. occasionally a ball would get through a "gap" in the logs.
We solved the first problem by using a 1/4" thick sheet of plywood, 4' x 8', to place in front of the RR ties, to act as a back splash board. We mounted targets on the plywood panel. We also BANNED the shooting of pistols at these demonstrations( but not at the club range.)
We solved the second by using a double stack of ties when enough were available, and by using bales of hay behind the ties when they weren't. We often put two rows of bales behind the ties.
Finally, we mounted our targets just up off the ground, so that we were shooting Down- not horizontal, or up on the backstops. This made the ground under the RR ties receive a lot of the PRBs we fired in demonstration.
I am sure that a large enough caliber RB can be pushed with enough powder to make it through a couple of bales of hay, some of the time. I don't want to be the "volunteer" to shoot that gun, however, as My shoulders aren't what they used to be!
:shocked2: :rotf: :hmm: We did NOT allow heavy loads to be used at our demonstrations for any shooting. The range was short, because our audience had to stand behind the shooters, and they needed to see our targets clearly to see what we were shooting.
Even 25 yds. is a long distance to spectators. We used a lot of Breakable targets at the demonstrations, usually clay pigeons. They were easy to see, and easy to see break from the spectators Point of View. They were easy targets to hit, so we would first shoot the centers out of the clays, then shoot any portion of the outer "ring" of the clay, letting the audience pick an " Hour" on a clock for us to hit. It gave us more of a challenge, and kept us from being bored.
We tried other small targets, BTW, but while we were having fun shooting beer bottle caps, or one inch diameter wafers of wood cut from an old pole, the spectators could not see what we were shooting at, or if we hit any of them! :shocked2:
We did hang balloons, and even Empty egg shells to shoot, because they offered such a visible target to the audiences. We also snuffed candles at night shoots, split the ball on the edge of an axe to break two clays at once, and even split playing cards on edge for the audiences. ( See my article on Off-hand and Trick Shooting, under " articles" on the index page to this forum for more details.) We had to place the stake for the card splitting no more than 20 feet from the shooters, so that the audience could even see the playing card on the stake! The Candles were back at 50 feet, and the Axe was put where it was safest to shoot, regardless of yardage. Sometimes that had to be as close as 10 feet, but usually we placed it at 25-30 feet- again, because spectators complained that they could not see the axe in the stump at further distances, even with two blaze orange clay pigeons resting against, one on each side of, the axe.
We had many club members who did not know how to sight the axe, or the edge of the card, or the candles, to hit them, and were easily discouraged, even when the targets were at close range. We altered the distance at the club for these "novelty shoots", so that the new shooters could learn the "tricks" up close, before we moved everyone back to 25 yards to make it truly competitive.
There is No POINT putting on a "show" if your audience can't see what you are shooting, NO??? :hmm: And, if you can't hit a target, the audience is not interested in waiting for you to learn, thanks to TV. :redface: :bow:
Some members of the audience wanted to keep the outer ring as a souvenir- okay by us. For some reason, young girls wanted to wear them as wrist bands. We cautioned them about the toxic pitch contained in the clay, and instructed them to wash their hands and wrist vigorously with soap and water when they took the ring off. :v
