Middle Earth Ranger Forum

I've decided to focus on my archery skills this year.

I started an "Orc" target by making a 2x4 wooden 'skeleton' covered in old couch cushion foam, and dressed in Goodwill clothes and Halloween mask, also from Goodwill (we have 'one dollar per pound' bulk Goodwill stores- they dump stuff in bins the size of pool tables and you have to elbow your way in to check stuff out).

I plan on makeing a few of these Orcs to place in the woods on my property for target practice.

For a more practical skill honing, I'd also like to improve my archery with the idea of hunting squirrels and rabbits which are on the land. To this end, at the same 'by the pound' Goodwill store, I've been picking up realistic squirrel and rabbit stuffed animals. I had some in the back of my van from a few days ago and my five year old commandeered them into his stuffed animal collection!

I'm also setting up a target I can put in my garage, in order to squeeze a few minutes of archery practice in on a more regular basis. I'm going to try a target plan I saw on an archery site: Make two "T"-shaped 2x4 struts, flip them upside-down, then connect them a couple of feet off the ground with another 2x4. Wrap the area above the cross piece with that heavy duty gardening fabric used to prevent weed growth, and then wrap that with chicken wire. Fill the space between the 2x4s that is wrapped with cloth and chicken wire with old clothes. I've been told this works pretty well at stopping arrows.

Any other ideas for 3-D targets?

A guy at my archery club makes 3D targets by wrapping a post in a thick layer of high density foam underlay, the only problem with that is its hard to pull arrows out.

Cool!

I've been meaning to make an orc-target for years. Maybe this summer.

I made my archery backstop (which I ended up just using as a target) by cutting all the cross pieces off of a pallet save the ones on the ends, wrapping the whole pallet in some old carpet that I had sitting around, and then stuffing the void in the middle with shrink wrap that we take off the boxes were I work. It's about 8" thick, but it will stop bodkin arrows out of my 60lb bow all day long without them ever penetrating out the back. Best of all, everything was free. Large feed sacks stuffed with shrink wrap work well too, as do cardboard boxes if that's what you have. I have some heavy duty 12"x12" boxes that I have stuffed that I use for random distance shooting. I roll them across the ground like dice, and then shoot them where they settle.

Brian

BrianGrubbs wrote:I made my archery backstop (which I ended up just using as a target) by cutting all the cross pieces off of a pallet save the ones on the ends, wrapping the whole pallet in some old carpet that I had sitting around, and then stuffing the void in the middle with shrink wrap that we take off the boxes were I work. It's about 8" thick, but it will stop bodkin arrows out of my 60lb bow all day long without them ever penetrating out the back. Best of all, everything was free. Large feed sacks stuffed with shrink wrap work well too, as do cardboard boxes if that's what you have. I have some heavy duty 12"x12" boxes that I have stuffed that I use for random distance shooting. I roll them across the ground like dice, and then shoot them where they settle.

Brian

Great ideas, and I like to recycle stuff as much as possible.

Orc targets are all fine, as long as you don't publicize it too much. Archery clubs and the online social network tend to get their knickers twisted in a knot when archers are shooting at humanoid targets.
There's a range near me that sponsors a dinosaur hunt, with life-size(?) foam targets and such. So I suppose a dragon and other malicious creatures could be reproduced to prepare for "inevitable" encounters with these beasts.

Kortoso wrote:There's a range near me that sponsors a dinosaur hunt, with life-size(?) foam targets and such.

Hmmmm A life size T-Rex target? That would take a lot of making LOL

Iodo wrote:

Kortoso wrote:There's a range near me that sponsors a dinosaur hunt, with life-size(?) foam targets and such.

Hmmmm A life size T-Rex target? That would take a lot of making LOL

https://www.rinehart3d.com/3d-targets/exotic-targets/