Cowboy Shooting Accessories

Hi Pards,

I lost the forest behind my home that served as a secondary backstop. So, I designed and welded new steel targets and stands for my practice. The steel is very close to the ground and limits the exposure of the rebar support. The steel is free to swing and absorb bullet energy and reduce bounce back and spatter. Most of the bullet fragments are directed straight down to the ground and the usual largest fragment is a dime size wafer. Ricochet from edge hits will always be a problem in any target setup.

The steel is 1/2 or 3/8 inch plate (not armor) and doesn't show any divots or bending with my low velocity non jacketed cowboy loads that use 200 and 160 grain cast lead bullets. The hardness of the black powder 200 grain bullets is BHN 8 and the smokeless powder commercial 160 grain bullets is BHN 14. The maximum velocity from the rifle is 800 fps. The target size ranges from 8 inches to 11 inches square. Adequate for some speed, but not so large to allow reckless shooting or so small that the speed is sacrificed.

There is a several square inch tab welded to the rebar that is driven underground and prevents the target from twisting.

These revolver and rifle targets used with the shotgun clay tosser targets exhibited in this blog give me some interesting practice scenarios.

Just my experiences and opinions . . .