Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Good source for steel targets

Would like to get a 12-18" gong to play with at 500 yards+

Mostly 308 sized short action rouds maybe a few .264 Win Mag or 300 WSM rounds. Whats a good place to start looking for these? Is there a better steel I should try to get it from?

Thanks

Go smaller.

JCSteel has good pricing.

If you have a local welding shop in your area, as I do, ask them for some AR400 or 500 plate. Got mine for next to nothing, as the steel was paid for for another application. 1/4 to 3/8 has stopped everything I`ve hit it with from 100 yrds to 800.

JCsteel

Mine have many thousands of rounds on them with very little wear.

I've shot dozer pads for years. You'll never hurt them and they are about free from equipment shops,

Good suggestions thank you!!!

If I should go smaller what would you reccomend? This would be with hunting rifles, just trying to "see what we can do" kinda thing. I hit beer cans at 300 using holdover dots, should I go 8" seems like thats a pretty common size on JC Steels website?

~1.5MOA at 500 and MOA at 800 yards seems like a pretty big challenge for us normal joe's with our kimbers (cousin has a Longmaster, the rest of us hunt with Montanas and Adirondacks)

For hunting rifles out to 500 yards, I have two size targets. A 12 inch round target for verifying zero and an 8 inch target for most of my shooting. I figure the distance I can no longer hit the 8 inch every time is the limit for that gun hunting. I find the 8 inch is plenty big enough at 500 yards for my hunting rifles.

Only one way to find out man. Too many variables. Just one of those things you have to figure out on your own. It will be a lot of fun figuring it out though.

If you can get to your targets easy to paint them, bigger steel isn't a bad thing as you can paint a 5" center or whatever. My steels are on a hill and we shoot over three small canyons. Painting them is not really on the agenda most of the time. I have a 6" @ 400, 10" @ 800, 7"+8"+12" @ 950, 14" @ 1,140 and 17"x24" @ 1,350.

I only have a few ar plates and they make a much better sound than the mild steel. More of a clang than a dull thump. The mild steel has held up pretty good to the small caliber stuff I shoot so don't be afraid to go that route to get you started.

Or, if needs be, I can fabricate it.

JC steel has group buys a couple times a year. My preference is larger plates because have had smaller flip over and expose my mounting brackets and t post. Brackets and t post get sharp blow threws.

This 1/3rd IPSC target (I think) from JC Steel has taken many thousands of hits from lotsa high powered rifles over the years... and is still in the same shape as when I bought it. I have several various JC targets from the 8" to the coyote shown here... most have the t-post brackets mounted on them.

Jake is a good dude, and it's nice to get a product that holds up well, for a reasonable price, from an outfit that gives-back.

1/3rd IPSC and "coyote"...


8" Round with T-post bracket.... this one gets shot a lot from 250-400... and separates the men from the boys rather quickly at 500 yards.

I bought targets from GA Steel in Houston, also available off Ebay.

http://stores.ebay.com/steel-products?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

Shooting targets 7

I would not go smaller, to hard to spot misses if your shooting alone. Wind will be the big problem, and you want to learn from the misses, so catch the bullet if you can. Paint a smaller dot if you want a smaller target.

Or, ....face your target with lead, and catch your bullets for remelting.

I use two sizes to help with this problem. The larger size just to verify zero. The smaller target for the majority of my shooting. I find if I spend too much time on the large target my focus goes down, group size goes up, and I'm just wasting powder.

Totally agree. I started out using steel about the size of the target I was trying to hit in the field, but quickly realized that the wind can play hell on hitting that 1 MOA target, and it was often hard to spot the miss among vegetation, snow, and grass. I started using larger targets and painting my 1 MOA aiming point, so that way even when I missed my "target", I still had exact feedback on the POI and necessary correction.

Amazon actually has some AR500 plates that have been working really well. They also have leg brackets that you can put a 2x4 through to hang the plate off of. Put 2 metal tube legs on each bracket and voila, you're off. Pretty handy system and inexpensive.

16" is a really nice size for shooting longer ranges for all the reasons stated above.