Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters best material for target backer

I can shoot out to 500 yds or so in my back yard and want to build some new targets for hunting practice. What have you found to be some good material to use for target backers? I would think treated plywood that is painted but have you found something better? Would like to be able to see bullet holes using 20-60x spotting scope. Would like to leave the backers up year round. Thank you.

Plastic campaign signs-Muddy

Choroplast

I agree on this. The name of the stuff is evading me right now but it is basically plastic cardboard. Chloroplast? Anyway, it would work good in theory as far as weather is concerned. The problem with backers is the holes. They get shot up and need replaced. You're gonna go down and put up paper, just take some cardboard with you. That or put up steel and take a paint can.

Our gun club has been using OSB board that slides into tracks for many years. Durable and easily replaced with the track/groove system.

Quarter inch OSB that I buy in 4x4 sheets works great for me. No need to paint it and it lasts for 5 years or more.

Big sheets of cardboard
Wrap black plastic trash bag around it and tape it to the back
Buy cans of Flat White spray paint and paint the trash bag


Wha Laa.... Homemade Shoot'n See!

Conveyor belting from a mine or quarry. About 30" wide and as long as you could lift, waterproof and self-sealing the holes to some degree

Obama or Clinton re election signs..........

Coroplast is light, tough, and probably weatherproof, but it isn't cheap, at least not in new 4'x8' sheets.

If you can find it as scrap in the size you want, you might get it free or cheap, but for target backers I'd think you'd want fairly large pieces.

On a related note, most shooters overbuild their target frames, especially ones intended to be portable. I see guys manhandling frames built of steel and 2x4s. For years I've made mine from furring strips with cardboard stapled on, and they've held up even in the wind. Easily repairable and replaceable too.

Paul

30 lb felt stapled to a frame..

I built these and like them a lot.

DF

We experimented with sheets of closed cell foam Walmart was selling cheap as sleeping bag pads. They can withstand an enormous number of shots with surprisingly little damage.
The downside was that you needed longer staples to hold targets.

Homasote also works and is easier to tack targets on.

thanks guys. lots of experience here.

dan

A bud's gunclub uses chicken wire across an open wooden frame. Works great for paper and cardboard targets. They just hang their targets on the chicken wire with clothes pins.

Yep it's great stuff get all my scraps locally from a friend in the sign business.He cuts it to fit my target board so I load his 308's in return..Have a three ft pile in the corner of the garage he gave me after the last election cycle...

Democrat election signs. After they lose of course.

Don't know what it's called but, at our range, we use the black sheets that look like stiffened air filter mesh and appears coated in some black asphalt gooey stuff.

Works really good.

Best material for target backer...




...able bodied welfare recipients.

I have gotten free "plastic cardboard" when it is discarded as out of date advertising at convenience stores. It is usually printed on one side, so works well. I used to belong to a club that used new pieces of it for backing on a rifle range; it would take thousands of hits on a 4x8 sheet before it needed replacing. I think we got it from a sign printing company.