Homemade Crossbow Targets

Moved from +++Questions for Bill Troubridge on The Backyard Sportsman+++

Hovey talked about making a target backstop for very little money but I can’t quite understand his instructions. My favourite way is to take 2 pieces of 2” x 6” lumber, each 3 feet long. Then drill a 5/8” inch hole, dead center through both at 3" from the ends. Then take two 36” standard lengths of half inch “ready-rod” or “all-thread” and with one washer and one nut on either side, fasten one end of these two to one of the boards, leaving the majority of the threaded rods on one side.

Then cut a whole bunch of corrugated cardboard into 8" to 10” widths by 30” long and stack these length-wise on top of the bolted board until you have a three foot pile stacked between the threaded rod that is sticking up. Then put the second drilled board on top of this and by pushing down and over the rod you will be able to place a washer and nut on each and then tighten them up evenly. The cardboard will squeeze down quite a bit and you will then have to take the top board off, or just loosen it, and add more strips until you end up with a tightly compressed mass of backstop material that will stop bolts and arrows until it gets worn and slack. Then you simply tighten it all up by turning the nuts down more, or open the thing up again and replenish the torn cardboard for very little investment.

Materials list:
Two pieces of 2”x 6” each 36” long.
Two pieces of ½” fully threaded rod 36” long.
Six nuts to fit threaded rod.
Six flat washers to fit over threaded rod.
A quantity of clean corrugated cardboard cut into strips.

Another type of cheap backstop can be easily made from a large enough potato sack etc., stuffed tight with plastic shopping bags (where they’re still available).

Both of these backstops are easily transported and moved to where practice is safe.

Move this post to where you see fit Ivo.

Pavise

Good info Pavise,

I've shot at these targets before and they are great. I did however hear complaints that it's hard to build up a well sized target due to cardboard being so thin. Personally I think, if you are shooting with some friends or shooting the 5(or more)-point target face, it's worth the extra time to build up a nice, safe, dense from top to bottom target...for obvious reasons , but there is a quicker and ultimately less safe alternative target build up for those who prefer shooting the traditional bullseye target with lower power target crossbows or vertical bows...The solution lies in the cardboard shipping bases used in refrigerator and other large appliance packaging. It's a piece of cardboard about 1" thick, though not as dense as the thinner stuff, it does help build up the target top and bottom much quicker, but the major portion of the target should still be made of the denser stuff.

There is also one other version of this "stacked" target that I know of and it uses strips of old carpet in place of cardboard. I hear it stands up to harsh whether much better that it's cardboard brother...I'm almost done with mine and it's looking very promising at 4x4 feet.

Ivo

I've made the same sort of target with old phone books. Worked well.