Build a Moving Target for Your Shooting Range

I live in the country in East Texas, and like most of the country folks around here I enjoy shooting.  City people don’t get the fact that shooting is an enjoyable pass-time for us country cousins.  If you live in the city you probably play golf or tennis or something like that for recreation.  In the country we shoot. 

So since most people around here shoot, most have a designated place where they can do it safely.  Some people have a creek bank or hill that they shoot into, and some have actual shooting ranges.  I have shot on some really fancy ones but mine is just a small shooting range on my farm.  It’s a fifty yard range with target boards for about eight targets.  It’s functional, but nothing fancy.  I recently had to rebuild the target boards, so I decided that I wanted to add a new element to the range; a moving target.  Now you can get as fancy as you want on something like this, but the one I built is pretty simple, and I’m going to share my plans with you.  My moving target is hand operated, so it takes one person to move the target while another person shoots.  I don’t think I spent over twenty dollars to build it.

Here is an overview of how my moving target works.  Basically it’s just a target board that moves on pulleys along a steel cable that is suspended above my stationary target boards.  The moving target is attached to a continuous loop of string that makes it possible to move the target board from one side of the range to the other and back again.  You can move it fast or move it slow.  You can stop it suddenly, then back it up a ways, then move it forward again.  In other words, its motion can be as erratic and unpredictable as you want to make it.  It is way fun to shoot at.

So here’s the step-by-step of how build it:

First you need some uprights to hold the steel cable.  If I had planned this ahead of time I could have just left the end posts on my stationary target board tall enough to hang the moving target.  I didn’t plan ahead so I had to add some uprights to the existing posts.  I used some old steel tubing that already had brackets welded to the bottom, but you could use anything that is rigid and will stand up straight.  I took the two pieces of steel tubing and bent one side of the bottom brackets at a 90 degree angle so that I could use lag screws to attach the up-rights to the wooden post that already had in place.  I also drilled a hole through the tubing, about an inch down from the top, so that I could attach an eye-bolt to each one.  I then screwed the two up-rights to the tops of the existing posts on my stationary target board.  The up-rights are sixteen feet apart.

Next I attached a 3/16^th inch steel cable through one of the eye-bolts using some cable clamps.

Before attaching the other end of the cable, I slipped a couple of small pulleys onto the cable. 

I then pulled the cable as taunt as I could by hand, and attached it to the other eye-bolt with a cable clamp.  I left plenty of thread on the eye-bolts so that I could tighten the nuts down with a socket wrench and get the cable really taunt.

With the cable now in place, I went back to the pulleys and clipped a snap connector to each of them.

I cut my moving target board out of some old one-by-twelve inch shelving and put a couple of eye-screws in the top.

Now I can hang the target board onto the pulleys.

Now I attached an eye screw to each side of the target board so that I could tie my string to each side: and two eye-screws to the back of the target board to act as string guides for the moving string.

I attached an eye-screw to each up-right to act as string guides.

Finally, I set a 4”x 4” treated post into the ground up at the firing line so that it is about even with the right end of the stationary target board.  I put an eye-screw into this post to act as a string guide.  The post was about five feet tall and I put about two feet of that into the ground so that the post would be good and solid.

Now I had to attach the nylon string that makes the whole thing work.  This looks kind of complicated from the instructions, but it’s not really.  I’ve added a drawing at the end of the directions to give you a better idea of how the string is rigged.  I started out with the target board moved all of the way to the left end of the steel cable as you are facing the target board, so these directions are written using that scenario.

First, run the end of the string through the eye-screw on the left side of the target board then drop the roll of string on the ground so that it will un-spool as you pull the string through the various eye-screws.  You won’t actually tie the ends of the string to the target board until you have finished running it through all of the eye-screws.

Now run the string through the eye-screw of the left up-right.

Next start the string toward the other up-right, running the string through the two eye-screws on the back of the target board.

Now run the string through the eye-screw on the right up-right.

Pull the end of the string all the way up to the firing line and run it through the eye-screw on the 4” x 4” post.

Now pull the string back down to the right up-right and go back through the same eye-screw.

Finally, pull the string over to the moving target board and tie it securely to the eye-screw on the right side of the moving target board.

You can now pull the string tight on left side of the moving target board, cut the string off, and tie it securely to the eye-screw that you started this whole trip on.

Here’s that drawing I promised you.  This is how the string would look if you were up above, looking down at the target range.

You are now finished.  You have a long continuous loop of string with the moving target board tied into it.  You can go back up to the firing line and test it out by pulling first on one string and then on the other.  If you did it all correctly the target should move from side to side on the cable.

Build a Portable Goat Shed

Since I move my goat pen from location to location around the farm, I wanted to build a fairly light-weight shed that I could move along with the pen.  As with most of my projects I recycled a lot of the materials for this shed from stuff that I had lying around.  I did have to buy four treated 2 by 4’s eight feet long, but the rest of the materials are recycled.  I decided to make the shed four feet by four feet square and about four feet tall.  This is how I built the shed.

First I took my newly purchased 2 X 4’s along with a couple of recycled ones and ripped them in half so that the finished lumber was 1 ½” by 1 ¾” by eight feet long.

Then I cut and nailed together the two sides of the shed. 

The front of the shed is 4’ 6” tall and the back is 3’6” tall.  The base is 48” and the angled piece for the roof is 50” long.  The cross brace is 45”.  Note that the uprights are set in 1 ½” so that after the sides are joined together the shed will be 48” square.

Next I cut several pieces of lumber to join the two sides together.  The front and back pieces on the floor are 45” long.  The front to back brace on the floor is 45” long.  All three cross pieces on the roof are 45” long.  The cross brace on the back of the shed is 6’ long.  This will allow a foot to stick out on each side of the back.  These will be handles that make it possible to loft and carry the finished shed.

For the floor I used some old ¾” treated plywood that I had lying around.  The corners of the plywood have to be notched to fit around the uprights at the corners of the shed.

I wanted to make the shed so that I could keep the goats inside of it while transporting them, so I cut a piece out of an old stock panel to make a fence across the front of the shed.  This fence is four feet wide and three feet tall. 

I used two bent nails and two straight nails to make a simple closure system that the stock panel can be slipped into.

Recycled roofing metal was used to cover the three sides and the top of the shed.

The last thing I did was make a couple of brackets out of some old flat iron stock that I had in the shop.  I mounted the brackets on the front uprights of the shed so that I can slip a 2 X 4 into them and make a carrying handle on the front. 

 

The finished shed is light enough for two people to lift and carry, but because of the distance between the front and back handles it is much easier for four people to carry.  When we don’t have any help around, my wife and I just lift it up onto the kid’s old Radio Flyer wagon a roll it to where we want.

Use Goats to Clear Your Land

A couple of summers ago we had a rash of wild-fires in East Texas and it inspired me to start clearing a wider area around my farm house.  The woods here are thick.  Not only are there trees, large and small; but there are honeysuckle vines, grape vines, and green briar vines growing over everything.  It’s a formidable clearing job.  I recently enlisted the help of two pygmy nanny goats that I bought from a friend of mine.  Joy and Abbey are small little things, maybe 18 inches at the shoulder and they don’t weigh over 40 pounds each, but boy can they eat.  They are the best brush clearers that you’ve ever seen.

Of course I needed to control the area that they clear so I built them a movable pen out of T-posts and cattle panels.  The panels are 16 feet long, so I put in T-posts 8 feet apart and wired the panels to them using tie wire like you would use to tie re-bar together.  I didn’t drive the T-posts very deep because I will have to pull them up on a regular basis.  I made the pen about 16 by 32 feet.  I’ve heard that goats are hard to fence in, but I’ve had no problems with them trying to get out.  Of course they are nannies, so they are not as aggressive as a billy-goat would be.

I had an old gate from a chain link fence laying around so I wired it up between two T-posts to give me access to the pen.

The goats went right to work on the brush.  The pictures below illustrate the method that I and my goats now use to clear land.

Because the goats are so small they can only munch on the greenery to a height of about 3 feet, so I give them a couple of days to get that part of the job done.

This is what I started off with:

And this is after 2 days of work by my goats:

Next I go in with a pair of loppers and cut down all of the saplings up to about an inch in diameter.  For larger trees I trim off all of the branches that I can reach with the long handle loppers, then I sit back for a day or two while the goats clean up all the branches and the vines growing on them.

Now I pull down any vines that are growing up into the larger trees.  This usually results in a big pile of honeysuckle and green briar which the goats seem to love. This pile of vines keeps the goats fed for a couple of more days.

After about a week the goats have done their part and eaten all of the greenery.

When there’s nothing left in the pen but bare branches and vines I go in with my machete and it’s a couple of hours work to cut up the bare vines and throw them and the branches out into the woods.

It’s now time to move the goats to the next section so that I can go in and rake the ground, throw out any rocks, and use my chainsaw to cut down any stumps or larger trees.

The ground is now clear enough to run my lawnmower over next spring.

In addition to the brush I give each goat 16 ounces of 12% all-stock feed each day and plenty of fresh water.  The feed amounts to about $10.00 a month.  Pretty cheap wages for these hard working hands.

In my next post I’ll show you how I made a portable shed for my goats to live in.