I am considering organizing a traditional archery fun league for next Spring or Summer. To make it interesting for new shooters, I thought we would use novelty targets and not bother to keep score. I've come up with balloons, stuffed animals, ping pong balls, and plastic jugs. The steel deer is a little tough on arrows. What other creative targets might we use?

We have a steel deer at our club that we call the bionic Deer shoot. It starts out with a large steel rings and progressively the rings get smaller and smaller till it's the last man standing. you pay to shoot it and you can shoot up to two arrows before your out. You can buy back in one time at an additional cost to continue shooting. The winner and the club split the money.

My favorite target's are long range or moving.

Knock-A-Block - shoot a blunt or judo point at a stack of Quaker Oats containers or small cardboard boxes.

You don't want a steel deer to attract archers, it's okay for experienced folks, but will quickly deter new ones to the sport.

You don't need much to make folks enjoy shooting a bow. Old plastic milk cartons, soda bottles(plastic), old soccer balls, some home made aerial targets, just use your imagination and make it safe and relatively easy so they can enjoy it and want to do it again.

Why not use a regular 3 D target and remove the vitals an add a balloon ?

You could use the steel deer as a stencil to make cardboard or foam cutouts to place in front of bags or other backstops.

An old bicycle wheel with a small diameter piece of all-thread mounted to it, with the bottom end bent round to where you snap in a clay pigeon. Attach wheel to an “axil” mounted to a wooded post to be able to spin.

Start the clay pigeon at the top/ 12 o’clock and let drop. Archer tries to hit the clay pigeon while it’s still swinging. Make sure you have a good backstop behind for safety and fast/easy arrow retrieval.

How bout some live chickens. Everyone likes chicken!!

Shop vac Small one will work,2 two foot pcs of 1 1/2 pvc pipe one 90 small stake to hold pvc up right. You make L with pvs hook hose of vac. Taped to bottom pvc pipe. vac hose on blower side of vac. Turn on and put a ping pong ball above up rite of pvc pipe.

I get a kick out of shooting fallen apples from the orchard. Just toss some around the yard and pasture and I can really have a ball. All kinds of fruits and vegetables--potatos, oranges, cabbage heads, melons, squash and much more--would be a fun shoot for everyone. Plus, all are degradable if you miss a few parts on the range clean-up and the animals and birds will thank you.

I would bet most small grocery stores would enjoy giving you their old fruits and veggies if you told them what you were using them for. And the kids love it, too. Good luck and great ideas.

Years ago at a shoot they had a spoon shoot. They took plastic spoons and stuck them handle down in a board with a groove cut into it. We shot at the spoons from 20yrds. It was fun.

Lighted candle, protect the candle shoot the flame out.

Do a search here. That question has been asked multiple times. There are a ton of different targets.

1. put a tiny amount of cornstarch into balloon, when hit you get pop and "smoke" which young kids love.

2. Spend a few days wandering garage sales, just thinking "what might be fun"- you will find a ton of things.

3. Goodwill/garage sales: If lucky you could get a used Halloween costume, stuff up a bit with old rags. Or some of the latex masks, my goodness boys would go nuts.

Modified candle shoot. Take a length of 1" pvc pipe and and drill a 1" hole in a chunk of 2x8x18" or a piece of plywood with a 2x4 mounter on top. Tap in a 2' piece of pipe. Cut a chunk of 1"id foam pipe insulation 18" long and slide down onto pvc pipe 6". You can set a tennis ball on top of noodle, or a ping pong ball. The foam will save the pipe and arrows. If the foam is hit the shot is void. The foam will wear out so have some spare. A good shot the ball will stay on the arrow and makes a good trophy for a newbe.

Candles got expensive plus the fire hazard, we them for years though.

Saw a lady shoot a boom box on tv one time. The audience CHEERED when the rap suddenly just died. I would pay good folding green to shoot at rap AND country music. Sorry to all you rappers and country music lovers. Its okay, you can shoot at my boom box tuned to Dan Fogelberg if you like.

Fill balloons with colored jello. Refrigerate(or not). Hang em. Shoot em. Put a one inch pvc pipe into a target, with the orange painted end facing the archer. Goal: tube that pipe! Dollar a shot money to the club.

Have a Pork Shoot. Costs 20 or 25 bucks and each person aims for what they'd like, i.e., Bacon, ribs, neck roast, hams, etc. Buy wholesale, shoot retail. Club money or a children's charity. Have the newspaper do a story on the shoot, have one of those giant gimmick checks to hand the charity for a photo op, and use it for a membership drive kick off.

Pressurized plastic bottles with some cornstarch or flour in ‘em. Just enough pressure to be fairly loud, but not enough to blow up the arrows.

And I am going to agree that one of the quickest ways to get people to lose interest in the sport is to set things up so that it costs them a lot of arrows. The bigger and more forgiving the backstop, the better.

Also, JMO, any time you can set it up for fast action - because having just One knockablock for a group of 4 shooters just doesn’t add up to a lively conversation…. Either somebody’s taking a lot of laps back and forth, or….

One of my favorites is to play "fetch" with a tennis ball and judo tipped arrow in a pasture. Just throw the tennis ball, once it lands and is done rolling, shoot at it. When you got get your arrow, pick up the ball and throw it again. Rinse and repeat for great practice at variable unknown yardages and cheap fun. A lot of fun with a couple buddies. After every round, whoever is closest to target gets to throw the ball next.

I have a bunch, here they are

The floating Ball - I used a leaf blower. People loved it

Or you could go crazy and make this. Shoot the clay pigeon, that will drop the blade and chop the persons head off!

The tube is is wild, the arrows turns!

The Bunny Buster is fun too, rolling disk

A simple one, the Tire shot

Another simple one, pool noodles

The marble drop is awesome also. Drop a marble into the tube, run over to the stake, nock and shoot an arrow before the marble hits the bucket.

Then you could go overboard and make this. Shoot the clay pigeon. It will break and that activates the blade which will drop and behead the person. It is incredible to watch.

This club used a tree, you can also use two 3D Targets, remove the core from one. Have them shoot through one to hit the other

Here is the shot through target I did

I made this using some of my 3D Apple targets

This I made with my Beer Bottle targets

Finally here is one I made. It is a version of the "Muzzy". If you hit the target, it will fall over and then pop back up. I did this by using a spring gate hinge from Home Depot.

3D Archery I shot a floating ball novelty shoot a couple years ago at a club near me. It was a lot of fun. I hit the ping pong ball twice.

Let's try that picture again.

drive a piece of rebar into the ground and put a "T" section of pipe on it. Poke the knot end of the balloon through some cheese cloth and tie it to the end of the "T", I added some candy into the balloon for weight, but I am not sure if its needed. The wind will spin the "T" and will blow the ghosts around, easy moving targets.

The bunny buster disks look really fun and good practice, gonna have to steal that idea!

Looks like Mike has been holding out on us! ;)

I guess I could have attached a picture to the fruit shoot reply above. I'm dying to try a head of lettuce or watermelon with a broached and I think a tomato would be explosive, but shooting orchard apples isn't bad, either.

Some great ideas, thanks. I appreciate the posts.

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