First Field Test of the Iron Grouse

Brobee

Brobee

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Alberta
Over the past few weeks my daughter and I have been illustrating up a storm, excited about the coming summer and our bi-weekly rimfire sessions out in the woods. I've been focusing on grouse and elk, and she's been focusing on a paleo-hunt concept.

woodland_paleo.jpg


grouse_concept_III.jpg


Since shutting down our woodland target enterprise (her covid19 job) due to insane escalation in the price of raw materials, we've got agreements with a couple local fabrications shops that if there is a remnant of 1/4" AR400 or AR500, they give us a call. These calls are rare, but we got one a couple weeks ago, jumped on it, and had some of her dinos laser-cut as well as a grouse concept I've been wanting to try for a long time.

Made a quick trip to the woods to try them out - Dinos are HARD HARD HARD, with very small scoring zones (ranging from 1.75" to 2.25")...and we were so excited about how well the grouse targets worked we made a video-short of our first-field-test to share when we try to talk our friends into a rimfire day:


Was also trying a new (to me) rifle this year - a left handed Anschutz 1416 semi-sporter (heavy, but short barrel) that I've set up with a Nightforce NX8 1-8 - feels like a noticeable upgrade to my previous rifle, a CZ 457 Varmint. No slagging the CZ - it is an AWESOME gun that I still love to shoot, but side-by-side against the Anschutz and I am afraid to say the Anschutz is noticeably more-refined, tighter, and better-fitting. The worst part is I let my left-handed lovely bride try it....you can guess what happened next...

Rich days...hope you're all keeping well!

Brobee
 
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Back in 2020 my oldest daughter had her summer job canceled as a result of all the covid lockdowns. I thought "opportunity!" and we pivoted by taking a good hunk of her savings, matched with funds from Dad, to make the largest-production-run-possible based on funds we were prepared to "risk", and fabricated close to 100 of our .22lr woodland rimfire targets - a good mixture of deer, bear, coyotes,, etc etc. We built a shopify store and set to seeing if she could make a return. Unfortunately our budget was unable to absorb the $$ required to become a site sponsor, so we did not market on CGN and relied on more old-school marketing strategies and word-of-mouth.

By fall we had sold the initial production batch to make both a return of and return on her capital which also reflected value for the work she put in. Excited at the idea of a functional business, we bid our supply chain for a second, larger production run that included new designs. We were shocked to discover that the supply chain chaos had hit, and the cost of raw materials had more than doubled! Assessing our cost structure, we came to the opinion that the market would not bear the price increase if done in a way that still made it worth doing for us, and consequently shut down our webstore and chalked it up to a wild experience with limited, but still awesome success.

It was a fantastic experience for a me to have with my daughter, with another benefit being we have a whole lot of prototypes we kept and now have up at the farm for weekend shooting adventures. We have alot of these, and they've turned out to be a great environment for us to bond around as a family.

We still kick around new designs that we sometimes produce when we get lucky and find a piece of cheaper scrap material left over from some industrial user's project, and our dino kick is certainly of this vein. It's funny - my wife prefers shooting dinos as she is a bit sensitive to shooting "real animals" - she feels a little bad when we target practice on elk all weekend and then we see them come into our field for real in the evening, but if we're blasting dinos she'll feel ok because they're already all dead. Who am I to argue? I get to spend the day with my family and our .22lrs.

So as she comes up with new designs to expand our dino line I sell off some of our prototypes to help cushion the $$. The dinosaurs are large, and have shapes that are not optimized for efficient use of materials, so their cost structure is obscene. We bootstrap $$ for production of prototypes (including me selling some of my lesser-used guns who's purchase for me turned out to be impulsive, and I've dialled way back all my centerfires guns, keeping just a couple for big game hunting), and it's turned out to be a great trade as I've found a way prolong happy days with my family in the woods.

Apologies for the long-winded story, but it's the context around the answer to your question - I don't think we'll be manufacturing and selling our dino targets, or at least not until we're lucky enough to have some abatement of the supply chain chaos and inflationary pressure we're feeling of late. Our Iron Grouse could perhaps be interesting - they have a design is both small and nests well for efficient use of material, so maybe there are economics for a commercial run but they would be tight. Not being a site sponsor makes it difficult to explore the possibility here, so if we did go for it, CGN could only hear about it if we found a couple of retail site sponsors to carry them or folks started telling stories about how they use them.
 
Just send me a pm and Im good for another batch of whatever you make! Theyre awesome and everyone loves them. Bobcat, Bighorn/Dall sheep,Groundhog/Marmot and a few grouse with a struttin Tom turkey to boot. Oh yeaaah Im in.
 
Grantmac said:
Those are supercool! I assume the head won't fall from a body hit?
Click to expand...

We only ran them between 30 and 45 yards this past weekend, and unfortunately discovered that body hits do drop the head. I suspect we’d need to make the base not from 1/4”, but something much thicker like 1/2” AR400 to have enough mass to keep this from happening. Our “solution” was a DQ for a body hit which had everyone staring through their rifle scopes waiting for someone to make a mistake.

When the heads are in the down position, the only way to stand it up is to hit the head squarely with your reset shot; a body shot won’t do. So a limitation of the design yes, but still a pile of fun.

Cheers,

Brobee
 
Of all the purchases Ive made, the shipping cost was included in the price qouted and was very reasonable especially since Im in South Eastern Ontario.
 
Actual size game targets is amazing and a great idea. I am upset I missed your production run! Some grouse deer bear or elk to practice on would be phenomenal for the longer distance shot training !

And the grouse for teaching the little ones how to head shot properly.
If you ever make more please post them here !
 
You wont ever regret buying any target from Brobee. A true gentleman and family man thats very proficient with firearms and a great cook and ambassador to the outdoor life. Need more just like him.
 
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