Update on Brobee's 2019 rimfire goal - the Hinterland Rimfire Challenge

What shooting positions should be part of the hinterland rimfire challenge?

  • All 5 positions for a well-rounded shooter

    Votes: 41 55.4%
  • I am too old and stiff to lay on the ground - no prone for me

    Votes: 9 12.2%
  • I only ever shoot prone - ditch the rest

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • How come there is no "off-the-hood option?"

    Votes: 6 8.1%
  • I would never shoot an animal standing unsupported

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Weight it more towards supported positions

    Votes: 14 18.9%
  • Weight it more towards unsupported positions

    Votes: 4 5.4%

  • Total voters
    74

Brobee

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Hi there!

Back in March there was a thread about our 2019 rimfire goals - some may recall that as a part of my greater goal to teach my soon-to-be-big-game-hunting-youngest-daughter about shot placement, we were working on inventing a new shooting game inspired somewhat as a cross between sporting clays and metallic silhouette shooting.

We're well down that road and have made up a bunch of hinterland rimfire challenge silhouettes. We've been out a bunch of times as a family focus group and have a couple of different varieties of games we've been playing, which almost all revolve around a series of 5 to 10 stations we've set up in our woods, each with two targets set at varying distance and of varying difficulty. For the most part we've been working through the following shooting positions:

  • Standing unsupported
  • Kneeling unsupported (but allowed to brace elbow on knee)
  • Sitting unsupported (but allowed to brace elbow on leg)
  • Sitting supported (off a log, stump, or shooting sticks)
  • Prone

You shoot each target 5 times from a prescribed position, scoring either an X (hit) or an O (miss), and if you get an x where the paddle stands up and on your following shot you successfully knock the paddle back down from the same prescribed shooting position, you get an über x (x with a dot on top) to denote your awesome superiority. Highest number of x's wins, ties broken by the shooter with the highest number of über x's.

So here's my ask - If the game were to have the greatest appeal to the greatest number of folks, what do you all think about the various shooting positions? Poll attached, and to give you a taste here's some pictures of our family focus group setting, starting with my wife opening the gate to our back woodland pasture where we've set up the hinterland rimfire challenge:


isabel_gates_heaven.jpg


Here's me running my CZ 457 Varmint on a 50 yard moose from the sitting position...as an aside and mini-range-review, this is my favourite .22. My wife and girls are all running Tikka T1X's which are total tack drivers, but I prefer the feel of a wooden stock and am prepared to sacrifice 5 round of mag capacity to get it. The gun make a ragged hole at 50 yards with CCI standard and CCI mini-mag, and the action has become super-smooth after the several thousand rounds I have through it now. Anyway, I digress, so here's me imagining I'm moose hunting:

jason_shooting_a.jpg



Here's some of the targets after getting a paint touchup at the end-of-the-day:

re-painting.jpg



And here's some pics of the targets in action. I think we've got the design down-pat and have figured out the optimum paddle configuration for size, weight, thickness, angle-of-tilt, and the inner and outer range limits on how far they can be away. Here's our smallest target, our wiley coyote with a 2 inch target hole:

coyote_a.jpg


coyote_b.jpg


coyote_c.jpg



Cougar:

cougar_a.jpg


cougar_b.jpg


cougar_c.jpg



Moose:

moose_a.jpg


moose_b.jpg


moose_c.jpg



Bull Elk:

elk_bull_a.jpg


elk_bull_b.jpg


elk_bull_c.jpg



Caribou:

caribou_b.jpg


caribou_c.jpg



Grizzly:

grizzly_a.jpg


grizzly_b.jpg


grizzly_c.jpg



Mule Deer:

mule_deer_a.jpg


mule_deer_b.jpg


mule_deer_c.jpg



Whitetail Buck:

whitetail_buck_a.jpg


whitetail_buck_b.jpg


whitetail_buck_c.jpg



Whitetail Doe:

whitetail_doe_a.jpg


whitetail_doe_b.jpg


whitetail_doe_c.jpg



Thanks for helping out, hope you're all having a great summer!

Cheers,

Brobee
 
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Very cool. Where did you get the silhouettes?

It’s been one of my 2019 fun-gun projects...

I ordered up some 1/4” AR500 from a mill in BC and had it drop-shipped to one of my shooting buddy’s machine shop here in Calgary; he transferred it to a laser cutting outfit he uses all the time. I sketched up some silhouettes, designed a base + paddle system in Adobe Illustrator and exported .dxf files for the laser guys which they used to cut everything. One of my neighbours is a pretty skilled welder who then did the fabrication in a classic Brobee-style gun+elk steak trade, and here I am now pinging away in the woods with my kids.
 
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The game looks very fun, and the targets are awesome.
What a great way for you to spend quality time with your family.
Congratulations on putting it all together.
 
Those are great silhouettes, very well done there, and great way to introduce rimfire in a fun way.

It looks like the paddle in the center swings up after shooting though?
 
Those are great silhouettes, very well done there, and great way to introduce rimfire in a fun way.

It looks like the paddle in the center swings up after shooting though?

Yes, I put a fair amount of effort into designing the paddle so that, when struck well, it swings up and comes to rest in the up position. In the game we're playing if our hit results in a standup and you then knock it down with your next shot, you get to mark the über x on your scorecard which we use for breaking ties.

Cheers,

Brobee
 
What more could a man want? Lovely wife,children ,dog and a piece of heaven to play on! Thanks for sharing and wondering if youd share ur brilliant design so some of us could attempt to duplicate. The targets are phenominal and kudos on the photography! This is why I love this site, thanks for sharing and keep burning powder, Cheers Chris
 
What more could a man want? Lovely wife,children ,dog and a piece of heaven to play on! Thanks for sharing and wondering if youd share ur brilliant design so some of us could attempt to duplicate. The targets are phenominal and kudos on the photography! This is why I love this site, thanks for sharing and keep burning powder, Cheers Chris

Will happily share some design details, am away on a bit of a holiday right now but will set to it when I'm back in a week or two.

Cheers,

Brobee
 
Ok, for anyone who has ambition to have a go at their own rimfire target creations, some thoughts to consider as follows:

rimfire_design_illustrator.jpg


The targets are laser cut from 1/4 thick AR500, based on drawing's I've created myself and converted to .dxf files in Adobe Illustrator. I selected AR500 because I want them to last forever, and was too chicken to try mild steel as there may be the odd jack@ss who has a go with their .17HMR before I notice and send them packing.

The conceptual standing design is simple - inspired by the wooden dinosaur skeleton kits I got every once in a while as a kid at Christmas, it relies on two slots cut into the bottom of the target that slide perpendicular into angled slots in the two base pieces. This allows the targets to be easily disassembled for flat storage (and shipping if I ever get commercially ambitious), and quick setup when you pile them all into the back of your ATV or pickup.

If your goal is to balance the paddle so it stays standing after each shot, there are many considerations:

  • mass and velocity of the .22lr round you're designing for (I went 40gr 1150fps)
  • range you intend the targets to be shot at
  • mass of the paddle
  • diameter of the paddle
  • placement of the pass-through-hole relative to the paddle (where it is struck...I went with the centre of the circle)
  • the angle of the target
  • over-travel of the paddle beyond the plane of the target

The angle of the slot in the legs is important, as it dictates how far forward the target leans which has a big impact on how reliably the paddle will stay standing. More on this later, but you can see in the above illustration that I feel my initial prototype design was not steep enough, and in my V2 design (which I have also shaved a bit for weight by dishing the underbelly) I have significantly increased this angle.

When you think about the perspective/aspect of your target subject and then sketch up the silhouette of your design, consider that the ear of the mule buck pictured above will interfere with the paddle leaning forward, and consequently it is a much more difficult design to balance if you want the paddle to stay up. If there is excess energy in the system when the paddle is struck, after the paddle travels through its arc it will "bounce" back down. The paddle in the mulie buck is not capable of breaking the vertical plane of the target because of the interference of the silhouette's ear, whereas the accompanying doe is a better design because there is less to prevent the paddle from leaning forwards beyond the plane of the target.

I have experimented with paddle diameters ranging between 2.9 inches (coyote target) and 4.5 inches (moose/bear targets), and I've made them in varying thicknesses, including 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2". What I have learned from a lot of testing is that if you want the paddle to stand and you are shooting 40 grain ammo at 1150fps at distances between 25 and 90 yards, you want the paddle to weigh approximately 1 lb. If you are shooting beyond 90 yards, you want the paddle to less than 1 lb. I have not experimented past 150 yards, so can't comment on the stand-up characteristics beyond that. So for your consideration see the following table:

rimfire_design_paddles_b.jpg



Because my hinterland family league is designed to be shot at ranges between 50 and 90 yards, my moose target has a 1/4 thick 4.5" dia paddle, my deer targets have 3.25" or 3.5" dia paddles made from 3/8" thick steel, and my coyotes/cougars have little 2.9" dia paddles made from 1/2" thick plate.

A piece of 1" tubing is welded along the flat surface of the paddle, and the hinge anchors on the back of the target are simply two 3/4" hex nuts welded to the back. I am using a 1/2" hex bolt for a hinge pin. Locating the hex nuts was a pain, but my welder buddy and I worked out a jig that now makes this simple.

rimfire_design_back_a.jpg



Here is a profile pic to illustrate the forward-leaning angle of my prototype design:

rimfire_design_side_a.jpg



The assessment of my family is that the most fun/satisfaction is had when the paddle stands up, and our experience is that this is easiest-achieved most reliably when the target leans slightly more forward. Here is our poorboy solution which is facilitated by the dog-notch-leg design of the stand's feet:

rimfire_design_side_b.jpg



With respect to what shapes you draw, my advice would be to draw a lot before you land on what you want to have cut. I rely a lot on reference photographs, looking for defining elements of shape that speak to me about how I see an animal. As you are almost certainly looking at your targets through a rifle-scope, anything with foreshortening should be avoided like the plague. Also, consider how much information you need about the shape of an animal for it to be instantly recognizable...here's a good example:

rimfire_design_cougar.jpg



I was originally pretty jazzed about the crouching cat and had it cut (also excited about the relative economy of it's smaller square footage), but in reality most of my feedback was that it is the least-recognizable shape, blobby in it's execution and therefore somehow less fun. So I drew up a bunch more different cats, and have landed on the left one which folks say is much more recognizable and get's them pumped behind their rifles for some here-kitty action.

Here's another example. After going through about a half a dozen different iterations of my bull moose to land on the one that spoke the most to me, I wanted a good cow or calf to keep him company. I sketched up about a dozen, and then eliminated half of them to wind up with the following:

rimfire_design_moose_variety.jpg


You can see there is a strong propensity for me to gravitate to a straight broadside profile, but if all the silhouettes wind up set from the same perspective there's something lost. Also, I did not want my girls thinking it was ok to shoot at running moose, so freight-train lady got eliminated. Quartering away is a tough aspect ratio to maintain cohesion in silhouette, so it got dumped (although I almost went this way), and while I liked long-legged-moose and reachy-munchy-rodeo moose, they were too straight-side-on profile so I eliminated them too. Miss ruffled-mane-just-standing-there wound up boring, so I selected Miss Twinkle-Toes as she is slightly quartering and somehow feels right for her big man moose. Writing all this down makes me feel insane.

I've been sketching up a storm, and have probably over a hundred silhouettes I've worked to wind up with the following current set:

rimfire_design_illustrator_variety.jpg


I find there are still good things and bad things about each design and continue to refine, but we are now tweeting more than we are making large revisions or major discoveries. I like the pairings and will most likely set them up as-paired in the half a dozen shooting lanes we've prepared at our acreage as we continue to work out our preferred course-of-fire and the rules of our game.

Thus far these have all been a labour of love and something to share with my girls, but we've had so much fun that my wife and I have talked briefly about doing a larger run to make them available to a wider audience. I've sold off a lot of my collection for $$ to get this far, and it's been big-time worth it in the fun department, but I am not sure either she or I is on-board with the magnitude of the expenditure in $$ and time we'd incur to make them in the quantities required to make them sufficiently cost effective that we would not be sitting on a garage full of steel for a long time. We're still looking at this.

So in the interim, these are my thoughts and I hope they share enough information that if someone is wanting to get creative and make their own they don't have as many iterations as we've had to get them right.

Cheers, and straight shooting!

Brobee
 
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Im just curious as to the price...though if I can scrounge the cash up, i might bite! Thanks for the thread!
 
Rimfire targets

bought a set. great fun and sure are sturdy. the first 500 shots simply wiped our paint off. there is no damage to the targets.

h ttp://woodlandtargets.ca
 
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Ordered a set and received them extremely quick. Alberta to Ontario. They were very well packaged. I cleaned some very light surface rust and wiped them down with alcohol, then got to painting. Need to get some more colours. I painted the whitetail buck with three colours to make it as realistic but easy to touch up once the shootin takes its toll. The coyote I painted flat black with some light brown overlaid to make it look sinister. They’re awesome and I’m gonna shoot them today. Can’t wait till the next set becomes available.
 
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