How to make a homemade Archery target

A home made archery target can be made using anything from Hay to cardboard and foam. Archery can be expensive, archery equipment meaning anything from arrow shafts or wooden arrows to the bow can be expensive. Archery Targets can easily be made at home costing little or nothing! Great archery targets for everything from Broad heads used for Archery hunting to field points.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Hay or Cardboard or Foam
• Rope
• canvas or blanket (opt)

1. 
   A hay bale target

   Whether you like Traditional Archery or Modern archery using compound bows everyone knows how expensive it can be. A commercial archery target can cost 50$ but I'll show you how to make a target for less than 20$ or even for free. First decide what kind of Target you want. If you are using primarily field tips than a target made with hay bales is best, and a target made with foam and cardboard is best for broad heads. IF you only have access to one then that will work. A hay target is the simplest to make.
   
   Several target ideas are provided.
   Buy 2-4 hay bales. They usually cost between 2$ and 5$ a piece, Make sure if you can to buy decoration grade hay bales which will be less expensive than feed quality hay. It should be baled very tightly and be a uniform size. Its a pretty simple target, just stack the hay bales length wise with one stack on another. 2 on the bottom and 2 on top. If you were to stack 4 on top of one another it will be very unstable and could fall bending or breaking any arrows in the target. If you stack two on two its a large target while being very stable. If you are using field points you could also put canvas or a sheet over the bales pulled tight and paint a target on it or you could paint directly on the hay with spray paint. If you are using broad heads I wouldn't suggest using a covering because it will catch on the sheet when pulling out the arrows continuously

2. 
   Stacked cardboard

   If you don't want or cant buy hay bales to use as a archery target then you could use Foam or cardboard. Cardboard can be used by getting a large pile of it. Its personal preference as to the size of the target. If you go to a place like Big Y or another store then you could easily get a large number of boxes. Simply stack the boxes up length wise so you can see the corrugated area of the boxes. Then you could either weight down the boxes by putting a weight on top or build a frame..even just use a bigger box to take the whole stack together. You can use either field tips or broad heads on this target. The arrows will slip in between the boxes and friction will stop them very quickly from penetrating thee target

3. 
   Foam blocks

   Foam is another option that is similar to boxes. You can either collect foam blocks from different stores that use them for shipping such as Grand Lumber or use sheets of foam that are used for packing many different things. IF you are using form blocks get at least 6 depending on the size and then use either rope or straps like you would use when securing things to a truck to lash the blocks together. Then weight down the blocks from the top. If you are using foam sheets you could put them all lined up inside of a box and shoot the box itself.

4. 
   A burlap bag ideal for a target

   The final idea for a target is get either for example feed bags made of heavy paper or burlap. Fill the bags with either plastic bags like you get at literally any store..you probably have a pile in a closet or you can use any other plastic or even old clothes that your going to throw away. If you don't want to do that you could simply fill the bad with sand which will work well also. Id recommend using only field tips for this target. Broad heads will be a nightmare to pull out of a plastic target and will be dulled by sand.

Tips & Warnings

• The tighter the hay bales, the more densely packed the plastic etc will produce a better target
• When using a burlap bag filled with plastic avoid using broad heads, its hard to pull it put.
• Always keep targets in a safe area, don't place in front of fences or other areas where you may not see people
• An arrow can ricochet, so be careful where you put the target

[whitetailwi]

on 11/16/2009 Good ideas! Thanks! 5*