That’s a hell of a hole, Harry. I mean, Caleb. God knows I’ve watched a number of these YouTube ballistic destruction videos, including some stuff that turned my stomach (e.g., .50-caliber annihilation of the latest iPhone). The deity also knows I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them all – from watermelon explosions to Tannerite-laden TV mayhem. But it’s videos like Caleb’s that I love best. People shooting stuff they hate. Anyway, one thing’s clear: unless you’re practicing your marksmanship, and maybe even if you are, shooting paper’s dull in comparison to just about anything else. So what’s the most fun target you’ve ever shot?

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

118 COMMENTS

  2. The little propane tanks you buy at stores. Shoot one of those and it’s fun to see a cloud of smoke. I am actually thinking about getting some flares and taping them to the side of the bottle.

  3. My truck’s tailgate. Because bullet hole stickers are for pansies.

    And yes, I took the tailgate off first. And no, its not a nice truck.

    • That’s funny, but in most areas body shops are required to report bullet holes in vehicles to the police. Say you were in a wreck and it got towed somewhere for example. Doesn’t sound like you’ll be taking it in for a cosmetic revival. I’m sure you could explain it to them, but who needs the hassle?

  5. I’m going with Tannerite. There are few things as satisfying to man and boy as the BOOM that follows the controlled trigger press.

  6. The community garden around the corner collects old Halloween/Thanskgiving pumpkins for their compost pile. I liberated some for a higher purpose, a date with tannerite. The kids (of all ages) had a great time with those at our Christmas reunion.

    My brother has two old tv sets in the back of his truck he plans to shoot.

    • I shot a old CRT monitor once. even on a tarp the amount of glass I still picked up boggled my mind. I would not do it again. pumpkins and watermelon and tannerite are just as fun and you dont have to pickup every little scrap.

    • My friends and I have a tradition. After Halloween, one of them goes to a pumpkin farm and picks up like 30 huge pumpkins for shooting. We don’t put tannerite in them, though I might go with the propane this year.

  7. A loaded, aged, diaper (preferably size 6) – right after they turn gelatinous. Even with a 22LR, there is a fantastic explosion and a tall geyser of juice after bullet entry.

    • Try a busted porta potty full of shit, that has been baking in the Vegas August heat to the point it is bubbling and then put 30 lbs of Tannerite..It create a fine mist of shit and the same could be smelled for more then 3 miles away for more then a week…It was hell on Earth….

      So your diaper bomb is like a firecracker being compared to a nuke. A weapon of ass destruction.

        • The cloud of flies that gorged on it was epic in number..I mean ever empty and Siaga 12 into a cloud and just see countless files drop and not make a dent in it the size or action of the swarm?

          It at one point block out the sun…The buzz was like standing under high voltage lines..

    • “A loaded, aged, diaper (preferably size 6) – right after they turn gelatinous. Even with a 22LR, there is a fantastic explosion and a tall geyser of juice after bullet entry.”

      Lol!! What the….?

      I don’t think I could waste a bullet on sh*t.

      • .22 pellet gun pellets into a day old cow pie makes neat crap craters. And splashes your buddy!

  10. Probably just boring. A family member has a couple hundred acres near Houston, which has a pond, probably once a stock pond. He buys tennis balls by the dozen, you toss a couple balls in the pond and shoot at them from varying distances (everybody has an AR). If you hit the right place, I swear that ball goes around 150 feet in the air, really impressive, and of course you use the high-viz balls. When it comes back down in the tank, see how fast you can send it back up. Lasts quite a while before the ball finally sinks.

    • OK, after thinking about it more, I have to post this, in a whole different category, appending “at work” to the question.

      Most fun target was a parachute, suspended above the desert in NM. Shot that bad boy with a matched set of .50 BMGs travelling 450 NMPH, roughly 515 mph on your car speedo, while flying all alone <50 feet in the air. Did that 10 or 12 times in a period of 3 months, in a program that was zero pressure, you weren't qualifying for anything, didn't need to prove anything, just pure fun. And they (you) PAID me to do that! And, if that's not bad enough, when you weren't flying (once a week), you were off, zero duties.

      Plan came through political warfare due to interservice rivalries, not my fault but boy, did I and my bride love it!

    • Shooting moving plastic bottles of different colors as drill at range sessions with women only league. The person who could make it go over the wood they were hung from. received a prize. Shooting walking backwards, shooting from behind cover using a mounted target at various distances. They start new shooters start with.22lr caliber and provide the ammo at cost for higher caliber you can since the husband, Art, loads his own. Shoot at Lone Star outdoor range outside of Lulling. League is “A girl and a Gun” and can go to Lone Star for schedule. We have had people from a few countries that only allow military to have hand guns come and join us.

  13. Oranges make nice targets. They are big enough to be hittable, and contain enough liquid to really explode when hit. Eggs are pretty cool too. a little more challenging, because they are smaller. And both are biodegradable which is nice when cleaning up the range. I’d say 99% of the time I’m shooting paper, or steel gongs, but sometimes it’s fun to see something vaporize.

  14. Paper targets that I have pasted on photos of notorious gun grabbers! Especially notables from my former state of Kalifonia.

  17. Hand-thrown clay targets with bags of tannerite taped to the undersides. After the first one nearly took a chunk out of my ear, I started shooting them a little further away. XD

    • Set up cans of warm diet soda, while teaching newbies to shoot a shotgun. They just about vaporize.

      • The guys at the range wanted it too. I think I have a product worth marketing. You can be my consumer test subject. Would you pay $10 plus shipping (should be easily sent USPS) if you got all the parts to put it together plus spare parts and extra target stickers?
        This target can be mounted to cardboard backing in indoor ranges or set outside to let the wind spin it by mounting it to a wood stand with a 1/8″ hole drilled through a stake.

  22. A steel plate with a 90mm recoilless rifle, a 55gal drum with an M-79 40mm grenade launcher, and a whole bunch of scenery with a MaDeuce .50cal Browning MG – all at Army boot camp. These had more to do with the weapon than the target, but still …

  23. Ugh! Best I can do in the ranges I can go to are peeps, lollipops and wafer candies. The only real cool thing is one of the grocery stores around here has these silver coins that they hand out that act like a coupon. They are plastic but they have a very tinny sound. Hung on a string and shot with a 22LR that make a VERY distinct ping! sound when hit.

    I have total envy when I hear what people can do in other states.

  24. Some friends, and I shot up an 84 Ford Mustang. We got some interesting looks when we took it to the scrapyard.

  25. Ozarka 1 gallon water bottles with 12 gauge 00 buck. So entertaining to see them disintegrate.

  26. Paper.

    In the form of a literary research guide that was 400+ pages thick and a really obnoxious English composition textbook I had to teach from in grad school.

    Shot them a couple times with a .22 to see how far the bullets would penetrate (not far), then propped them up against a stump and blasted holes through them with my then brand-new Marlin 336 until they were nothing more than twisted lumps amid a snowdrift of confetti.

    You could say it was a symbolic rejection of pedantry and sophistry: I like to think Aristotle would have approved.

      • Short answer: No blog for Ing; not enough time and motivation (mostly motivation).

        Long answer:
        I blogged for quite a while — mostly random subjects, sometimes firearms — but over time I lost my zest for just randomly writing and closed it up a year ago. I’ve been thinking recently about starting my own gun-related blog, but I dunno if I have the gumption to keep content flowing and really do it right. Sometimes I daydream about finding a couple high-quality contributors to help me build something TTAG-esque, but I dunno if I have the time and gumption to manage other people, either.

        Gumption is a different issue, but the time problem might be fixable. I spend waaay too much time reading TTAG. 🙂

  27. Seriously, how am I NOT the first one to say it?

    …The Talllban.

    I wouldn’t say it was “fun,” but firefights are surely the biggest rush I’ve ever had.

    The most fun would be soda cans and paper targets with friends. It’s less about the targets themselves than the friends out shooting with me. We used to gather up all our old rifles and go sit in fields for hours plinking away after school.

  30. 1 gallon jug of orange juice hit with a 30-30. Makes quite the entertaining explosion of color.

  33. A bunker with a 90mm recoiless gun. Same target with LAWS rockets. Didn’t do the shooting but seeing a fast mover chew up a target with the 20mm gatling gun was fun. Brrrrrrrrr….

  34. Unopened pressurized beer keg. 22lr would bounce off the outside of it. One round from an sks caused it to shoot old, stale bear 50 feet high.

  35. On the twisted side, I took a mannequin and taped McDonalds catsup packets all over it then dressed it in white t shirt.
    I had people paying me to shoot it.
    On the fun side, a one pound can of tannerite, set atop a 5 gallon empty propane jug, (already shot), then a 5 gallon bucket of sealed rancid pickles on top of that. The bucket took several seconds to come down and looked like a spent shotgun wad. The propane jug inverted. There was a green mist/slime in the air and all over the ground.

  36. My top three.

    Fill milk jugs with water. Freeze and cut off the bottle. Nice icey explosion and zero range cleanup.

    Surplus pumpkins. Interesting to see the difference in ammo types without having gelatin.

    Also, took out a large wasp nest with a 12ga. That was pretty cool.

  37. Old cans of shaving cream or spray paint.

    Rotten pumpkins or watermelons.

    A 1962 Oldsmobile.

      • Come on now, ‘Your mom’ jokes are funny. Unless it is your mom then not so much. Everyone thinks the guy slipping on the banana peel is funny except the guy who slipped on the banana peel.

    • I have been known to come up with some pretty raunchy stuff, but this beats anything I have yet to see!

  39. Oh man, when I was a kid, a junkyard full of old rusted junk cars from the 50s with most of their windows intact. We had to occasionally dodge the watchman who walked around with 12 gauge salt-shot, but otherwise it was .22, BB gun, and wrist-rocket heaven! I don’t think there was window left after a few weeks of that!

  40. Sure feels good shooting critters that are nuisance, like raccoons or coyotes. With gun or bow. But as far as targets go I’d have to say anything that’s of a gelatinous wet type substance that doesn’t totally get destroyed by the bullet, so afterwards you can look at it and see the yaw/fragmentation or bullet path. (like ballistics jell or anything similar) It just looks cool as hell. Back when I was in the army though, after deployment, our 2nd platoon “uncovered” and was able to keep, an entire conex packed full with SAPI Plates, we took a few out and tested them with different calibers at different ranges and how they held up under multiple hits. That was interesting as hell and probably the most fun I’ve ever had shooting.

    FYI, those SAPI plates will stop one .338 win… however… the round hits the plate so hard it sends the (porcelain?) solid backing of the plate flying 50 feet in the air with enough force to decapitate anyone wearing it. That was sure a sight to see.

  41. An old 6-pack of beer I found in a cooler when I was ten. I shook the cans and plugged them with my air rifle. Good times.

  42. Tannerite in bulk and household appliances truly unbelievable the absolute destruction and seeing shrapnel zones and watch it shatter each link on a high tensil 5/16″ lifting chain holding an oven chained shut dam mad the chain went it cost plenty and wasn’t expected!!!

  43. Tannerite + coleman propane cyl + roadflare + 1 cup of gasoline in a gatorade bottle.

    Set the flare a foot away from the mess to ensure ignition.
    Propane in front of tannerite, gas bottle on top.
    Shoot through propane to detonate tannerite and smile.

  44. Balsa wood toy boats in the slough up by Old Monroe, Mo. When I was eight or ten my cousins and I would launch and sink them with .22 shorts from my old Mossberg single shot, while pretending it was the battle of Midway.
    I had a lot of fun one day trying to shoot down Sleek Streek wind up toy airplanes with a BB gun. Never hit a one, though.

  48. Clothespins, as a young cub scout earning my rifle shooting merit badge at summer camp.

    Does BSA even let kids shoot anymore?

    • Yes you can still get the Riflery Badge with the BSA. BSA High Adventure sites usually have a pistol program. This in addition to archery badges and axe and knife throwing as part of the Outdoor Survival Badge.

  49. Most entertaining was a rabbid raccoon with a 22 rifle. That bastard was undeterred, AND charged at me! Lol

    Second to the sick raccoon- small watermelons with Model 94 Winny 30-30. Just completely obliterates them… smiling thinking about it.

  50. Last year I discovered my favorite target was DUCK. Unfortunately, they taste like muddy boots. I have received counselling on a separate thread, which justifies the purchase of another waterfowl stamp!

    There is nothing… NOTHING as wonderful as popping up on a pond filled with ducks and unloading your shotgun into a flurry of a thousand wings!

  53. Three things come to mind.

    New Year’s Day, 2009, my father and I took turns blasting apart his old computer after it had crashed and pissed him off for the last time. We primarily used his Ruger Vaquero .45 Long Colt pistols, loaded with his low-velocity handloads and some “hot” max-loaded rounds, as well as a Mosin Nagant and my Beretta Px4 9mm. The low velocity rounds would actually bounce off of the computer tower’s chassis now and then, though the “hot” rounds (as he called them) tended to plow through and bounce around inside the tower. Predictably, the Mosin Nagant tore clean through every time. My 9mm seemed to do the most damage to the internals after penetration. Even two years later we were still picking slugs and copper jackets out of the inside of the thing.

    At the end of 2009, New Year’s Eve to be exact, we repeated this process with the second computer that had pissed him off one time too many. This time, our weapons of choice expanded to include our then-new Remington 870 Express synthetic 12-guage shotguns, with the 6-round magazine tubes (and incidentally have sequential serial numbers). We used birdshot, good old 00-buck, and some slug rounds. What I found interesting was how the birdshot seemed to act as a sort of blunt instrument when the cloud of pellets hit the chassis and actually knocked the tower around–there’s several considerable depressions in the thing, littered with lots of little dimples where the birdshot pellets hit, that look like they could’ve come from a hammer strike. Unlike the last computer we shot, very few slugs/pellets and copper jackets were recovered as most shots seemed to go straight through or fell out as the tower was beaten around like a red-headed stepchild from all the shotgunning.

    In-between these “computer shoots”, sometime in the late summer, my most memorable target shot was on a paltry 50MB SD memory card that had come with my dad’s brand-new digital camera. We were so insulted by the size of the card that it was chosen to be my new GLOCK 22 RTF’s first target. My first shot missed, but the second one smacked right into the middle of the card and split the casing off. At first we thought it had been obliterated, but a quick look around revealed the memory card with a near-perfect center hole in it, and the casing cover that had been snapped off. I’ve kept that SD card in a card holder ever since.

    So…yes. Back then, technology was not safe around us. 😉

  54. Coming home from the Sierras at age 13 with my brother….do you think that single 6 – .22 LR will go through our cast iron skillet? I do……I don’t. The gauntlet had been set.

    To this day I have that large cast skillet with 6 – 1/2 dollar size holes in it. Memories of years past.

    Don’t worry about wasting a beautiful engineered cooking implement. Dad finds them at garage sales all the time for a dollar and already seasoned to boot!

  55. Crows in treetops with my .243. 65 grain vmax will cause a crow to break into its component parts.

    • EDIT: Didn’t see the part of the iPhone already being shot when I watched the video.

      I significantly enjoyed the iPhone shooting more than that of the Blackberry.

  57. I’ve shot a couple of things that was fun. A fridge in my house with a 12 ga shot gun, to put it out of it’s misery and to force myself to actually buy a new one. (that plan worked)
    One of my cars while out shooting, I fell down and hurt myself. My AMC American was a good target while pissed and I put a round into that $50.00 car. It’s crazy how many people noticed that bullet hole! And one little stupid thing was when Master Lock was showing how their locks stood up to gun shots, I shot one with an old 3 screw Ruger .44 magnum Blackhawk. Wish I still had that gun along with my Colt Python, but suffice to say, the Master Lock commercials with hogwash. That lock was GONE after being shot. The final thing was an old washing machine with a full automatic Mac 10. That was fun.

  58. Shooting stuff is fun.

    For me a 55 gallon drum of gasoline a 3000 meters. With a TOW missile when I was enlisted.

    Although when one of my gun crews scored a dirrect hit on an old APC during direct fire was fun too (M109A6 155mm). The round functioning inside the track was impressive.

  62. The carcass of a 55 Ford pickup which had a tree growing up through the engine compartment. My friend’s .45 long Colt rounds bounced off the doors, my .357 rounds penetrated. A couple of rounds of .30-06 black tip from my Garand went through the truck the long way.

    The best show I ever witnessed was 8″ naval gunfire from the USS Newport News. I don’t know what we hit but the secondary explosions were very satisfactory – proving that its much better to give than receive.

    • When I was in the navy, many years ago, we used to shoot at trains in North Korea. We only had two 5″ guns.
      Sometimes you could seal a train in a tunnel, by closing up both ends.
      Great times! Screw those commie bastards!

    • Best one I saw was a 30MM GAU-8 from an A-10 on a Serbian tank that the base commander let us see. That was pretty cool.

  63. 8″ x 12″ steel plate at 1500yds on a cold barrel then stacking 3 more of the 5 shot string on top Sako TRG-42 338 Lapua NightForce glass

  64. Old hard drive with a 12 gauge (went through a whole box of target loads chewing through it), detergent jugs topped off with water with a .30-06 (180 grain softpoint made a big explosion of water and suds and sent the cap flying 10 feet into the air), a cheap Chinese MPX MP3 player that crapped out on me in a month with .22 LR… nothing too out of the ordinary. My usual rimfire plinking target is a wobbly pin that’s fun to smack around.

  66. A paper target … with Obama’s face on it.

    The range made us stop after a few minutes, said someone had complained… Our thoughts were, “So what!”, but we stopped anyway.

    Lots of fun while it lasted!

  67. 1 – Tannerite inside a bail of hay with AR
    2 – Full soda cans thrown in the air with clay target loads
    3 – Cans of spam with mac and cheese, dangling from strings with a 22

  68. We are required to destroy old hard drives where I work.

    The guy I work with is also a gun guy, so, we conduct “penetration tests” with various calibers.

    So far, .308 is the best, with 30.06 close behind. Shooting a hard drive with 50 AE is very cool, though. 45 acp +p JHC (my personal defense rounds can double as an ashtray, hence “jacketed hollow cavity”) makes a very respectable hole.

  70. PC LOAD LETTER one too many times on a newish HP ink jet with 00 buck. And yes we sang “Die m*therf*cker, still fool” ceremoniously.

  71. A donkey, being fornicated with by a Middle Eastern man with a slung weapon.

  72. A plastic ping-pong ball – not a real one, with a .22 pistol.

    That ball just hopped and hopped with every shot – you didn’t need to hit it – just splashing dirt on it was plenty.

    Then it would roll back down the backstop, ready for the next shot.

    It was about thirty years ago, and it still stands out. I bet that somebody is making the equivalent in self-healing plastic these days, and selling them for a lot more money.

  73. Hiw abot ceramic insulators. Years back (many) was part of a team stripping off the high voltage wiring from an old power line that was being demolished. Instead of climbing up and tossing the insulators as we were told to do we shot them down with our .22’s lots of fun and very good practice!

    • You make me smile sir. When I was 16, my dad, a conductor for the local railroad, worked a work train fixing tracts. That summer I rode with him, they would drop us of at the start of the day and we would trout fish 5 or 6 hours. At the end of the day they would roll back down the mountain. Dad would pull out the S&W K 22 masterpiece, we took turns at blue glass telegraph insulators for almost 7 miles at 10mph on the caboose. And no the K 22 is not for sale my son will have it on his 18th birthday, that’s how I got it. And I’m still smilling.

Comments are closed.