JUMPING TARGETS

Once upon a time, we at Calibre were stalwart fans of punching paper. We'd head to the range with some fine-tuned, hand-assembled ammunition, settle in behind our gun, and put maybe ten holes in a piece paper 100 or 200 yards away over the course of 40 minutes. We'd caliper our groupings, laugh at our friends that shot poorly, and then get back down to the business of shooting accurately.

But somewhere between then and now, we've gotten less patient. Ten rounds in forty minutes has turned into... well... more. A lot more. So much more that we have a heading on our budget entitled "Operating Costs: Ammunition." That right folks, work for a gun magazine and you too can write off your ammunition purchases. And a result, we've long since tired of shooting paper and have worked our way through a variety of targets. Reactive targets, pop cans, you name it. And the absolutely unerring fact of the matter is that it's always more fun to shoot stuff that does stuff. It doesn't matter if it's a pop can exploding downrange or a steel plate swinging on its chain. The problem is, a lot of targets that do stuff when hit are either heavy and expensive (in the case of large AR500 plates) or messy, wasteful and expensive like pop cans.

Lately, however, we've found some slightly less formal targets from Jumping Targets, and find ourselves eschewing all our other targets in favour of these little guys. A variation on what many would call a "Texas Walker" style of target, these small steel triangular things are available in three different sizes, and are designed for everything from rimfire to big centerfire cartridges like .30-06. The idea is, you toss them out onto your range, and as you hit the topmost paddle, the impact forces that paddle down, and the target slowly walks away from you. The nice part is, since most ranges are not perfectly smooth, these targets have a tendency to spin and move in slightly different directions every time, forcing you to adapt to a new and unpredictable target presentation. And of course, no matter what, the better you get the farther away it goes! We also have one of their rocking gopher targets; a heavyweight large target with the silhouette of a gopher. Similar to the jumping targets, this target gives a really positive visual indication that it's been hit; smacking it high up with a .308 at 100 metres will actually somersault the thing right over. And should you spin it and put the gopher in line with your firing range, the ends of the rockers on the bottom sport small targets as well, so you can spin it back.

Obviously steel targets are not anything new but that doesn't make them any less exciting for a gun aficionado. Furthermore, Jumping Targets is one of the few large target manufacturers that will actually ship within Canada; something most companies refuse to do on account of the cost associated with shipping AR500 steel. Furthermore, their wise assortment of target varieties (including the very interesting spring-loaded sniper target) and respectable prices make these a sure fire hit... so to speak!