Ideas wanted for woodswalk Archery competition.

I'm looking for ideas for a woodswalk Archery competition. This will be part of the aggregate portion of shooting events in our club's 50th year Rendezvous in October.

Sadly, there is not much room to set up any running targets due to the hillside facing a higher section where tents or people may be.
Don't worry, it is safe....but we are cautious and have used only stationary targets in the past.

I already have planned the standard 3d critter targets and a friend bought a new one which will be used too. I have a surprise non archery target (perhaps 2) planned for interest. I also have a tiebreaker of sorts planned and is just for fun wich will be posted on a bale to shoot at.

Other ideas are welcome...but not running targets....

also, is hay ok to use for a backup? or only straw. I have a friend say not to use the hay as it will ruin the target points of the arrows. That was news to me..what are your thoughts? I already have a half dozen hay bales from last year's cutting.

Hay won't hurt field points but could damage fletching if the arrows bury themselves into a bale.
For my money, I'd rather risk having to refletch an arrow that to lose one altogether.
Been there, done that at some of the 3D shoots I used to compete in.

deermanok said:

Hay won't hurt field points but could damage fletching ....
Been there, done that at some of the 3D shoots I used to compete in.

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Thanks, other than the 3D, what are some of the challenges you've experienced on other types of targets?

OhioHawkeye said:

Thanks, other than the 3D, what are some of the challenges you've experienced on other types of targets?

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The only thing that comes to mind are those cheapie foam targets like you'd find at Walmart. Arrows can blow right through those. They're ok for kid bows but not so much for anything bow rated for 45 pound pull or higher.

I find that simple balloons with a little bit of flour in them make an interesting target. Add the flour, blow them up and Tie them from a string about a foot long. The flour will tend to "steady" the balloon so it doesn't blow around too much and really "explodes" when hit. Use a back stop

Hay is much better than straw---and neither one will hurt a steel arrow point. My guess is that the bows you're going to use will be rather light in draw weight.

deermanok said:

The only thing that comes to mind are those cheapie foam targets like you'd find at Walmart. Arrows can blow right through those. They're ok for kid bows but not so much for anything bow rated for 45 pound pull or higher.

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I'll have to check them out. The three WM near me do not have anything more than fishing stuff

ohio ramrod said:

I find that simple balloons with a little bit of flour in them make an interesting target. Add the flour, blow them up and Tie them from a string about a foot long. The flour will tend to "steady" the balloon so it doesn't blow around too much and really "explodes" when hit. Use a back stop

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Unfortunately, I'm allergic to latex so no balloons .. but this is a cool idea.

Caterpillar Hunter said:

Hay is much better than straw---and neither one will hurt a steel arrow point. My guess is that the bows you're going to use will be rather light in draw weight.

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bows start at about 45# with most in the 50 + pound range... longbows and such mostly. No laminated or plastic manure and no pullies and funny stuff hanging from them. There will only be a couple of kids. they can use whatever they have.

I use to go to some woods walks that had all sorts of neat shots set up. Deer standing behind a tree that had a hole through the trunk, ground hog between two rocks, some of the targets would bust a ceded arrow if you missed. One of the hard ones was a tree in front of the shooter, and the shooter had to lean out around the tree on the off hand side to shoot. Those were some fun shoots! Wish they still had them around here.

Last one I set up used plastic bottles of different sizes with a tether string and a stake to kind of anchor them. Judo points are great and no one lost an arrow. Tie breaker at the end was a Kentucky V on a foam block.
2 liter bottle can be spray painted into a ground hog and so forth.

Skeet targets. While they are now "safe" (they used to be made with lots of strychnine to make 'em fragile) I'd still lay some tarp or something down on the ground under the target station to catch a majority of the fragments and make clean up easy.

Depending on time of year, Matzah crackers (think of a 8" square Saltine, hold the salt). You can also get this year-round on Amazon, especially if you don't care about freshness

Play William Tell with an apple and a dummy (no, not your brother in law).

Hang a cube of pool stick chalk from fishing line about 10 yards out - they make an impressive puff of blue when hit with rimfire at 100 yards, should look good with an arrow at 10.

Plastic Easter eggs filled with flour will also produce a nice puff. Problem is size and being able to hit at any distance... though this may not be an issue in your use case.

Get some rifle silhouette targets, trace and cut them out of cardboard or foam, use judo points or similar to thump/push target over vs. penetrating. Set up as parts of the woods walk, or go crazy and shoot a NRA style silhouette match from appropriate yardages (maybe half rimfire distance, max shot would be 50yards on rams and they are pretty big when you use full size targets).

Any of the plastic self-sealing targets would work as well - other than disks and such, there are crow, gopher, etc shapes.

old scrap dry wall makes a nice puff of dust when hit. I have been to primitive archery matches where an apple was hung on a string at about 20 yds. Crease the apple 1 pt, cut a piece off, 2 pts, put the arrow through the apple 3pts. Also had a target sort of like the Tomahawk target in the ffamous Ed Ames tomahawk throw on Johnny Carson. Hit the neck 10 pts, hit the chest 5pts, hit the crotch 10 pts. Put on in either eye and get 15 pts. Full size silhouette at about 35 yds. We had rules like no plastic arrows or fletching. No sheet metal tips (Wooden arrows were much easier to find back then.) Several shooters just shot arrows that were sharpened and fire hardened to a sharp wooden tip. The matches I took part in, permitted no fiberglass or training wheel bows. Nearly everybody had long bows they made themselves. One guy showed up with a Pennobscot bow that he made. He couldn't hit manure with it anyway.