[Archers] Fall Monster Mash Targets

[Garth Groff]

Noble Friends of the Bow:

It is that time again, the selling frenzy that leads to Halloween! This 
is the best time of the year to pick up targets featuring monsters, evil 
creatures of the night, the undead, and other nightmares. I have a 
pretty good supply of target art already, if pretty is an appropriate 
word here. Still, I'm always on the hunt for new stuff.

Today I dropped in at both Charlottesville's Dollar Tree stores, the 
real bargain place for this stuff. This year they are featuring jointed 
cardstock figures that are 5 feet tall. Besides the usual skeletons, 
they have male and female vampires, Death, and a very fearsome mummy. 
Just mount these with spray glue on a few layers of heavy cardboard, or 
tack them to some archery foam, and you have instant enemies to shoot. 
I'm not sure how effective arrows are against the undead though. These 
figures are large enough to be easily seen at 20 yards or more for adult 
shooting (think advancing man . . . er . . . monster), and would make 
excellent targets at closer distances for a children's range.

Another new item this year is a thin mylar door covering of a huge 
monster face that is mostly mouth. This could easily be mounted on 
appliance-sized cardboard and would make an excellent target for adult 
distances, maybe even at 50 yards. There were many more of these with 
other monsters, most in window size, but I passed on them. Maybe later.

There were some nice life-sized styrofoam blackbirds in two poses that 
might make a fun shoot. If I can score a full-sized styrofoam skull, 
these birds could substitute for an apple in a macabre William Tell 
shoot. The problem is that full-sized skulls cost around $10-12, which 
is not exactly within my budget. I might have to just use a regular wig 
head, which sells for around $4 at a beauty supply store, or at a yard 
sale for far less.

Dollar Tree also had some soft spiders nearly 10 inches across that 
would make good targets. Consider putting several on one target face. 
Their smaller spiders were either too rubbery and would cause 
bounce-offs, or were too hard and would probably shatter if hit. 
Besides, the small spiders are probably too small to make good targets.

I also found a few 15 x 18-inch gummed clings left over from several 
years ago, and bought most of them. I scored a Death, Frankie, and 
several of Drac. These are really good for children at 8-10 yards 
because they are rather cartoonish, feature bright colors in distinctive 
blocks with good color separation, have little shading, and are on a 
white background. They are much more visible than something that is more 
realistic and features lots of shaded dark tones. I leave the backing 
paper on when I use these.

One thing to keep in mind when buying this stuff is how visible it will 
be on the range. Detail drops out badly beyond 10 yards, and the darker 
the image, the more difficult (read frustrating) it is to shoot. Go for 
the largest images you can find, and those that have simple lines and 
good contrast. For that reason, I passed on some smaller (but very cool) 
clings of rats coming out of sewer, and avoided the large clings with 
ghostly figures that are supposed to look like an image in a dirty 
mirror. Nice at five to ten feet, but just a blurred mess at ten yards 
or more.

There are a lot of other places to look for low-priced targets. Dollar 
General and Family Dollar stores sometimes have some goodies. The pop-up 
Halloween stores might have something worthwhile, but expect them to be 
high priced until the last day. And speaking of last days, Dollar Tree 
just boxes this stuff after they close on Halloween night and saves the 
remnants for the next year. There's no clearance sale at Dollar Tree, 
though DG and FD do offer markdowns.

You can probably get some neat stuff online at Amazon or party stores, 
but shop carefully. I got my mylar "knight roll" wall decoration that 
we've been cutting up into individual figures from a party store for a 
fair price, but it was half that on Amazon (Lady Sarah used these last 
year for the (K)night Shoot at WoW, and I used them for the war point on 
the children's range). When I went back to Amazon to order, the item had 
disappeared.

Yours Aye,


Mungo