Weekend Musings

Sorry about not posting much the past few days, but it has been a busy weekend. I went with a friend and his father-in-law to scout out some hunting locations for this fall. Today, I took the family for a hike. We drove up into the woods to an area with some well-marked trails and good overlooks on the side the mountain.

My oldest son has been saving up all summer to buy a recurve bow and the equipment to get started into archery. The problem was setting up a safe area for practice. As I mentioned recently, we've been helping my father-in-law in taking down an old ceder fence. I decided to take some of the fence pickets to make a backstop for a small archery range. I used a couple of 8 foot long 4x4 pressure treated posts to use as uprights. I cut down a couple 2x4's to use as cross pieces--one on the top and one on the bottom, leaving space on the uprights to sink them into the ground. After assembling the basic frame, I laid down two layers of ceder pickets. I overlapped the pieces so any gap between pickets in the top layer would be backed by a picket in the bottom layer. Once these were laid out, we nailed down the pickets. We leaned it up to test, and an arrow fired at the ceder, which is pretty springy, was stopped. Since he will only be using target points--not sharper broadheads--I think the backing will be satisfactory.

However, for an extra measure of safety, I will hang loose carpet in front of the backstop to slow down any arrows that miss the target. My thought for hanging the carpet is to get two metal brackets for hanging a coat rod and attach to the top of the backstop, and then nail or tack the carpet to a wooden coat rod which we will hang. This will also allow us to roll up the carpet when not in use to protect it from the weather.