The first thing I did was find a good picture of a moose that showed where the vitals were located. I am an engineer/computer guy by trade and I have access to a slew of computer graphic and drawing programs. Using these, I was able to trace around the moose picture and then scale it up to life size. For reference, I figured the top of the moose's hump would be 6' 6" from the ground and scaled everything accordingly. This is the picture I used.
And this is the profile I came up with.
So I had my moose target shape, now I needed to design a stand to hang it from. The stand I had for my old bag target was on its last legs so I decided to come up with something that would hold both targets. It would have to be sturdy because I knew that the moose target would be pretty heavy. I had done quite a bit of research and settled on cutting the moose target out of a 4'x6'x 3/4" rubber horse stall mat. These are relatively cheap ($40), fairly common and would definitely hold up against the barrage of arrows I would be throwing against it. One problem I saw with this, though, was that the arrows could be difficult to pull out so I bought a 2’x2’x2” piece of high density foam (6 lb) that I cut into the shape of the vitals area. I fastened this onto the rubber with some zip ties and my moose target was complete!
Using my 3D modeling software, I came up with a stand design that is made out of 2x4's. It needed to be tall enough to hold my moose target at the correct height and also hold my bag target at a different height when I wanted to practice shooting game a little closer to the ground. Here is a photo rendering of my stand model holding the moose target.
And here is a photo rendering of the stand model holding a bag target.
Now it was construction time! One of the great things about the modeling software I use is that creating 2D drawings, complete with bills of material, to build off of is a breeze. I created the drawings, bought all the material and built the stand in a couple of hours. My wife always tells me that my computer models look a lot better than the actual product but this time I think I got pretty close. The top of the hump of the actual hanging moose target is 6’ 8” from the ground instead of the 6’ 6” I designed for. The one thing I really didn’t count on was how heavy the rubber target is. It is definitely a chore to hang it up and take it down! But it does work very well.
Here's a photo of the actual stand holding the moose target.
And here's a photo of the stand holding the bag target and my clay bird holder attachment. The horizontal brace that the bag is hanging from is detachable so it doesn't interfere with the moose target.
It was a fun project and it will hopefully pay off in moose meat this fall.
Darren
Mark
Here is an ideal bow shot at 22 yards.
Paul
Since we're talking moose targets, here's a pic of a moose, and my target. ;-)
Cool pic Rob---not a bad bull either.
Good luck, Robb
Full size moose 3d target in the front driveway!!!!!