MGM has an Internet Special on their squirrel targets:
I wish they would tolerate .30 caliber. If they would then I would buy some for Boomershoot. MGM does have rifle targets but it’s more than I really want to spend right now.
The View From North Central Idaho
Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
Actually they could survive .30 caliber hits if they were just a bit thicker. I have a set of circular gongs. Couple small ones and a big 12″ diameter one. But there 1/2″ thick, over double, near triple the thickness of that one. They do take a beating. Magnums and intermediates don’t even dent it while heavy calibers like 7.62x54r just minorly ding it.
You can find silhouette targets like that 1/2″ thick. You can find deals on ebay of all places but I don’t know if you care for them. But those are just the plates, you’d have to make up some kind of rig yourself or weld the bases yourself.
That’s their .22 squirrel auto popper (part number AP22SQ).
They have one that will stand up to .30 caliber, the regular squirrel auto popper (part number APSQ) is $129.92.
I’ve had their standard auto popper (part number APS) for over a decade. It’s holding up rather well, even to repeated .30 caliber rifles. I don’t go shooting as often as I’d like, though, so it’s not like it gets tons of use.
“these squirrels showed up from the factory manufactured incorrectly”
Oh I don’t know, they look perfectly fine to me… for prairie dogs.
Write ’em and see if they’d be willing to sponsor Boomershoot. Mike supports the shooting sports and travels quite a bit doing it. I even squaded with him briefly this past year as he was shooting through the match.