About TargetHolders.com
One of the original airgun target sites on the web. Started by a guy with a PCP rifle, a love of plinking, and an idea that came from a beer cap landing on a paper target.
It Started the Way Good Things Do
For many of us who were fortunate enough to start shooting at a young age, we have fond memories of plinking. For most it was with a BB gun, pellet gun, or a small caliber rifle like the .22 rimfire.
Remember when you lined up cans, bottles, or whatever you could find in a row, then opened fire trying to knock everything down? For many of us this holds great memories of a simpler time when the only thing that mattered was shooting with dad or close friends. We weren't trying to out-do each other by shooting groups on paper. The only thing that mattered was breaking that bottle or rolling that can.
"Plinking was all about fun. One of my earliest memories was shooting a .22 rifle at cans with my father. I missed more than I hit, but I didn't care — because it was so much fun to just watch the dirt fly."
The AirForce Talon and the Beer Cap
I got back into air gun shooting and picked up an AirForce Talon PCP air rifle — one of the most accurate production air rifles ever made. I was messing around one day and moved my paper target out to 50 yards. I rested the bipod on a plastic table and shot a five-shot group.
When I went downrange, I was hitting a quarter-inch low at 50 yards. I showed my friends who were busy shooting trap — all five shots could be covered by a quarter. That night, I was sitting in my home office with the paper target on the desk. I went to the fridge, grabbed a cold beer, opened it, and tossed the cap onto the desk. It landed on the target. I slid it over the five-shot group and thought:
"If I'm going to get any better at air gunning, I need to push myself with smaller targets."
I knew my air gun was capable of shooting bottle cap groups at 50 yards, so I needed to create a 50-yard air gun target. And that's what I did.
The Original Beer Cap Target Holder
A simple plastic holder sized to hold beer caps upright at any distance. Start at 20 yards — the cap flies off when you hit it. Move it out as your skills improve. I could consistently hit them at 50 yards. For high-powered rifles, imagine the bragging rights hitting a beer cap at 150 to 200 yards.
Then Came the Squirrel Simulator
I was invited to an air gun fun shoot at the Bay Area airgun club. I'm an avid hunter and really enjoy squirrel shooting — I usually go twice a year to a location 320 miles away because of the sheer number of ground squirrels. They're so thick you could shoot over a hundred in one square acre, return the next day, and it's like you were never there.
Missing the fun of shooting squirrels at various ranges, I created the Squirrel Simulator target — a hand-carved wooden silhouette target, 24 to a box, that you scatter out at 20 to 100 yards. It gives you a realistic shooting scenario to hone your air gun skills at any range.
The Squirrel Simulator Reactive Target
Wooden silhouette targets sized like a real ground squirrel. Set them up at 20 to 100 yards. Use a rangefinder, guess the holdover, double-check the trajectory chart, take the shot. Then go find where it fell. First appeared at the Bay Area "Fun Shoot" — August 31, 2008.
Where TargetHolders.com Is Headed
The original products had a good run. I'm not in the target manufacturing business anymore, but the domain has been around since 2008 and the mission hasn't changed: make plinking more fun.
Now the site is rebuilding as a two-aisle resource. Roger's Picks on the Amazon side — reactive targets, splatter targets, steel spinners, and paper targets I've personally used and liked. And a community free printable target list, curated and growing.
Same site, same love of plinking. Just a different delivery method.
Domain History
TargetHolders.com was registered in September 2008 — making it one of the longer-standing airgun target domains on the web. Over 17 years of history, through PCP rifles, fun shoots, and more beer than Roger probably should have had at the range.