Melons are even better if you freeze 'em first. There’s a pumpkin farm right across the street from my gun club and often in the late fall/early winter the owner will let us pick the last of the pumpkins out of the his field. I recommend something with a bit more punch than a .22 though. Try a big fat .44 mag hollowpoint or even a shotgun slug.
Haven’t done the soda can deal at all. But I do sit on my deck with my 22 and shoot snakes as they come across the lake. I miss more than I hit.
Its not fair, us Micks aren’t allowed have this fun with guns . We can only go clay pigeon shooting and getting a gun licence isn’t easy .
The M-80 and soda can thing sounds like fun aswell but we can only get fireworks at Halloween (illegally).
Here’s something else fun to shoot. You’ve all seen those little stuffed animals in the arcade games, right? For a quarter, you try to pick them up with a crane like device.
Soak them in water and freeze 'em. Take the to the range in your cooler so they don’t thaw out. Then pop 'em with a high speed, small caliber projectile, like a .220 Swift or .217 Bee. Stuffing everywhere!
I want all you Americans to take note of Yojimbo’s post here, just in case you need yet another reason to fight for your 2nd Amendment rights. Shooting is just damned fun!
Yo, Jimbo. Come on over to the States an I’d be happy to take you to the range.
I was in the States about 3 years ago (Burlington , Vermont) training with work and was brought to a range . Used a handgun and helped get a guy’s new hunting rifle set up. It was great fun and very safe .
If I’m ever in Ohio Unclebeer I’ll take you up on that offer. 
Yojimbo,
Can anything beat the satisfaction of a banger in a coke can?
I used to love messing around with bangers but I couldn’t bring myself to do the Moore Street(where Dubs go to buy fireworks) thing for a couple of years now. Getting to old I guess . 
BTW: Aren’t Bank Holidays great. Most of the Irish on the board seem to be posting somewhere at the moment.
Did anyone try that website I posted? Melons, cans of soda, coconuts, 2 liter bottles of soda, and other food items are shot with handguns. There are even a few examples of the tracer-style bullets for handguns. Maybe no one has looked because I don’t know how to make it a link - I copied and pasted the URL from my Favorites. I thought that automatically made a link. Here, I’ll try it another way: http://www.5sigma.com/joseph/inan/
Well, given that Cecil has done a column about the bubbling in NutraSweetened drinks vs. plain ol’ high-calorie sodas, some intrepid soul here should take it upon him/herself to analyze the difference, if any, between the two when their cans are shaken and shot.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Y’all have some pretty neat suggestions.
BTW, Uncle Beer, if I use a 44Mag. wouldn’t I totally destroy my target?
ultress, i rarely if ever miss. was my job for a while to teach technique in the army for firing weapons. i wouldn’t mind joining you sometime…:sigh:, well
when i was in the army, we used to take the heaters from the MRE’s and stuff’em down 1 liter plastic soda bottles, fill’em up about a quarter way with soda, cap it, and let it sit out about 150 meters away. after about 5 minutes, not only does the heat from the heater reacting with the liquid begin to build pressure inside the plastic bottle and virtually make it grow, when you shoot the bottle dead on from 150 meters or so with an m-16 it explodes something fierce, and the sound it makes, would make you think they dropped the bomb right behind you. 
Destroy your target? Well, I s’pose it depends on how big your target is. A .44mag into a small pumpkin pretty well demolishes it, but if you use a larger one, there’s enough big fragments remaining to shoot a few additional times. You could probaby find enough pieces to expend a cylinder or two.
Cool topic here. I love to go plinking with my 22.
A 44 mag makes neat little holes going in, and great big holes coming out. So only one side of the melon is toast on the first shot.
Anyone know where I can pick up a 44 mag carbine reasonable?
::[nostalgic moment] - this was my first rifle, and I would love to find one again [/nostalgic moment] ::
I unleased a 20 gauge hollow-point slug into an unwrapped block of ice. “Look ma! Its snowing!”
This thread reminds me of a comic book I once owned (can’t remember the name). The characters were delinquent aliens that used to go around shooting things. Anyway, one issue had a philosophical monologue that went something like this:
“Some people say that life is a bowl of cherries. I disagree with this completely. To test this theory one needs to take the object in question and discharge a 12 gauge shell into it from about 3 feet away. If the object in question falls over and kicks its feet up into the air while making little “ick ick” noises, Congratulations! It was life. If, however, all it does is leave a sticky red mess on the carpet, then it was probably a bowl of cherries. Better luck next time my friend…”
I wonder if this would make a good sig line?
WTG = way to go
Ladies? Oh, ladies? I give you ::stepping to one side and grandly gesturing at all the fellas trying to blow things up:: – MEN! ::walks away shaking her head affectionately::
Right after halloween, you can buy pumkins REAL cheap. Large calibers vs pumkins…yee-HA!!!
And, Jess, the Girls enjoyed it too, try it sometime!
Heh. I took my wife to the range once. You know, an “if there’s gonna be a firearm in the house, then everyone should know how to use it properly” kind of thing. Even if it was a shotgun and not a hand gun. She had a pretty good time and we did determine that if anyone ever broke in our house and she was compelled to use deadly force, she should aim at their knees. That way she’d blow their head clean off.
My ex likes to buy cans of mis-mixed paint for target shooting - usually with the larger sized bullets. Preferably bright obnoxious colors.
You could get a similar effect by adding food coloring to your water in your milk carton.
BTW, I was a pretty good shot when I could see the target.
Ok what you might want to do is fill one of those oil barrels with pepsi get 200 meters back and shoot it with your handy 105mm anti-tank howitzer. Like JF said, make sure there is nothing behind your target. Or if you don’t have a Howizer, find a BIG cement wall and load a can of soda into ever useful spud gun and fire away.