I live in a rural county and see many road signs that have been shot, mostly with shotguns it appears (many similar looking impacts or holes), sometimes rifles (one or only a few holes.) Has anyone here ever shot signs or been with a group doing it? It sort of boggles my mind that you’d shoot road signs. Do you do it while driving, sitting in a truck, or on foot? Is ricochet a big concern? What about houses behind or near the signs? Usually the shot signs are in remote areas, but sometimes fairly near houses.
No, never. My rural youth was misspent on a broad appreciation of damn-foolery and rascality, but unsafe use of firearms was your ticket to a society-wide sanctioned ass-whipping.
Well I’m not in America and not a redneck 
but yes, I’ve shot signs. Only with an air rifle, though, and I was about 14 or 15 at the time. My friend and I used to go up to an airfield and practice our shooting on a 30mph sign on the road nearby. It was a handy target for zeroing in the telescopic sights. Did we worry about ricochets? No, we were teenagers. It was a pretty quiet road, anyhow.
Only with paintballs.
I never did, but we shot lots of stuff with BB and pellet guns.
We shot trees in the woods with a shotgun.
We shot BB guns at critters from stopped trucks.
I see the appeal, though. I bet it makes a great noise; you get to see the sign rattle; you get to drive by every day, and think “we did that”; and, I bet it’s a fun thing to try to do from a moving truck.
Well, the primary purpose of the excursion was not to shoot signs, but there have been times when signs were shot, yes.
Usually there’s a fairly large mountain behind the sign and definitely no houses. Even that drunk, we didn’t want to shoot anyone.
The guy driving shoots at them whilst driving and the guy in the passenger seat shoots at them from there.
It’s actually fairly hard to hit a sign-sized target at speed on a bumpy dirt road.
This was 15-20 years ago, and could be partially responsible for my hearing problems. Shooting a firearm from an enclosed space like a truck cab is very, very loud.
We used to shoot my neighbour’s weathervane with an air pistol to make it spin.
Yeah that’s what I suspected too, and wearing hearing protection sort of would take the “badass” factor out of it. :rolleyes:
Never shot at them, but it was a favored game, back in the day, to try to hit them with an empty beer bottle flung from a moving vehicle. Difficult thing to do. Rewarding, though, when successful.
Never shot at them, but it was a favored game, back in the day, to try to hit them with an empty beer bottle flung from a moving vehicle. Difficult thing to do. Rewarding, though, when successful.
Yup. I was out one night with a co-worker and his friend. We’d gone to K-Mart earlier, and had purchased 3 BB pistols. We figured that a BB gun couldn’t do any permanent damage to a metal sign.
Driving along a rural side road, my co-worker’s friend decided to take a shot at a living room window. Guy sitting inside notes our license plate number; then calls the Sheriff.
Unbeknownst to us, some older guys were downtown that same night, shooting out storefronts with .22 rifles.
My co-worker came in the next day, with the news paper under one arm.
“Hey, rhythmonly. Wanna go to Mexico?”
He opens the paper which has a headline reading “Vandals Cause Thousands Of Dollars In Damage To Downtown Area”.
Regrets general.
Eh, we were immortal back then.
Not much of a “badass” factor, tho. It was fun, but hardly something one would hold up as an indication of ones coolness. “Hey baby, I shot a sign”? Nah, just something to pass the time.