Having a pellet or bb trap to practice shooting your airgun, can help you shoot more often, since you can use it indoors or outdoors. And a pellet trap will help you keep from littering your yard with toxic lead based pellets, and it can increase safety by preventing dangerous ricochet of pellets, and bbs.

A brilliant airgun pellet trap design I’ve seen floating about the internet, and sold by some airgun companies is a simple wooden box with an inside layer of Air Conditioning Sealing Putty available at big box and local hardware stores. It’s relatively inexpensive, and rather than relying on a metal plate to reflect the travel of pellets and bbs to a layer of sand or a trap, the putty just absorbs the impact of the pellet, and holds it. There is no lead dust being spread about in a living space, and no related clean up. Adding a clipboard or clip system to the pellet trap, will hold heavy paper targets completes the trap. Clean, simple, and cheap.

Here’s where to get the A/C Duct Putty, or Duct Sealing Putty. Hint, it is in the electrical department and not plumbing or a/c filter or duct department at Home Depot.

Hanging out at Gateway to AirGuns I’ve enjoyed seeing a variety of approaches to gathering supplies and constructing Pellet Traps.

Some construction ideas for the Pellet Trap box:

Used wooden drawers
Any wooden box with an opening on one side
Metal circuit breaker boxes
Milk Crate or any other suitable beverage container or box
Cardboard Box
End Cap for large PVC Pipes

If there is a chance that your pellet gun or bb gun might be strong enough to fire its projectile through the Duct Sealing Putty, many folks line the back of the box with additional layers of wood, or a plate of steel to prevent pellets and bbs from going through.

Will put up some pictures of my pellet trap shortly, and also some links to free downloadable and printable targets.

In the meantime here is an official 10 meter air rifle target they use in the Olympics.