Well, I decided to do a semi-review of a shooting stand I picked up recently. I say semi-review, because I have not yet been able to take it out in the field and use it. Once I do that, I will likely update this article. My initial impressions have been good and I thought I would share this with a few people. I felt it was a pretty solid design and fairly inexpensive. The stand is manufactured under the name, The Last Stand (http://www.laststands.com/), and currently sells for $39.99.

It is a pretty simple idea really; take rebar and a pair of well-designed hardened rubber brackets and make a stand. Here is a picture of the packaging.

You purchase six each five foot lengths of rebar. The rebar cost me $15 and the store cut them to length. As untreated steel does, the rebar I purchased had some surface rust. I decided to coat my rebar in Rustoleum spray paint to keep my hands and vehicle from getting filthy during transport and setup. As the clear instructions show, you insert two lengths of rebar into the bottom of the bracket until they protrude from the top, then pull the rebar outward till they snap in place.

Once that is done, you take the two remaining lengths of rebar and place them in the center hole of each bracket and splay the legs out a little. If you are using chain to hang a steel target from the stand, you would add them while doing this part of the assembly.

Now the stand should be set up and looks like this:

  One thing I really like is the ability to adjust for elevation. Getting down into a gully or ditch gives you a nice backstop and if the terrain is uneven, the stand will still be nice and level. Hard to see in this pic, but the ground nearer the tree is higher. You can see by how much rebar is sticking out the top on that side that I shortened that side to accommodate.

Once you are done shooting, the stand folds up nicely and is easily transported and stored. I may find or make a bag to carry these in.

All in all, a pretty cool little setup. There are some videos on their page where you can see this being used with different types of targets. I plan on getting an AR500 steel plate as my main target as well as some clips to hold paper targets for handguns and smaller caliber stuff. Hopefully once I get the targets added and get this out into the field, I will be able to get some pictures