Thanks to all those who bought and showed interest in my Improved Silent Pellet Trap  over the years. I made and sold over 400 traps in various designs and woods since producing them for the 1999 Roanoke international Airgun Show. In early 2005, I stopped making them to spend more time with my growing flock of 4 kids. I am very pleased to announce that I have licensed the design to Archer Airguns. They have kept the essence of my design while being able to offer the trap at a reasonable price. Please visit their site link above.

I had been using a Beeman Silent Pellet Trap with ballistic putty for years. I noticed some problems with the trap and designed an improved version.

• DEEPER TRAP: The old trap has less than 1 inch from the ballistic putty to the back of the target. Once enough pellets cake up, the pellets will bounce back. In the old trap, I frequently had pellets bounce out of the trap. Since I shoot in my home, having pellets laying on the ground where children and animals can get the is unacceptable. My trap has 4-5 inches from putty to target and I have not had a single pellet bounce out in over 5000 shots. Of course, you should clean the caked pellets out of the trap periodically. The ballistic putty is reusable and should last practically forever.

• ACCEPTS LARGER TARGETS: The old trap was only big enough to accept preprinted, small and expensive targets. I made my trap big enough to accept targets I print off of my computer printer on 8.5x11 inch paper and it can still take the store bought targets. I recommend using recycled cream colored  heavy (24-28#) desktop publishing paper. This paper gives cleaner holes and will more closely resemble the color of store bought targets. It costs only a little more than cheap copy paper. Regular 20# copy paper will give many clean holes, but it will also give flaps just as wide as the pellet but a few times longer. I use Ian Pellant's ballistic software to print my targets.

Above you can see the clipboard with the hole cut out. There is a 2 inch deep piece of ¾ inch plywood under the putty. 10# of putty in my trap gives a full 2 inches of thickness. Below the plywood under the putty, there is space for thousands of spent pellets.

• CLIPBOARD TO HOLD TARGET: The old   trap used a piece of cardboard as a backer for the target and to attach the target to with pins or tape. The cardboard gets shredded over time leading to considerable mess, both inside and around the front of your trap. My trap uses a clipboard to hold the target, therefore no tape. The center of the clipboard is cut out as you can see in the pictures. I noticed that if I didn't use the cardboard backer, the holes were just as clean and there was no mess from cardboard. The clipboard holds the target well enough to get clean holes. The clipboard sides into a slot cut in the sides and bottom of the trap and the target (8.5x11inch) is held in place in the slot. Even the store bought smaller targets stay in place.
• RESERVOIR TO HOLD SPENT PELLETS: The putty never needs replaced. You simply clean or pick the pellets from the ballistic putty when they start to cake up and reshape the putty. In the old trap, the pellets fell down in front of the putty and had to be dumped out each time you clean it. In my trap the reservoir below the putty can hold from 3-5000 pellets before having to be emptied. I also put a piece of plywood below and behind the clipboard that has a beveled edge. This prevents debris from getting into the slot.