How do *you* peg your bosses?

Cereleste

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Hello all,
At tournaments last summer, I saw a wide range of configurations of pegs, stakes, and guy ropes used to secure varying weights and geometriesof bosses on different hardnesses of ground. Anything from 2 pegs to 4 pegs to 2 ropes to 2 pegs+1 rope etc.
Is there a standard/guideline for this anywhere? Or is it a case of adding more pegs/ropes until the boss stops getting blown over?
I ask partly because my local range uses large Danage bosses with a tent peg in each corner and a guy rope pegged behind, into ground that starts out fairly soft in spring but over the last few summers has ended up rock hard. While it doesn't take that long to set them all up, there's a fair bit of hammering and fixing inevitably bent pegs and if half as many did the same job then it would save time and finger pain.
I don't think I've been to any competitions with as complicated a setup, though most have used layered foam or much heavier straw. I have half a mind to try toppling a boss via a rope attached to my bow scale to measure the difference in force it takes with several peg configurations to see whether it makes much difference, but if someone's done that already or has a handy rule of thumb then I won't go to the rather silly effort.
So, what system does your range use with what bosses, and on what sort of ground (and what sort of wind exposure do you get)?
 

bimble

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for most of the year we just use a single guy rope out the back... extra guy ropes can be added if needed. Our new bosses have large pegs through the frame, but that's mostly because they are on four wheels so would move, rather than stopping them from falling over.
 

dvd8n

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I don't know what kind of pegs you use but if the ground is genuinely hard / rocky then you would probably be better off with Hard Ground Pegs aka Rock Pegs - something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Diamond-Hard-Ground-Orange/dp/B00BQZDL0Y?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_1 - they're made from hardened steel and will go into any ground without bending using a decent mallet or, as they're hardened steel, a proper hammer. You don't need to get them from Amazon - they pop up in the likes of Lidl and Aldi quite often. If the ground's really hard then you can get screw in ones but they are almost certainly overkill.
 

Cereleste

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Hi dvd8n - we've already got a mix of pegs like those, and aluminium ones with the same diameter and a handle that's a bit easier on the fingers. We've unfortunately also got a big bag of those steel pegs with a 20 degree bend halfway along the length from when people hammer them at the wrong angle; they're harder to bend back to straight than the aluminium ones.
Bimble - what do you use the other portion of the year when it's not just the guy rope? How do you decide if it's time to change up/down from the guy rope?
 

bimble

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They're all solid, fixed stands (these are the best photos I have of them, (they now have wheels on the front legs to make moving by one person easy). To be honest, we tied them down with the Feb storms this year, otherwise they are left out, year round, with just the guy rope at the back. Very occasionally there's a wind storm bad enough to blow one or two over. But that'll be conditions bad enough that no-one is there shooting, so they're just picked back up when someone is next down the field.



 

geoffretired

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One thing about guy ropes that is not intuitive is that the nearer to the top of the boss or stand, the more likely it is to pull the whole thing backwards. It pulls the front legs upwards. Sometimes the thinking is that the ropes being at the top, will prevent the boss from falling forward at the top. That is true, but the other effect is to lift the front legs. On a tripod stand, the front legs just need to become a little "light" because of the pulling from behind; then it all falls over as the back leg is the only firm one.
Danage types need lots of down force applied, sometimes at each leg. Sometimes via a long spike into the ground somewhere inside the "footprint " of the three or four legs.
 

Emmadragon

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Ours are like the ones bimble describes - we have a foam boss in a large frame, with four wheels, 2 at the front and 2 at the back. There are holes in the lower part of the framework so there are 2 pegs into the ground at each side of the bottom of the frame, and then a third peg attached to 2 guy ropes simultaneously; 1 set attached at the top, and the other set attached halfway down the frame. The only time that ever hasn't been enough was during the recent storms. And even then, several of the bosses just got wheeled around the field by the wind, rather than being blown over. They are very heavy, but still movable by a single person when not fastened down.
There's a lump hammer permanently out on the field for use if needed, but the back pegs are very strong, and the side pegs are kept straight by being hammered through the holes in the framework.
 
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