Birchwood Casey

Birchwood Casey have been making things that go on guns and things you shoot at since 1948. Three of their products have outlived most of the companies that once competed with them: Tru-Oil, the stock finish gunsmiths still reach for; Perma Blue, for touching up worn bluing at the kitchen table; and Shoot-N-C, the reactive target that changed how people practise.

Shoot-N-C is the one most shooters meet first. A black coating over a bright chartreuse layer, so every hit opens a ring of colour you can read from the firing point — no walking down between groups, no squinting through a spotting scope, and it works in the flat light of a winter afternoon when an ordinary paper target has gone grey. They come from three inches up to twelve, each size suited to a different distance and a different gun.

Alongside them sit Target Spots: plain fluorescent discs, self-adhesive, that turn a cardboard box or a spent target into a fresh bull. Less clever than the Shoot-N-C, and useful precisely because they are simple.