I guess it was a fit of marketing optimism that Daisy decided to provide its audience with an indoor shooting opportunity, presumably for the snowy months.

Rick, I should have known to run this by you first (could have saved me a lot of research). I have here the page from Bob Boccaccio’s 2003 book which ID’ed the unit for me. This was the ONLY reference I could find for this bell target.

Bob's book says this box uses a target 4 ½ ” by 5 3/4”. My cut-to-fit paper gives me a flat paper fit of 4 ½ ” wide by 5 7/16” tall. Now, I must say the four metal corners are not ‘square’ pockets, as they are slightly dome shaped and tight on the outer dimensions. Bob’s reference also says these targets are of “heavy cardstock”, the thickness of which I cannot determine, but as an approximation, a thickness of 10 post-it notes seems to be a rough gauge.

 Rick, for your information I’m including an ad from a 1910 British sporting magazine which features an “Improved Daisy” pellet catcher box. I don’t know if it was a Daisy product.

 By the way, my neighbor was looking over this No 21 box, and said something that might explain why these things are so uncommon. He said: “You know, when this thing was new and shiny I bet it was too pretty to shoot at. No wonder no one bought them…”.

Well, thanks to the reproduction magic of  Daisytalk member jackdog (aka ricksu) I have put the reproduced (circa 1911) target into the No. 21 Bell target. Here is an indoors photo, and an outdoors photo.

 When I read through the patent description, the designer had two uses in mind. One was to shoot thru the paper target and let the lead shot smack into the steel backing (or ring the bullseye gong), and then fall into the box (thru the lower slot) for disposal.

 Or second, the half-inch space behind the paper target could be ‘layered with felt’ so as to preserve the lead shot for reuse.

 Most kids probably didn’t have ‘felt’ available, but cutting up dad’s newspaper to fit behind the target probably worked just as well. If I let my imagination run wild, then possibly back in the spring of 1912 some kid was chopping up newspaper for this purpose, and the headline of  that paper read “Titanic strikes iceberg”.

Or not: as most kids probably cut up the funny pages.