靶

Left-side leather radical — pictograph of an animal hide stretched out to dry, head at top and tail below. The indexing radical here, supplying the meaning: archery targets were originally stretched leather hides hung on a frame, with painted concentric circles. The radical puts 靶 in the hide-equipment family alongside 鞋 shoe, 鞭 whip, 鞍 saddle.

Right side 巴 supplies the sound — bā shifting to bǎ through a tone change. 巴 itself originally pictured a coiled snake; the connection to targets is purely phonetic. Same phonetic appears in 把 grasp, 爸 dad, 吧 final particle — all sharing the ba reading and easy to bundle as a cluster when memorizing.