By: Will
I spent a good part of my childhood blowing ammo out of Ruger 10/22s and Mini 14 carbines…..and when I say “blowing ammo” I mean like…….. we would come home and there would be .22 casing in our boots. Heck, in all honesty, our Lego boxes had .22 ammo floating around in them! Somehow my brother and I survived and I can’t remember there ever being a time when we had any accidental discharges or pointed guns at each other……….. other than the one time we were on our horses and had a long range gun fight with CCI mini mag snake rounds. Remember those? The ones with the blue see-through caps…..yea that was stupid.
So what is the point of all this rambling and what does it have to do with the Guns Gong Crazy AR500 Target? Well, looking back, my brother and I shot a ton of rounds but when it came to accuracy you just don’t learn much about marksmanship by emptying multiple pre ban Hot Lips .22 mags into empty Mt. Dew cans……….
Introducing the Guns Gong Crazy Shooting Target!
The Guns Gong Crazy Shooting Target is a quality, easily stored, gong target system that won’t break the bank. The components are clearly thought out and at under $250 for the AR500 version, its hard to justify not trying it out for weekend plinking or even professional training use.
What is inside:
When your brand new Guns Gong Crazy Shooting Target arrives, (try saying that outloud three times in a row), you will find all the components neatly arranged and secured for shipment.
Inside the box you will find the AR500 or AR400 steel gong, depending on the model purchased, as well as the collapsible stand, windage flag and hardware/kevlar straps. Also included, is a can of orange paint and a magnetic stencil featuring a circular patterns cumulating in the bullseye.
The Target Stand:
The collapsible stand features a robust handle, flimsy and useless shoulder strap, and a small black velcro strap to keep the legs secured during transport. The blue paint helps differentiate the stand from the rest of the target but as you will see in subsequent photos, that didn’t stop us from shooting….I mean, testing out its durability.
At first I was rather apprehensive of the stability that the folding target stand would provide as the legs just didn’t seem like they were wide enough. My concerns quickly faded though as the stand, when placed on even ground, didn’t appear to be unstable in any way and the steel hanging from it actually seemed to distribute the weight and increased stability.
The AR500 Gong:
The gong itself hangs from two extremely durable kevlar straps which swing free via “S” hooks. The straps proved extremely resilient to 9mm, .308 and a handful of other rounds that we intentionally tested on them at close range. Furthermore, I see no reason why the straps wouldn’t continue to serve their purpose for years to come. And if they don’t? You can easily purchase replacement straps here.
The Guns Gong Crazy Shooting Target comes with some useful little doodads like a collapsible, magnetic flag and the target stencil. Both the stencil and the windage flag will prove useful to long range shooters concerned about accuracy.
Performance:
We started off shooting the target from 200 + yards away with a Springfield Armory SOCOM II. Unfortunately we only had open sights (post your snide, anti optic, remarks in the comments below) so our long range hits while sporadic, did ring out clearly emphasizing the joy that is shooting steel. The SOCOM II was the same rifle we featured years ago and, while its kind of a Frankenstein at the moment, it served its purpose and I’m super thankful to Opie for bringing it out. See what it used to look like!
We also shot the target with both my personal San Tan Tactical SBR and Opie’s SIG 556 SBR. (Thats Opie rocking the Overwatchdesigns.com Overwatch World T-Shirt)
After hammering the target for some time at varying distances, (yea we ignored the legal advice on the stand), we walked up and began inspecting the AR500 steel and the behavior of the bullets after striking the target face. Interestingly enough, the rounds had been directed downward and produced a consistent line in the desert floor. This is a good thing seeing ricochets, while excellent for producing youtube comedy clips, are dangerous! Says Capt. Obvious!
Not surprisingly, the AR500 steel showed no signs of damage and gets a resounding thumbs up!
What could be improved:
If there was anything that needed to be improved it would be the shoulder strap and velcro strap securing the legs. Both seemed cheesy and Im sure they would both break and or get lost over time. In the case of the shoulder strap, I’m not even sure its necessary. Both parts almost seem irrelevant to the whole package anyways so I wouldn’t even worry about them.
Where to Find It:
In Conclusion:
The real beauty of the Guns Gong Crazy Shooting Target is its quality without loosing portability. The price is also of note and, at just under $200 for the AR400 and $250 for the AR500 version its hard to come up with an valid excuse not to get one.
Add in the fact that all the parts on the gong are replaceable, and you are going to be hard pressed to find a better deal out there.
Finally, I don’t know if the Guns Gong Crazy Shooting Target would have helped with my Mom’s exasperation of finding .22 rounds in the wash machine, but it certainly would have helped me become a better shooter and If there is one thing that I want our readers to take away from this review, aside from the quality of the system itself, is the usefulness of having a quality target to hone your skills on.
We will continue to feature the Guns Gong Crazy Shooting Target whenever we go shooting and I would like to personally apologize to the guys at Guns Gong Crazy for the delay in getting this review published as it took waaay too long.
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