Booth first look: this is a SHOT Show 2022 booth interview with Connor from Hammer Targets, published February 28, 2022. I did not have the target home for range testing and evaluation when this was filmed, so treat it as a look back at the 2022 launch, not a T&E. For our later hands-on take, see Hammer Targets: Shoot Steel Anywhere?
Squat Squad, over the past few years millions of brand-new gun owners have come into the hobby, and a lot of you are now moving from handguns into rifles and longer range. That usually means you need better targets. Paper is boring, and it does not give you the instant feedback you want. If you have your own range or your own property where you can set up targets, this is the booth I was most excited to visit at SHOT Show 2022: Hammer Targets, a small, family-run company out of Emmett, Idaho.
Connor and I had swapped a couple of emails before the show, and I told him I had to see this thing in person. This article sticks to what was on the table in 2022: the modular stake target itself, why the design keeps splatter down, the AR500 cowbell, and the platform stages. Our earlier Hammer Targets article covers the separate review video.
TL;DR (as taped in 2022)
- What it is: a portable, stake-in steel target system that breaks down into three pieces and is held together with R-clips (hitch pins). No tools needed.
- Setup: under a minute. A built-in slide hammer drives the stake into the ground, and a fin keeps it from rotating.
- Safety angle: the gong head is welded at an angle so splatter goes down into the dirt in front of the target, and the swinging head moves when hit.
- Modular: swap the head. Sleeves let you hang your own AR500 plates on chains, and platform stages hold bottles, cans, or even archery targets.
- The fun one: an AR500 cowbell that Connor said rings out far louder than a plain plate past 1,000 yards.
- Made in the USA: built in-house from cold-rolled and AR500 steel sourced from American companies.
- Today: the Hammer Targets site currently says the company is rebranding and product availability is paused. Check there before you plan on one.
Built to ride in the truck
Connor’s goal was something as portable and usable as possible: a target that rides on the seat of your truck or car and goes wherever you go. He takes it out to BLM land in the desert, family land up in the mountains, wherever. It breaks down into three pieces held together with little R-clips, and it is small enough to fit inside a rifle case.
I asked about that, because it sounded almost too good. The only part that gave him any trouble was the length of the neck. In some hard rifle cases it runs a touch long, but in his soft case it was no issue at all.
Setup is the slick part. Snap it together, then use the built-in slide hammer to drive it into place. Once you get past the fin, the fin holds the target and stops it from rotating while you shoot. Connor said he has put hundreds of rounds on it in a day without walking out to readjust it once.
There is also a curve built into the upright. That is there for dampening: when the target gets hit, the force has somewhere to go instead of driving the stake up and out of the ground. Along with the fin, that is why it stays put.
Why the angle matters
This is the point I wanted to hammer on, pun intended. On tape, Connor said the head is welded at a 20-degree angle so splatter and spalling go straight down into the ground in front of the target, with no real risk of ricochets coming back at the shooter. (The current Hammer Targets site lists the gong at 11 degrees, so the design may have changed since 2022. Go by the maker’s current listing.) They have tested it closer than they probably should have, with good results, and they posted video of the splatter pattern on their social media.
I shared why that matters to me. I shot USPSA Nationals out in the desert, and out there you can hit a rock and have it come right back at you. It is also a big reason I avoid static steel, especially static steel matches. If the target is not moving, a bullet jacket can come right back at you, and someone can get seriously hurt. Connor said ricochets with targets they had used in the past were exactly what pushed this design. His father, who was very safety-focused, built it around two things: the angle of the gong and the rotation the head is allowed when it gets hit.
Bring your own steel
The kit ships with Hammer Targets’ own gong, but you are not locked into it. They added sleeve heads that let you hang any of your own AR500 steel from chains. That keeps the free-floating plate idea, so most of the fragments still get driven down into the ground. If you already started a small steel collection (I joked about the Walmart plates), you can keep using it instead of letting it sit in the closet.
The AR500 cowbell
Connor called the cowbell his favorite thing at the booth. They almost did not bring it, and he was glad they did, because it was a hit. It is an AR500 cowbell that he figured weighs just over five or six pounds, and the resonance is ridiculous. His point: past the 1,000-yard mark you can still hear a hit on a plate, but it is nowhere near the sound coming back off the cowbell. At the show it was their very first one, with production planned within weeks.
Platform stages: shoot anything
When I noticed the neck comes off, I said it would be really cool to have a tray table. People want reactive targets, and they want to blow up soda cans or set up ballistic gelatin, but whatever table you put out there is going to get shot up too. Connor had already beaten me to it: platform stages that go on in place of the gong, so you can stack bottles or anything else you like on top.
The original idea was actually archery. They wanted to stand archery targets up anywhere around the house without finding a permanent spot for them, and it grew from there as people came up with creative uses. On tape, the platforms were slated to go up on the website next to the cowbell.
What calibers can it take?
The gong that comes with the kit is the handgun target, at 3/8-inch AR500. Connor said it is good for handguns at pretty much any range and for most rifle rounds past the 100-yard mark. For bigger calibers at closer distances, they offered half-inch steel gongs. I mentioned that some companies rate 3/8 as rifle-rated even closer in, and Connor said they would rather be conservative so the steel holds up over the long run. They did not want someone to hammer on it for a year at too close a range and walk away thinking the product failed, when really no steel takes heavy calibers that close for that long. Replacement parts were available too.
Made in America, built to be affordable
At the time, sales went only through the Hammer Targets website. The complete kit came with everything you need to start shooting, with the extra gongs and other heads sold separately. Connor’s philosophy: focus on the shooting, not the setup, and keep it affordable so you can spend your money on guns instead of targets.
I pushed back a little on the word “cheap,” because the quality in hand was really good. Handling it at the booth, it felt like it matched or beat what I have seen from some of the more established steel target companies. Everything was made in-house from cold-rolled and AR500 steel bought from American companies, and when I asked where the steel was actually sourced, the answer was American steel.
Our take
For anyone who shoots on open land, a target that lives in the truck, stakes in under a minute, and keeps splatter down is a smart answer to a real problem. The modular heads and platforms make it more than a one-trick gong. That said, this was a 2022 booth look. The company’s site now says it is rebranding and availability is paused, so check hammertargets.com before you count on one, and always follow the steel maker’s minimum distances for your caliber.
Links
- Hammer Targets (official site): hammertargets.com
- Related on SlavGuns: Hammer Targets: Shoot Steel Anywhere?
- Everything else I run: SlavGuns Amazon storefront
- Precision accessories & Anarchy parts (code SlavGuns on Anarchy-made only): slav.li/anarchyoutdoors
- Support the channel: join the Squat Squad on YouTube
Would you run a stake-in steel target like this on your land, or do you stick with a full stand? And who wants to hear that cowbell at 1,000 yards? Drop it in the comments. Thanks for reading, and keep on squatting!
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