Shooting at paper can be boring and lame. If you don’t agree, it’s because you haven’t placed the optic on your precision rifle over a piece of distant steel and pressed the trigger—waiting for that infectious ding to make its way back to your ears.

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The benefits of steel targets are pretty obvious. They provide instant visual and audible feedback to the shooter. You can place them much farther away than paper targets. They rarely need to be repaired or replaced, and they can be permanent installations or mobile.

The Ultimate MGM Targets Torture Test

Of course, like any other product, steel targets come in varying levels of quality and you get what you pay for. That cheap gun-show steel target with an irresistible price tag will seem awfully expensive once you ding it really good or put a jacketed round through it while shooting with the crew. Not even the good stuff can stand up to M855 steel-core ammunition. However, for anything other than that, quality steel can take a good licking.

This brings us to MGM Targets, which has taken the quality of steel targets to a whole new level. I saw this firsthand when I attended a torture test of sorts that included hitting steel targets with everything from your standard 5.56mm rounds to the hard-hitting .300 Winchester Magnum and .338 Lapua Magnum. The company also brought along an M249, an M60E and an M240 just to keep things honest. And in case that wasn’t enough, the folks from Dillon Aero rolled up in an SUV with a Dillon M134 minigun on top. Yes, they used a minigun to test rifle-grade steel—from a distance of only 40 yards.

For more information, visit MGMtargets.com.

Watch the video above to get a better idea of my experience. Want to read this entire story? Head over to OutdoorGroupStore.com and pick up a digital or physical copy of Ballistic Magazine’s 2019 Precision issue today.