The Caldwell Shooting Gallery

Caldwell are known for producing all sorts of useful accessories for the shooting industry from rifle rest to targets and even bi/ tripods. Now they have come up with a cracker of a piece of equipment that will sharpen up your aim, improve your shooting skills and guarantee to have you grinning from ear to ear.

The new Shootin’ Gallery is a trip down memory lane when as a lad those fairground rotating ducks lured all my pocket money away on a Saturday afternoon. This motorised moving target system is very well made, affordable and comes as a kit form to assemble at home. It is designed for .22 rimfire use only and when switched on via the rechargeable battery gives hours of never ending resetting circular targets. Its heavy duty construction ensures durability and after a few passes of the targets you are hooked, but beware you will eat through ammo as those targets keep popping straight back up again.

SPEC

When assembled, which is easy with the good instructions and tools included, although it will take an hour or so you have a fully motorised and moveable target system. It is 35.5” long and 12” high standing on four sturdy legs that tilt the gallery slightly forward to deflect bullets downwards. On soft ground a piece of plywood helps to stop it sinking.

The 9” high front plate is made from hardened steel and there’s an additional, heat-treated steel impact plate you attach to the top of the front one to provide more shot protection as this is the heaviest hit area.

There are eight targets with four showing at any one time move from left to right at one speed, they are visible for about five - six seconds to shoot. Dimensions are 2” in diameter and they are a robust ½” thick. You attach them to the gallery via heavy cotter and split pins, this allows them to be replaced and flip down after they are shot. Due to their weight they stay down and don`t bounce back up.

The targets are attached to a rotating chain assembly, preassembled, like a bike chain that rotates around two pulleys one attached to an electric motor. This is powered by a re-chargeable 6V battery that is attached below the motor in its own armoured box.

LET US SPRAY!

There is no remote so set up at a minimum of 25 yards distance and then retire to the firing line. Make sure there is a safe back drop and start shooting those movers. There is also a supply of high Vis sticky targets to attach to the discs. Caldwell recommends only standard velocity .22LR ammunition to avoid damage so I complied. The targets fall when hit with a convincing “clang” and stay down until they reach the end of the line. Then as they rotate around the edge of the gallery they fall straight again due to gravity and at a sloped angle so when they reappear at the other end they are up right again. It’s so simple its fool proof and means there is very little to go wrong.

You will get the odd stray shot or more on the front plate and here at 25 yards all that happens is a lead splatter and paint removed with hardly a dent at all.

More importantly throughout the testing and that was many thousands of rounds at Christmas there was not one ricochet. I did put additional protection in front of the battery box as it sits low on the front plate but it did not need it. Battery life will vary due to temperature, it was icy at Christmas and we had on average of 1 ½-2 hours of nonstop rotating moving fun.

To spice it up a bit we fitted the new Firebird exploding targets to some of the 2 inch discs, wow they really livened up things with no damage at all. Also if the gallery is elevated a bit we attached other paper targets to the discs , in this case Zombies!, again great fun.

CONCLUSIONS

The Caldwell Shooting Gallery is a highly addictive, portable shooting system suitable for the individual or gun club. It is very well built and heavy and should last for ages with a reasonable battery life. A remote ON/OFF switch would be a good idea to get the most out of the battery.

It only has one speed but that’s fine as it is still testing to shoot those small targets and you can always set them up at longer range to stretch your skills a bit more.