It is always nice to see your name in a major publication, especially when they are taking a look at your products. Our friends over at Athlon Outdoors recently took a look at our HDP 50 Compact pepper dust ball pistol.
In case you need a refresher, the HDP 50 Compact launches .50 caliber solid rubber or dust ammo at 360 FPS. This force will hopefully provide both a kinetic and sensory blast to an attacker via the pepper dust and raw impact from the hit.
The writer, Tim Stetzer, says of the HDP 50 Compact has “Simplicity by Design” And this is true. For the HDP to be truly effective as a personal protection option, it has to be simple. Simple things are harder to break. Simple things are easy to use. Simple things just perform.
Says Stetzer, “The gun has no external controls other than the charging button on the bottom. The HDP fires with a double-action-only trigger. The trigger has a Glock-style blade safety, so there’s no need to manipulate a manual safety before use.”
The HDP 50 Compact being simple does not handicap it in accuracy. The author of the article had no trouble stacking rounds on top of each other in his testing. “Despite the basic sights, I was surprised at the accuracy of the HDP. The trigger is fairly long but not overly heavy at only 5.75 pounds of pull. At 10 yards, I was able to drop .50 cal rubber balls on top of each other in one tight group.”
So how well can someone with very limited shooting experience do with the HDP 50 Compact? Stetzer had a volunteer in his friend’s daughter. “She has very minimal shooting experience. However, after a round or two to get used to the trigger, she was also stacking rounds on top of each other. The complete lack of recoil and noise with the CO2-powered pistol certainly helped her quickly master the system.”
Is the HDP 50 Compact for you? That is a firm maybe. There are situations where a less lethal response is preferred to no response or too much response. Are you prepared for more than just a handful of scenarios?
As the author phrases it, “I can also see it being very useful for someone who doesn’t have access to a firearm, who isn’t comfortable using a firearm, or who lives in a restrictive area that makes firearms ownership difficult. For those folks, something like the HDP 50 gives them an option that’s better than harsh language and prayers.”
We get it. Ammo is expensive. Firearms are expensive. Everything these days is expensive. There is a brightside to the P2P story, however. We know how hard it is to budget for “insurance” items and we priced the HDP 50 Compact accordingly. For less than $120 you can pick up the HDP 50 Compact and for just a few bucks more, you can add extra ammo and 8 gram CO2 cartridges to you order so you can get in some more practice time.
Read the whole blog on Athlon Outdoors by clicking here!