American Eagle .223 damaging gong?

[bongoz]

I got a Fraser Valley 12x12" square gong last Christmas as a present and it's been awesome! only been shooting it with PMC .223 and it's held up great. I'm also using the Fraser Valley mounting brackets with chain and rebar which works great!

Today I was shooting a mix of PMC ammo and some spare American Eagle .223 I had lying around.

I noticed some pretty significant pock marks that I've never seen before. I was able to narrow it down to the American Eagle ammo that was causing the damage.

All the shots where at 100 yards minimum:






My crappy pictures make it hard to see the depth of the pock marks. But you can see above the light marks that are not shiny is the PMC and the shiny marks are the American Eagle.

I'm not too worried about it. The Damage is not awful and I'm sure it will still last me a long time even if I continue to shoot it with the AE .223

I just thought it was strange how the American Eagle damaged the target significantly more.

Does anyone else have experience with this american eagle .223 in the red box? I'm sorta curious to try the gong with some other .223 to see if it's maybe just an issue with the american eagle?

[Still alive]

I've used the same ammo on the same FV AR500 steel at 25yds with no noticeable pockmarking.
We were asked to torture test the targets to see if they would hold up for the members and they looked fine after the session.

[Runningfool]

That damage seems excessive. Are you sure in your "mix of pmc ammo" there was no green-tipped pmc xtac ammo? That stuff has steel in the projectile.

Edited to add: in re-reading your post, I'm guessing you meant a mix of pmc and AE ammo not a mix of pmc ammo plus some AE ammo. At any rate, I would take a magnet and check the projectiles of you ammo - factory could have mixed up projectiles and maybe your batch of AE has steel core.

[Tikka223]

A couple of my AR500 gongs have similar pock marks and I too was wondering what ammo caused it. I've only ever shot American Eagle out of my AR and Swiss Arms. The AE I was mostly shooting was the black box AR223 or whatever it's called that you get at Canadian Tire. .308 SMK and Bergers haven't left any marks.

[CraigNConnor]

Thicker jackets on AE

[bobbyd11]

My uncles tavor does the same thing when he shoots his ar500 steel setup. 223 doesn't mess around I guess haha.

[greentips]

Interesting. I saw the same thing with a steel target two weeks ago. At first, I was jacking people up for using M855, but no one was using any!

We did shoot some AE 223 that day.

If it is a M855, there should be a smaller deep dimple created by the steel tip.

[GUB]

The 62 gr PMC green tip seems to mark up my plate. Even past 250 yds

[Sarge_DL]

What distances are you shooting at? I'm pretty sure AR500 steel is supposed to be shot no closer than 100 yards when using .223.

[coleman1495]

Its funny you should post this. I have a 1/2" AR500 gong which was purchased through Hoplite Tactical ( I think it came from Fraser Valley- Don't Know for sure). Anyways the black box AE is leaving the same kind of divots in the surface.