How Long Range Can the Hellcat Pro 9mm Go?

By GunSpot

We have had a chance to try out the Hellcat Pro 9mm since its launch, with Grant having put more than 4,000 rounds through his. During all our testing, the Hellcat Pro has proven to be a gun capable of more accuracy than most shooters will be able to even take advantage of. This is remarkable considering it is designed to be a compact CCW pistol — albeit one that holds an astounding 15 rounds of 9mm and handles and shoots like a much larger gun.

I have no doubt that if the Hellcat Pro were in a lab setting that it could shoot tight groups out to nearly 200 yards with quality ammo. But for most, human error will end up preventing those kinds of results.

The Challenge: How Far Can I Shoot the Hellcat Pro?

But, just for the heck of it, we decided to see how far we could land hits on a 30”x18” steel silhouette, pushing it all the way out to nearly 200 yards. We came up with a “game,” if you want to think of it that way. But, it’s important to point out we still stayed safe and practiced proper gun safety.

The idea of our challenge is to first make sure we have a good 10-yard zero on our Hellcat Pro. Then, we would shoot at 25 yards for five shots, and if we get a hit we move it back 25 and then 25 more until we could no longer could produce quality hits.

While we could have helped minimize the effects of human error by benching the gun during all this, we decided to fire standing offhand — because, why make it easy, right?

This is a fun exercise that keeps ammo usage low and lets you challenge your brain and lets you really work on how you pull your trigger.

The Zero

We chose to zero the Hellcat Pro at 10 yards as this is the distance Grant usually does personally. Once Grant did this, he shot a confirmation group at 25 yards. We also made sure to have all the same ammunition for our test.

For this project, we used Remington 115-gr. UMC ammunition that Remington provided for this project. We can’t thank Remington enough for helping us secure enough rounds for our project.

Then, we set up a quick place to rest the gun 10 yards away from the target. Grant actually cut a foam yoga block and used a small sandbag to build a stable shooting platform. From there he fired a few slow concentrated fire shots onto a paper target, taking note of the impacts and making adjustments as needed. Once Grant had a tight zero, we moved back to 25 yards and went standing and offhand.

Moving Out

Once scooted back to 25 yards, it was easy to shoot a tight group, and 25 yards is probably on the longer end of where most pistol gunfights would occur.

At 50 yards, we saw the group start to open up. The Hellcat Pro is way more capable than most shooters, including us. So here at 50 yards, Grant started to see some human error introduce into shots creating a group of about 6” with a few shots landing right of his intended point of impact. But with another hit and five out of five total hits, it was time to step it back to 75 yards.

Now we moved it back to 75 yards. It’s hard to keep track of rounds once your competitive spirit kicks in. So naturally, Grant got trigger-happy, firing six total shots and hitting four of the six. He shot a great first hit right below his intended point of impact, and I think the thrill and fun got to him as he fired an extra shot.

Back at 100 yards, Grant hit his first shot, missed the second, hit three and four, and missed shot number five. This group ended up being all good torso hits, with around an 8” spread. At 100 yards, the slightest bit of human flinch and wind pushing on your body is enough to cause a missed shot. From here on, of course, it only got tougher.

Crazy Long

This one was crazy. Grant moved back to 125 yards and fired five total shots again. This time, he hit the first four in a row and missed his fifth shot. His holdover was high enough that he missed a center torso shot, but ended up having two headshots, one in the shoulder and the four must have been a pair somewhere. We heard the ding on the steel of the fourth but could not see a separate impact. Since we got a total of four hits, we stepped back to 150.

At 150 yards, we started to notice a big dip in what we were capable of. Grant shot five shots as usual and missed the first two, hit the middle shot and missed the last two. The one-hit Grant produced was in the bottom left of the steel silhouette, almost completely in the bottom corner. But that still gave us one hit, which meant it was time to step it back all the way to 175 yards.

The Last Step

Let’s be honest, it’s crazy to be pushing a 3.7” -barreled concealed carry pistol in 9mm out to 150 yards — much less, beyond. Again, this distance is extreme for the Hellcat Pro, but we like to live on the edge, and as we stated, the pistol is a shooter.

Grant shot five and missed all five. Then the fun happened. I (Dylan) decided “what the heck, I will give it a shot”. So, I had Grant film me trying it at this distance. I missed the first shot, but I landed the second shot! So, we were still able to get hits on steel at 175 yards with the Hellcat Pro — and you can believe that I made sure Grant knew I had pulled it off!

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, most of the distances in this are not even applicable to defensive handgun usage. These are more fitting to carbine and rifle ranges. But, it can be fun to take a pistol like the Hellcat Pro that is intended for everyday carry and push it to its limits.

More accurately, it pushes you to your limits because we believe this is a pistol that can outperform the shooter. The Hellcat Pro is capable of much more than we were able to do with it, but we had a great time challenging ourselves and simply having fun on the range. And just look at the results — a hit at nearly 200 yards with a CCW-ready pistol. We’ll take that as a win!

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