Halfway through the cocking process, with the shiny metal arms pulling the string back

This ‘opens’ the Stinger so that you can fold it in half - imagine holding a long stick out in front of your body, parallel to the ground with arms extended and a hand on each end, and you squeeze your hands downward and inward to turn the stick into a frowny face.

You cock the Stinger by pressing a thumb release lever where the stock meets the body, a natural position for your dominant hand. Many traditional products use a separate cocking tool while you put the crossbow nose-down to the ground and use your feet as an anchor: One of the main ways companies are trying to innovate is by making it easier to actually load, cock, and fire a crossbow. Ease of cocking is the biggest difference So I’m happy to see companies like Steambow work on this category, hope it continues, and it does seem like they’ve accomplished their goal of making a more universally-accessible crossbow. That’s why, over the last few years, a few companies have experimented with making crossbows more relevant for normal folks looking for something in between a toy and Hollywood. Which means most normal folks don’t really engage with crossbows, leaving it to Hollywood badasses like Daryl from The Walking Dead or Katniss from The Hunger Games. Traditional crossbows can be mechanically complicated, physically hard to cock, are heavy and bulky, expensive, don’t fire enough rounds quickly enough to help in a ‘tactical’ situation, etc. But, as discussed in TP’s roundup of the best survival bows, crossbows in particular usually aren’t a good choice. If you’re relying on a knife, pepper spray, or even a hunting trap, that requires getting very close to the target, which is harder or riskier.Īrrows are usually the best consistent way to put non-firearm projectiles down range. But self/home defense and hunting become much more difficult without guns because you can’t hit things far away from you. It’s okay if you can’t or don’t want to have firearms. Although I don’t have a lot of crossbow experience, I find them mechanically interesting and have wanted better answers when people ask about firearm alternatives. The build quality is roughly the same as the cheapest AR-15s, for example. seems fine, although I’d like to see the overall cost (including the bolts you need) closer to $300-325. The bolts do not always fly consistently, hit the target straight on, etc.

The limiting factor is accuracy, since you still have enough ‘power’ at 50+ feet but it becomes impractical to hit what you’re aiming at.

The effective range is about 50 feet (15 m) in a self defense situation where you’re aiming at someone’s torso and about 25-30 feet (8 m) when hunting small game like rabbits.

Besides being recreationally fun, the Stinger mostly makes sense if you can’t or don’t want to have a firearm, yet still want to be able to hit targets on the other side of the room/house/yard instead of being limited to something like a baseball bat.

I’m glad this product exists and hope to see more focus put into the “crossbows for normal people’s prepping” category.

120 lb pistol crossbow