Target Shooting - Is Anyone Telling The Truth?

I shot bullseye pistol and rifle during portions of the 60's and 70's. I was serious about it and competed in a lot of big matches, All Army, All Services, Perry, etc. I was not in the same league with the likes of Bill Blankenship, Hershel Anderson or Bonnie Harmon, but I shot with them often.

Even so I could shoot one ragged hole at 25 yards in timed fire most of the time and I could, in competition, stay in the ten ring in rapid fire most of the time. I quit Bullseye when red dot and scope sights came into the game. It violated my whole sense of what pistol shooting was all about. Joe Pascarello, whom I knew well, won Perry with a red dot sight around 1978 or 79. That ruined the game in my opinion. I never forgave him for that.

I took up PPC in the late 70's and early 80's. Then moved into IPSC for awhile. After I retired I got into Cowboy Action shooting, and I still shoot a couple of matches every month. I am blessed to have a range in my yard, so I can practice anytime I feel like it.

Today I am pushing 75 years. Though time has taken its toll, I can still outshoot anybody I currently know in terms of precision shooting. I'm just not as fast as I used to be. I consider myself to be a good shot but not a great shot. Nevertheless, I have know many great shots. So if somebody says he shot a two inch group at 25 yards, I accept it as truth. I also acknowledge that he was using a damned good gun.

Today, I have a cowboy shooting buddy who can at a signal draw a single action revolver with each hand and put ten rounds on a torso target in 1.89 seconds at a distance of 25 feet. That includes reaction to the beeper, drawing the pistols and having to manually cock the hammers for each shot all done in the blink of an eye. That sounds like BS, doesn't it? But it is fact.

If you want to be really good with a handgun, practice is important, but it isn't enough to just practice. It is competition that provides the impetus for striving for perfection, for analyzing every shot and finding and correcting errors in technique. Competition also teaches total concentration and focus; moreover, through competition, one learns how to eliminate or control stress. Bullseye is the discipline that truly teaches the fundamentals. When you have mastered the fundamentals move on to one of the "action" games. If you are getting older and don't have great mobility, then cowboy action shooting may be your game. If you just aren't interested in competition, then buy a timer and use it each time you practice. You can compete against your own best time in whatever drill you are working on.

I can pretty consistently get 2" groups in slow fire with my Rugert Mk. II Target w/red dot.

With a combat pistol... not so much.

My typical groups at 7 yards with a combat pistol are not that good, but I also practice shooting at combat speed at those ranges. I guess I shoot about 5-6" groups at that range, at combat speed.

Way back when, I shot some of the Atlantic Fleet matches when I was active Navy.

My combined slow and rapid fire groups were about the size of an orange at 25 yds, when I moved to 50 yds, it became the size of a large grapefruit.

I was shooting several hundred rounds a week though. I don't even attempt do shoot that tight now. And, even if I reloaded, there's no way I could afford to shoot that much.

I try to shoot center mass, be it the head or spine, and still shoot pretty decent. I can still call my shots most of the time, and know when the trigger breaks where the round went.

I don't know, with my buckmark, I can shoot about a fist sized group at 25 yard with a typical bull'seye stance, and two handed it's about the same. I think the majority of shooters I see at the range suck at pistol shooting because they jerk the trigger hard and flinch.
I also think the mechanical accuracy of pistols is neglected these days, stressing "combat accuracy". An old S&W model 15 can shoot great groups out to 50 yards, but I really doubt that a sig or berreta can come even close. I guess that's OK, but most people just say, "I hit the guy, good enough for me". Even with that hinderance, I saw a female cop shoot a hardball sized group with SD ammo at 25 yards with a Glock. I think with enough practice, that's what you should expect.

HB

I keep a group about the size of a paper plate. If it gets smaller, I shoot faster. If it gets bigger, I shoot slower.

Get a shot timer. Shoot for "threat-stopping accuracy", which is as accurate as you need to be to stop a threat as fast as you can. It doesn't take a 2" group at 25yds to stop a bad guy. It takes about a 8" group from 7-15 yards.

It's about how fast and how many rounds you can shoot with reasonable accuracy, not how accurate when taking 5 seconds between shots.

Practice

It's like anything. Do it enough times and you get proficient at it (whether you like it or not)!

For many years, I stopped shooting as I took up playing a musical instrument. The music and the instrument were my life.

I ran into a musician who had a gun magazine and I mentioned something about how I used to shoot, reload and all that. He said to me "there's no reason why you can't do BOTH!"

That was enlightening to me. Now I do both, although I usually put a lot more time into hunting than I do shooting. If I have a new gun, then I shoot a lot to work up a load for the gun, get used to the gun, how it shoots, how it feels, etc. Once I've picked a load, I load a bunch of ammo and then enjoy hunting.

This kind of accuracy often seems impossible to me, but a lot of guys on the Internet say otherwise, so it must be true. Of course, I’ve only been to the range twice this year.



At seven yards (21 feet), I can generally hold a three-inch group or a little better. I can also easily hit head-sized targets at 50 feet. That is after about six years of infrequent shooting.

~G. Fink

I get distracted with that sort of shooter because some of them are very unsafe.

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Well, that would be a problem. I started going to a new range. I play a little hookie and go when others (and I) ought to be working. Plus, this particular range doesn't seem to attract too many unsafe shooters. Still, the guy shooting his .44mag next to me, for example, doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I have switched to shooting more .22lr because it is cheaper to shoot and I can concentrate more on trigger control, etc. Hopefully that will help me a lot.

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+1. As you likely know, each .22 gun likes different ammo. If you haven't already, experiment to find its preferred ammo. Otherwise, you'll be fighting something you ought not to be fighting, rather than improving like you should.

I shoot pretty well at the combat distances, but the longer range stuff gives me fits.

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One "trick" is to aim small, miss small. I find that there's an optimum sized bullseye for any particular distance. And it ought to be well-defined (e.g., not made with a black marker). Experiment a little. For me, it's just over 1" per 10 yards, i.e. when shooting at 25 yards, I use a 2" Shoot-NC, since it just registers when I focus on the front sight. When I use a 4" Shoot-NC, the groups open. If I were to aim at an IDPA silhouette at that distance, my groups would be, um, bigger.

Another "trick" is to absolutely not peek at the target between shots to see how you're doing. I see that a lot, and it's a real accuracy killer. Find your natural point of aim, establish your sight picture, focus on the front sight (even during recoil) and don't take your concentration off it until you're done shooting.

Seems like the OP has been pretty well answered. Two inches at 25 yards offhand is in the neighborhood of NRA "Master" level shooting: extremely good, but there are a lot of NRA Master level shooters.

Beyond that, it's worth pointing out that the great majority of handgunners at the local range are clueless, lacking even basic information about sight picture, trigger control, etc. Five minutes of instruction will cut the groups those folks are shooting in half, at least. So comparing them to "serious", practiced shooters is kind of pointless.

OTOH, there is a LOT of pure unmitigated bullpucky printed here at THR, including the recent thread by the fellow claiming groups with his off-the-shelf .44 that would win any Olympics and/or World Championships ever held.

The bottom line is that, with enough shooting experience -- including not only your own shooting but that of other people at the range -- you get an idea of what is possible, what is likely, and what, well, isn't.

I've been shooting in a bullseye pistol league for about 2 or 3 years, just recently qualified for the NRA "Expert" level using a .22. I don't think I'll ever get to "Distinguished Expert". I'm doing good to keep all 10 shots in the black on an official 50' target, and I don't think I've ever kept all 30 shots in the black in a set.

I've seen one guy shoot a 297 once (with a .22 target pistol.), and his targets didn't look as good as the ones posted here all the time -- with full-powered .357's and .44's and .45's.

Using a .38 Special with full-power SWC's, I can usually keep all the shots on the paper if I shoot it single-action. Barely. (I'm getting better with it)

I've been going to the range pretty often for quite a while now. I used to think I was getting to be a pretty good shot. I tried an IDPA match a couple months ago. I was put directly in my place by people who compete. I did a steel shoot last weekend... not as bad, but still an ego deflator.

Moral of the story? Competitive shooting (PPS, Bullseye, IDPA, IPSC, etc.) is the only place for me to get real answers and real results. I can lie to myself (and to you guys on the internet) all day long about how great I am. I can't lie to the guy holding the timer or the guy scoring the hits. I will do IDPA next summer and every steel shoot I can possibly attend. These things make me better.

This is why I shoot air pistol and free pistol...to keep me humble.

I'm a decent shot, but I have a hard time cracking 540/600 in air pistol...and a truly top-flight competitor will be shooting 570 or higher.

I can consistently hit the gound with my hat if I throw it.

If the wind is behaving of course.

My experience is that if you spend enough time putting 'em downrange, you'll amaze yourself in short order. The difference in "average" accuracy from someone who shoots every other week, and someone who shoots twice a week, is monumental.

My primary guns are all capable of single hole accuracy at 25 yards, I'm not.

I go for fist-sized holes at 15 yards. That's good enough for my needs. I also like to move while shooting.

I have one friend who can pick-up any full-sized pistol cold and shoot cloverleafs with it at 15 yards (his shots open up a bit more at 25 yards). You need to know him to understand. He can stand there and hold a gun on target for minutes without moving, he hardly even breathes. My other friend ex-marine Scout/Sniper is absolutely fidgety compared to him. They're both way more accurate than I am, but I shoot faster and all within the "alpha" zone. So which is better, does it matter?

You might not believe this but I'm gonna tell you anyway.

I shot a ragged one hole group going at 25 yards. My shooting partner wasn't impressed, he has seen it from me hundreds if not thousands of times. I stopped to admire my group and revel in the moment. I must have been taking too much time because he told me to take my second shot.

After that, my group opened up a bit to the normal six or so inches (on a good day).

And that's the truth.

I think many confuse yards for feet

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The secret is switching out decimal places.
A .1 inch group at 100 yards? (Well, okay, now we're starting to get in to the "has anyone actually made a pistol this accurate?" discussion, but.) Actually a 1 inch group at 10 yards.

Woo-hoo, My "30.0th" post

Lots of people can shoot tiny groups, you just don't hang with the right crowd. Shoot competitively, IDPA/IPSC/Bullseye and you'll find your shooting improving. I started shooting bullseye in 1975 in the Navy with irons, but now I've gone to red dots or scopes on my .22 pistols.

You still see a few pistol boxes on the bench at my local range. The best of them can create 2-3 inch holes where the X used to be.

If a person isn't telling the truth about their group sizing, would they tell the truth about telling the truth?

Interesting discussion.
I've seen some photos posted of people's targets and distanes, and far be it from me to call them liars.

I've posted some of my targets (on the post titled "one ragged hole") and while I am not yet a 25 yard shooter, I can currently shoot reasonably well at 25 feet. I hope to work my way up to 25 yards one day.

I will say this. There seems to be a lot more folks who shoot really good online than who show up at the range. I never seem to meet folks who shoot the 2" groups at 25 yards, off hand, with their carry pistols or those who shoot 1 MOA at 100 yards, iron sights.

I've been shooting in a bullseye pistol league for about 2 or 3 years, just recently qualified for the NRA "Expert" level using a .22. I don't think I'll ever get to "Distinguished Expert". I'm doing good to keep all 10 shots in the black on an official 50' target, and I don't think I've ever kept all 30 shots in the black in a set.

I've seen one guy shoot a 297 once (with a .22 target pistol.), and his targets didn't look as good as the ones posted here all the time -- with full-powered .357's and .44's and .45's.

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Bob, that is pretty much what I think. I am shooting Olympic pistol and shoot military handgun matches for 30 years, I am doing alright and have a few trophies to show.

At the public ranges, I have seen not a dozen people shooting as accurate as me, and I go at least once a week.

On the Olympic 25m pistol target, the ten ring is two inches, the 9 ring is four inches. I hope that all the talent that I have found on the internet will help our country to win gold in the next olympics!!!

I would also take that as proof positive.

I probably exaggerate, not purposefully, I just think it happens without much thought.