Oh lordy! Someone mentioned specific shot times.
I've seen this before on other forums. Good thing that everyone is faster than I am. I can just follow along and not get involved in that.
When getting into shooting with a timer, I caught myself cheating on my own times. Counting a round in when it was out. Reshooting a drill in the set and picking the best time. On occasion I'd tell someone that I can run a clean, cold, concealed Bill Drill in under 3 seconds...because I managed to do it once or twice in ten attempts.
Eventually, I realized that the only person's money I was throwing down range was my own. And, without metrics, you are simply imagining if you can shoot well or not. Once I started scoring my drills like Vickers or Hackathorn do, I found out that I hadn't progressed nearly as much as I thought.
The point is that I KNOW how fast and accurately I'm likely to shoot that pistol at a given range, and in a given circumstance. I KNOW that if I skip the range for a month (which has happened a few times), I backslide quite a bit. My "feeling" is that if I skipped two years, I'd be starting over.
The only "self defense" times that count are the cold and honest ones. Go to the range with a timer, set your target, make a body shot at 20 yards (or whatever drill you like). Note the time. If you miss, you can score that run as "possibly-less-than-proficient", or "possibly-dead". Shoot that drill ten more times, or a thousand, but you can only "count" the first drill. That first score is exactly how good you are at doing that particular thing upon demand at that time.
Try the same drill again next week. Do it for two months. Note the FIRST time in each session.
Then skip 30 days and run it again. Is that time the same as the first? At this point you will KNOW if you need to keep practicing....or not.
Or, you can decide that you don't really care. The first time was good enough.
To be fair though, the OP asked about how we might feel about our proficiency....not what we know about it. I'd guess that most people simply don't know. Feelings are more fun, and make for better coffee-talk.
-40 Krag carbine in military trim. He told me he had paid $7.50 for that rifle. In 1959 I watched him shoot a running buck at well over 100 yards with the same rifle, still military. He didn't shoot targets or rocks, His box of 20 rounds of Winchester ammo had lasted 20 years. He'd bought a new box to have a full magazine. Krags were still used in Basic training during WW1 because of shortages of Springfields and Enfields and is likely what he trained with.
