Choosing a Pistol Target

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For any pistol shooter to truly shoot well, they need to develop a steady hand and pistol targets that work consistently. A lot of pistol shooters either have poor shooting form, or they struggle to consistently hit their target. If your pistol shooting needs some work, read on to find out how to improve your technique.

You need both consistency with your aim and line of sight, which is why using steel targets for your practice is an excellent idea. Every minute on the range, not spending half an hour aiming at something on paper or zeroing your gun at your pistol targets is essentially time wasted. If you can make most of your range time effective, your accuracy and shooting form will improve dramatically. There's no better way to spend your time, especially in this economy, than making sure you are shooting right.

For pistol targets, steel is by far the best material. Steel is tough, and it won't bend or break. It also won't absorb the impact as well as cheaper materials, meaning that it won't deflect as often, and will be a lot easier to see the patterns on your paper targets. If you aren't going to be shooting very much at all in the mean time, you can use steel rifle targets, but I recommend using them only for practice.

But even for practicing with steel targets, sometimes there's nothing better. I used to use fiberglass pistol targets for my practice, and I still like them, but after a while I found that it was more trouble to see the patterns on these than it was worth. Fiberglass targets absorb impact much better than steel does, and they don't appear as nice on paper as do steel targets.

Now, I use a couple of different kinds of targets for my practice. I have a set of target paper targets that I lay over my paper target pad and shoot over. Sometimes I'll use this kind of old training target that my dad gave me, but I've gotten better at using the ones that I have at home. These look similar to a silhouette image when you're shooting over the paper targets, and they can really help me get the feel for the feel of actually shooting a pistol. They're not perfect, but I can tell right away if it's not a good target. You can discover more info about pistol training targets here.

Most of my shooting is done outdoors at the range. The only time I get to take a shot at steel targets is when I'm hunting, so I usually go out to the field instead of to the range. I use the same type of pistol targets for both, so if I use steel targets while I'm hunting I know what I'm shooting at, and if I use paper targets I know what I'm looking at. For most of my practice, I prefer paper targets, but when I go out to the range I use the steel ones because it gives me more range to my shots. This post https://www.britannica.com/sports/shooting will help you understand the topic even better.