I’ll frequently use a single Q-PT target for one or two hundred rounds of practice. But every time I fire my pistol, I know whether I hit my intended target or not. After each drill, I use target pasters to cover up my misses.
In class, we run the targets the same way. Hits stay, misses get pasted.
That’s dramatically different than what I see often at the practice range. Last week I was next to a guy who put up a single reduced silhouette and proceeded to fire eight boxes of ammo out of three different guns at the same target. Halfway through you couldn’t even tell whether his rounds were impacting the target. The whole thing was covered in bullet holes from edge to edge.
If you don’t know where your bullets are landing, you’re just making noise.
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
Your last sentence reminded me of the quote, “No one has ever been killed by a loud noise.”
Semi used metric target + 3m spray glue + print off from http://www.pistol-training.com Shoot and repeat.
I should paste my hits. That would be cheaper.
This is why I like steel targets. Eight to 12 rounds, then it gets painted. No question as to hits.
Pat Rogers uses that same sort of system “nagative taping”. Tape the misses, leave the hit zone alone, after awhile you should be launching rounds through a “window” in the hit zone.
Ref “just making noise”; one of my mentors used to admonish his cops that such behavior was “ballistic masturbation”, and that one should never masturbate in public.
I mostly use index cards and paper plates as targets. They’re cheap enough to put up new ones after about 5-10 rounds on each one. I do like the idea of taping misses; I tend to get hung up worrying about where each and every round goes.
On a similar note, who has a source for pasting tape of different colors? I use regular masking tape, whitish, and it becomes counterproductive when used on IDPA target or black bullseye targets.
Target Barn sells pasters in black & brown. It’s what we use at our IDPA matches.
Call it “Cargo Cult Practice” -to steal a concept from Richard Feynman. One is going through the motions of proper practice- making the gun go ‘bang’ in the general direction of a target- but without getting any better at shooting.
I sometimes use the .22 to chew the black out of the middle of the target. Then when I switch over to centerfire, aim for the hole. I can see the misses then.
I use 3/4″ round labels that I buy at Office Max.
I just use the white ones but they come in different colors.