It does better when soaked. It lasts longer than other media (more hits). I get all of the newspaper I want from the local recycle center.

As stated before, you get less penetration with wet paper compared to gelatin. Other have stated it's a 1 1/2 to 1 ratio or for every 1" of penetration in wet paper ='s 1 1/2" of gelatin.

You should stand the paper up and tape it together. I typically use 10" to 12" bundles and put them in a cooler and then put water on them. I carry the whole thing to the range and take the bundles out of the cooler as needed.

Typical wet paper bundles. Did a test using some home swaged 225gr hp's for the 45acp/p+ combo's. Shot 5 rounds into the bundle at 50ft. 2 blew out the back.



Easy enough to peal the layers back to find the bullets and measure depths of the hits along with what the recovered bullets look like. The target that was placed on the front of that bundle pictured above.



Those bullets were designed to explode/frag. As you can see there's nothing left to them yet penetration was 7" to out the back of the bundle.

Take the extra time to make bundles and wet them. The end result is a better quality product. Right now the results you are getting is a result of the effort you put into making a media to shoot into.