Let's Make Bullseye Shooting Great Again.

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Bob Smalser

Bob Smalser

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Seabeck, Washinbgton
Loved the recent Idaho Falls incident where a civilian retrieves his pistol, moves to the sound of the guns, and engages at 50 yards. As a retired infantry officer and Olympic Rifle coach training juniors, it punched all my value system tickets. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if he'd have hit his target like the 40-yard engagement at the Greenwood, Indiana food court hitting 8 out of 10.
We are not well served by the current almost-total emphasis on 7-yard shootemups. Yeah, it insures the gun works as advertised. Yeah, it exercises magazine changes. Yeah, you have to move fast between cover w/o accidental discharge. Yeah, it's the most common engagement distance. And yeah, it's fun w/o a lot of tedium. But what it lacks is practice in the more difficult skills of precision shooting as opposed to suppression.
Well, the various CMP National Match courses do all of that as well when you include the Infantry Team Trophy, and every state has a State Rifle and Pistol Association sponsored by the CMP that organizes local matches. You compete against national standards with nationally-recognized awards.
Train with the pistol like it’s all you have when you lose your rifle after you’ve been blown out of your vehicle and are injured. The standards are 50-yard hits right-handed, left-handed, both-handed, kneeling, prone, supine….and at 200 yards you are sufficiently close they stop shooting at you.Screenshot-2026-08-04-at-16.21.08-1200x675.webpeicpistol01.jpgPicture 005.jpgperry 2018.jpg
 
I would lean more towards the practical shooting matches but youre not wrong. Unfortunately 7yrd indoor shooting is whats mostly available. Finding shooting sports near by is almost impossible
 
Bob Smalser said:
Loved the recent Idaho Falls incident where a civilian retrieves his pistol, moves to the sound of the guns, and engages at 50 yards. As a retired infantry officer and Olympic Rifle coach training juniors, it punched all my value system tickets. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if he'd have hit his target like the 40-yard engagement at the Greenwood, Indiana food court hitting 8 out of 10.
We are not well served by the current almost-total emphasis on 7-yard shootemups. Yeah, it insures the gun works as advertised. Yeah, it exercises magazine changes. Yeah, you have to move fast between cover w/o accidental discharge. Yeah, it's the most common engagement distance. And yeah, it's fun w/o a lot of tedium. But what it lacks is practice in the more difficult skills of precision shooting as opposed to suppression.
Well, the various CMP National Match courses do all of that as well when you include the Infantry Team Trophy, and every state has a State Rifle and Pistol Association sponsored by the CMP that organizes local matches. You compete against national standards with nationally-recognized awards.
Train with the pistol like it’s all you have when you lose your rifle after you’ve been blown out of your vehicle and are injured. The standards are 50-yard hits right-handed, left-handed, both-handed, kneeling, prone, supine….and at 200 yards you are sufficiently close they stop shooting at you.View attachment 903162View attachment 903164View attachment 903166View attachment 903168
Click to expand...
Amen
 
Like your ideas. However, if the shooters here are indicative of shooters nationwide the U.S. has a problem. Shooters here have a hard time grouping at 7 yards, at 15 yards their groups are about a 3 foot square ( the target backers are 3X3) and 25 yards they are hopeless.
 
Good pistol marksmanship requires a lot of things, notably discipline and determination. The common theme of instant gratification does not fit well with that goal.

From what I see, most of today’s shooters are more interested in acquiring guns and magazines that hold at least half a million rounds than in learning to “hold & squeeze.” When I was learning to shoot decades ago, we didn’t have money for a lot of ammunition, and a lot of different guns, so challenging ourselves to hit what we were aiming at was the name of the game. I’ll be surprised if the needle swings back around to that philosophy.
 
In the early 2000s, for three, maybe four years I ran an event at the Bianchi Cup called airstrike using semi-auto Steyr Mannlicher air pistols, based off a 5 shot falling plate system, that mimicked the RApid Fire event shot at the Olympics.
I discovered the first day , that one handed the average Bianchi competitor could NOT hold the white on the sight-in target! Even placing shots in the zero land outside the circle!
Two handed, which we modified the rules to immediately,
the average competitor could not hold the black of the sight-in bullseye.

and all the falling plates where the black size.... So many would be competitors of this event with $500 prize money would not even try actually shooting at the plates because they sucked so bad aiming at the stationary black.

Bruce Piatt won most of my price money over the few years I did it. but you could cleary who had classic bullsey trianing no matter what part of the world they came from.

if they could put up a nice group inside the black, you knew they had done something beside IPSC or action pistol.
95% of the competitors were all over the white. It was and is a very sad state of affairs.
 
As an old guy I grew up around Bullseye shooting and have always strived for accuracy over speed. That sort of mentality was reinforced when I was in the Corps, with the motto "one shot, one kill" Today is seems everything is go fast and mag dumps. Now folks are all about FRTs and spray and pray. I have seen many vids of folks with FRTs and wonder how many rounds actually hit the target. Whatever floats your boat. I'll stick with my "one shot one kill" ethos.
 
Bob Smalser said:
Loved the recent Idaho Falls incident where a civilian retrieves his pistol, moves to the sound of the guns, and engages at 50 yards. As a retired infantry officer and Olympic Rifle coach training juniors, it punched all my value system tickets. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if he'd have hit his target like the 40-yard engagement at the Greenwood, Indiana food court hitting 8 out of 10.
We are not well served by the current almost-total emphasis on 7-yard shootemups. Yeah, it insures the gun works as advertised. Yeah, it exercises magazine changes. Yeah, you have to move fast between cover w/o accidental discharge. Yeah, it's the most common engagement distance. And yeah, it's fun w/o a lot of tedium. But what it lacks is practice in the more difficult skills of precision shooting as opposed to suppression.
Well, the various CMP National Match courses do all of that as well when you include the Infantry Team Trophy, and every state has a State Rifle and Pistol Association sponsored by the CMP that organizes local matches. You compete against national standards with nationally-recognized awards.
Train with the pistol like it’s all you have when you lose your rifle after you’ve been blown out of your vehicle and are injured. The standards are 50-yard hits right-handed, left-handed, both-handed, kneeling, prone, supine….and at 200 yards you are sufficiently close they stop shooting at you.View attachment 903162View attachment 903164View attachment 903166View attachment 903168
Click to expand...

Admirable goals, but it ‘ain’t gonna happen. Very, very few civilian gun carriers have the time, money, or desire to train like that.
In a lot of courts in a lot of jurisdictions, shooting at an attacker beyond a very few yards is really hard to justify to a judge or jury of ignorant and anti-gun peers.

In some of the less free states the interventionist good guy shooter would have been charged with Reckless Endangerment, at minimum. Possibly possessing and firing a weapon in a Sensitive or prohibited area.
 
Smith357 said:
As an old guy I grew up around Bullseye shooting and have always strived for accuracy over speed. That sort of mentality was reinforced when I was in the Corps, with the motto "one shot, one kill" Today is seems everything is go fast and mag dumps. Now folks are all about FRTs and spray and pray. I have seen many vids of folks with FRTs and wonder how many rounds actually hit the target. Whatever floats your boat. I'll stick with my "one shot one kill" ethos.
Click to expand...

What is “FRT”?
 
Bullseye shooting is as popular as it isn't because no one plans on standing stock still with one hand in their back pocket firing their ccw one-handed at a guy 50 yards away carrying an AR-15.
 
pilkguns said:
In the early 2000s, for three, maybe four years I ran an event at the Bianchi Cup called airstrike using semi-auto Steyr Mannlicher air pistols, based off a 5 shot falling plate system, that mimicked the RApid Fire event shot at the Olympics.
I discovered the first day , that one handed the average Bianchi competitor could NOT hold the white on the sight-in target! Even placing shots in the zero land outside the circle!
Two handed, which we modified the rules to immediately,
the average competitor could not hold the black of the sight-in bullseye.

and all the falling plates where the black size.... So many would be competitors of this event with $500 prize money would not even try actually shooting at the plates because they sucked so bad aiming at the stationary black.

Bruce Piatt won most of my price money over the few years I did it. but you could cleary who had classic bullsey trianing no matter what part of the world they came from.

if they could put up a nice group inside the black, you knew they had done something beside IPSC or action pistol.
95% of the competitors were all over the white. It was and is a very sad state of affairs.
Click to expand...

But the fact of the matter is, that in almost every non-law enforcement or military defensive shooting, a high degree of accuracy is not important at all. Neither is a lot of training.
The successful wounding, stopping, and killing of most people, good and bad, is done by rank amateurs. Always has been.
Most of the people reading this, myself included, have set much higher standards of training, skill, and mindset for ourselves.
But we are not the norm.
 
Arik said:
Arik said:
I would lean more towards the practical shooting matches but youre not wrong. Unfortunately 7yrd indoor shooting is whats mostly available. Finding shooting sports near by is almost impossible
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Most ranges have 25 yards. The beauty of bullseye is measurement. If you are consistently in the 9-ring or better at 25 yards, you'll consistenly nail an E-Silhouette at 50.
25.jpg
 
AJ said:
Like your ideas. However, if the shooters here are indicative of shooters nationwide the U.S. has a problem. Shooters here have a hard time grouping at 7 yards, at 15 yards their groups are about a 3 foot square ( the target backers are 3X3) and 25 yards they are hopeless.
Click to expand...

If you can keep your shots on a sheet of notebook paper at 5-7 yards you can successfully defend yourself in almost all self-defense situations. Caliber is not important either.
You don’t even need rifling in the barrel. All that is needed is a safe, functioning gun, and the mindset to use it if needed.
Exceeding these minimum standards is very desirable, but not in any way a necessity.
 
Phenix said:
If you can keep your shots on a sheet of notebook paper at 5-7 yards you can successfully defend yourself in almost all self-defense situations. Caliber is not important either.
You don’t even need rifling in the barrel. All that is needed is a safe, functioning gun, and the mindset to use it if needed.
Exceeding these minimum standards is very desirable, but not in any way a necessity.
Click to expand...
Bullseye shooting is mentioned here occasionally, but it's usually talked down quickly by the concealed carry/ defensive crowd. I'm not sure why this is the case as there is so much more to shooting handguns than practicing at close range for the illusionary gunfight.

I'm not trying to win over converts to Bullseye shooting. Both types of shooting practice are important if one plans on being a well-rounded, skilled shooter. After many years of both types of shooting, I've seen improvement with defensive type shooting after using skill developed in Bullseye shooting. It does require discipline and lots of practice but well worth the effort.
 
Last edited:
Phenix said:
Still don’t get it, and I have been shooting all kinds of handguns for over 55 years.
Click to expand...
The trigger resets automatically (forced reset) and since your finger is still holding it back it will shoot again thus creating full auto rate of fire The reset is very very very very fast so legally it is still one pull of the trigger per shot. In other words, imagine if you could pull the trigger 500 times in one second. Each shot is an individual pull but the speed will create 500 rounds a second (im making up those numbers)
 
Bob Smalser said:
Most ranges have 25 yards. The beauty of bullseye is measurement. If you are consistently in the 9-ring or better at 25 yards, you'll consistenly nail an E-Silhouette at 50.
View attachment 903194
Click to expand...
Sure but its not the same as the incident that we're comparing this too. To be closer to reality of that situation. Get your heart pumping, adrenaline dump and blood pressure up and try to shoot at a moving target that could possibly be firing back.

Obviously this doesnt happen in practical shooting either but there are ways to mimic those bodily reactions. Time, speed, fast movement from one position to another. Ive seen people throwing cattle bells until they reach the next position. Or picking up a weight and running to the next station. The point is to get the heart rate up and then try scoring a solid hit. This is the opposite of bullseye, where the shooter tries to be as calm as possible.

Having said that, overall it is a good idea. Having good solid fundamentals is never a bad thing
 
My shooting range is a dead end trail in the National Forest. I set up a variety distances 10-100 yards. Since I shoot mostly handguns I feel confident with every gun I shoot and the distance. 7 yards is a joke IMO. My pellet rifle is accurate to nearly 50 yards.
 
rockquarry said:
Bullseye shooting is mentioned here occasionally, but it's usually talked down quickly by the concealed carry/ defensive crowd. I'm not sure why this is the case as there is so much more to shooting handguns than practicing at close range for the illusionary gunfight.

I'm not trying to win over converts to Bullseye shooting. Both types of shooting practice are important if one plans on being a well-rounded skilled shooter. After many years of both types of shooting, I've seen improvement with defensive type shooting after using skill developed in Bullseye shooting. It does require discipline and lots of practice but well worth the effort.
Click to expand...
You beat me to it, @rockquarry ! I shoot classic Bullseye and plate matches. Bullseye skills do indeed carry over.

The fundamentals learned in Bullseye help my plate match times. When I attempt to go too fast, the basic skills go out the window and I miss. Missing hurts; either accepting the miss adding time to the score, or the time to recover and make another shot. A famous shooter (Rob Leatham?) said “You can’t miss fast enough to win.” True that!

I truly believe skills gained in methodical one-hand shooting are valuable. As an example, my right shoulder is giving me trouble right now. Shooting one-handed is painful. But in the last match I happily DQ’d myself and shot with both hands. Yep, sure works better as expected. One 25 yd timed fire was 100-6x. Single-hand skills transferred, even when “cheating” with both hands. I will apply the same skill in this Saturday’s plate match. As a final note, “cheating” should be expected in a defense situation. To not use everything you can conjure up in such a crisis would be foolish. Ain’t no such thing as a fair fight.
 
Phenix said:
If you can keep your shots on a sheet of notebook paper at 5-7 yards you can successfully defend yourself in almost all self-defense situations. Caliber is not important either.
You don’t even need rifling in the barrel. All that is needed is a safe, functioning gun, and the mindset to use it if needed.
Exceeding these minimum standards is very desirable, but not in any way a necessity.
Click to expand...
Shot placement is the most important. Coupled with that is speed. Back in the days when I taught Combat Handgun, I could draw and fire two rounds from a M1916 holster with the flap down over the holster stud in under 8/10's of a second on command. Most of the guys that I see at the range would blow their foot off attempting that.
 
Interesting thread. From over 60 years shooting pistols being on an Army pistol team was the absolute best thing. All our instructors were Presidents hundred's shooters( don't know what that is, look it up) and very very good. From managing an indoor pistol range in mid 70s , being a certified NRA instructor and shooting often since I firmly believe bullseye shooting should be the first principle a serious shooter learns. If one can shoot bullseye effectively they can adapt to any other. Not bragging but I cringe when I go to shoot these days with all the " spray and pray" shooters. Most shoot at 3-7 yards and its really sad to see the targets. I shoot at 10 yards with a new to me pistol then once getting a good group move to 20 yards which is max at the indoor range. Being 75 and having had many finger, wrist and arm surgeries not what I was back in 70s but ok. Guess today most want whatever " Right Now" and do not care about taking time to learn?????.
 
Greyman50 said:
Interesting thread. From over 60 years shooting pistols being on an Army pistol team was the absolute best thing. All our instructors were Presidents hundred's shooters( don't know what that is, look it up) and very very good. From managing an indoor pistol range in mid 70s , being a certified NRA instructor and shooting often since I firmly believe bullseye shooting should be the first principle a serious shooter learns. If one can shoot bullseye effectively they can adapt to any other. Not bragging but I cringe when I go to shoot these days with all the " spray and pray" shooters. Most shoot at 3-7 yards and its really sad to see the targets. I shoot at 10 yards with a new to me pistol then once getting a good group move to 20 yards which is max at the indoor range. Being 75 and having had many finger, wrist and arm surgeries not what I was back in 70s but ok. Guess today most want whatever " Right Now" and do not care about taking time to learn?????.
Click to expand...
Very good post.
 
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