Targets for Firearms Training

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. When you go to do your training or even go to the range for some practice the type of target use might be very important to you. The fact is it probably doesn't matter as much what target you're using as it does what you're actually doing with the target. There's a lot of different types of targets available out there. And of course, a white piece of paper or a piece of cardboard with some spray paint lets you make whatever target it is you need for whatever skill development or training session you're actually trying to achieve.

Well, I'm here at the target counter at Blackwing shooting center in Ohio today to look at the different types of targets they have and some of the different things you can do with them or what those targets might be best used for just to give you some different ideas for the next time you're out at the range. Of course, the first thing we're going to look at is a standard bulls-eye type target. Now this target here is probably something that people have shot at more than almost anything else. Now, whether you've just done tactical training and shot a lot of silhouette targets or you've just done a certain type of training with a certain instructor that uses one target or another. Something like this can be incredibly useful.

People see this and they see a bullseye and they immediately start probably thinking about that 10 ring, wanting to get all their shots in that a center, you might decide that any shot inside of this circle area here is actually good to go. And that size target is about the size of that high center chest. If we just look at that black circle once we close that area down of course it is the size that we normally think of when we think about engaging the head for that more precise shot that more precise defensive shot. So something like just using the black circle or using the entire circle, or maybe just flipping it over and using this entire square rectangle whatever targets shape that you may actually have. Don't get too tied up about what type of target you're initially presented with.

Start thinking about what you can do with that target. Let's take a look at this one. Now this is a 25 meter zeroing target clearly marked for the M4 Carbine. It's designed to that you actually have front and rear sight adjustments built into it so that if you miss the center area that you're aiming for you end up down here. Certainly it could be used for that purpose very, very well.

But if this were the only target you had you could use the entire grid as a target area. You could use each quadrant as a target area. Of course you could use the center black or if you wanted to practice more precision you could have the main target area, be there for speed and actually go down to these individual small circles for precise shooting, maybe with your rifle you're going to take rapid shots at that center box and then move out to these others on command or whenever you decided to practice your precision. So again, a lot more versatile than just siting in. A lot of people like to use these different decals and stickers when they're on the range of course these are the shoot and type the ones that when you actually shoot, they break apart and you get a lot more of this yellow that shows up.

Really good for shooting at distance. Also just a lot of fun to shoot at. If you have a new shooter, someone who wants a lot of visual stimulus to let them know that they're actually achieving what it is they want to achieve you can use these small dots to replace just place them over the holes. And then of course you get to reuse the target. And a lot of people stay away from these targets because they're a little more expensive for everyday use or for every drill, but they can be a lot of fun to use.

Also, another thing you can do with these is make these replacements over areas that you shoot up. So if you take this target to the range and you shoot the center out, you still want to have some kind of indication of where your center is. You simply could replace it with one of these decals replace that center area. No problem. This type of target is also pretty popular.

Of course, this target looks a lot more like a silhouette target some ranges don't let you use actual silhouettes. So what we've done is taken the center of that silhouette that B27, B21 type typical target, and we've moved it out of the way gotten all the extraneous stuff out of the outside. And we've just got the center to shoot at. Of course, this could also be used as a replacement to go over a standard type silhouette. I mean, look down here and go down a couple of shelves and we've got this target.

This tombstone target is also a very popular target. Of course, this type of target is very popular on ranges also where you can't use a normal human shape or a silhouette. Of course it gives us a high center chest size area and it gives us something that sort of represents the torso. If we think about it, this is probably more like center mass and we technically would want that to be a little bit higher, but again no reason you can't use this type of target for really good training pretty defensive shooting, defensive rifle whatever it may be, because again, it is human body size. I'm going to walk around the counter.

We'll take a look and see what we've got on the other side because there's a little more creativity going on when it comes to using these types of targets. We've got a lot of different things. We can start up here again with some small decals. We've also got these target spot decals which don't give you the shoot and see but again can be very cool for just putting out there for precision use different balances of speed and precision. When it comes to rifle use, you've got your larger areas which you can shoot relatively rapidly especially with an optic.

And then these smaller ones which almost any range on any optic these smaller ones are going to be certainly a demanding more precise shot require you to slow down again. Anytime you have decals involved you can use them to make your paper targets last longer. If you start with paper targets. Then we've got this guy here, bowling pin maybe not on a reason to shoot at actual bowling pins, if you're not a sport shooter but again, the bowling pin shape gives you two areas. If you think about it for the balance of speed and precision, you've got your top area which is a little smaller, your bottom area which is a lot bigger, multiple shots strings down here maybe single shots up there for extreme precision.

Just try to hit those stripes right there in the middle. Another option there as we go down here of course the poker target, you can use the poker target of course, for games with your friends or you can use this also for a good on demand target. Another nice thing about this. If you ever do any training for precision rifle use is you can actually have your spotter or your training partner designate different cards. In other words, you could say to have hearts and you'd have to find the two of hearts through your optic and then engage it appropriately.

So not only is it a good target for the precision rifle trainer, it's also a good target for someone who's going to be maybe looking for game or if you're actually a professional military or law enforcement person who's working a sniper role this type of target can really help you to be able to gather intelligence through that optic find the threat that you need and engage it when appropriate. As we move down here, we see that we got some silhouettes. We've got a silhouette target here this particular one from law enforcement target company. Again, indicating one particular no shoot area. Not exactly sure who thought that target was a brilliant idea, but we've got it here to use.

We've got the X ring again as usual a little lower than we actually want. One of the things I like to do on these types of targets is really think about where my high center chest would be. If the X ring is a little bit low for me I might designate that from the line of numbers up to the top of the eight is my combat accurate area. And then maybe out to the eighth. So I've got the eight the eight the eight coming across on the X and that triangle.

And then the oval that goes around the top of that triangle is actually my combat accurate area might be a really good option on a target like that. And then of course we start getting into some photorealistic stuff. We've got this guy right here these are our active shooter at the mall. And one of the things that starts happening when we get in the photo realistic of course is you don't have that point of aim point of impact designated by a box or by a circle or by a dot. Now to take a target like this and put one of these decals on it would of course defeat the whole purpose.

The idea is to get used to shooting at someone that might actually be trying to harm you or harm someone else in a public environment. So you're going to want to focus on this area and then take the shots and then come up and evaluate them. Now, remember, you don't want to get up to this target and you can see that there's a little bit of a dashed line in here giving you your normal silhouette. You don't want to come up here. If you were intending to shoot the high center chest and you have a shot up here, don't celebrate that.

Okay, that's going to be a deviation. That's going to be a miss. It's a learning opportunity. You don't want to shoot at a target like this and have a shot that happens to hit right there and say, Oh I would've broke his arm. And he wouldn't be able to shoot me.

Okay, a shot out there when you're trying for the high center chest, that's a miss. It's a pretty big miss. Makes you take advantage of that opportunity to learn to realize that you didn't do exactly what you wanted to do. And now it's time to actually slow down and get the shot, you need to get, use more deviation control. Again, we can get into some more extreme targets more photo-realistic targets.

Now, while these may not be the average homeowners number one concern, the idea of a target that's full color that actually shows human flesh that shows people pointing weapons at you. That might be something you want to do instead of just visualizing that actually shooting at photo realistic targets that are colorful that look like people and are actually meaning harm to you. Of course, we may be engaging a threat that means harm to someone else as well. The next target that we're going to look at is this one and this is the kind of target that I really liked to use on the range. It's a more versatile target that lets us do a lot of different things.

Of course, it's a photo realistic target. So we've got the high center chest and we've got the head area that we can visualize. We've also got the designated area of a small rectangle here in the high center chest that gives us the opportunity to evaluate our performance. Did we hit the area he wanted to? And same thing in the head.

Now this particular headshot box I think happens to be a little bit high. Again, think about the areas you want to train to hit. I'd move that box down a little bit but wherever it may be, again, it does give us at least another indicator of point of aim, point of impact and deviation control to hold ourselves accountable. Just make sure we're training realistically, whenever we get the chance. And what I really like here are these extra black circles that are around the outside of the target.

So in other words, why waste this space? Now we've got these black circles. We can run another drill. We can do a lot of different things. Maybe if we just pick up a gun for the first time and this is the target that we have we might want to go ahead and just check our site alignment site picture make sure we know where the gun is impacting on one of these small circles and then get to our defensive shooting drill.

And that leads us to my particular favorite target. That happens to be right here on this shelf. This is the SED target from law enforcement targets. Now I love this target as a training target is probably one of the most versatile targets I've ever seen and what it doesn't have as far as photo realism. It more than makes up for different opportunities for balance of speed and precision drills.

So this wouldn't be the final target that you'd want to evaluate your performance on. You certainly want to use a photo realistic target for that if you had the option, but this is a great target for skill development and for learning new skills. Of course, we've got our high center chest box we've got an abdominal box and a lot of times in class we'll use that abdominal box as another high center chest box. In other words we're not training to shoot the lower part of the body but we are training to shoot a box that's that size. So we'll just simply use that to save paper.

We've got a headshot triangle that is pretty appropriately placed in about the right size. And of course, we've got the entire bowling pin the whole bubble that we have for the silhouette that we could use for any body shot. If we were shooting it more distance if we were working on some other skillsets and then around the outside, we've got the circles the squares and the triangles with numbers. So we can call out right circle. We can say circle and have it be a multiple target drill.

We can call it a number. We can sometimes we'll call out a number like seven and have people shoot any two targets that add up to the number we've called out. So we might call out 10, they'd have the option of shooting the six and the four, shooting the five, twice we might call out four. They could shoot the one in the three or the two, twice. We could call out seven of course, and there's a lot of different combinations of three, four, the one six the two and the five.

And that gives people the opportunity to think about something other than just the shooting when they're out on the range. And of course we get have people shoot the E shoot the B shoot the S shoot, the top of the B. The versatility of a target like this shouldn't be underestimated. Just buying one type of target and going to the range with it 20 different times. You can do 20 different things 200 different times of the target like that.

And you can do 200 different things. Don't worry too much about the target that you actually have, however. What you really need to worry about is what you're doing with it. I hope this look at these different diverse types of targets helps you prepare for the next time you go to the range and do the best you can with whatever you've got. Check out more videos, just like this one at the person or defense network.