UpperAtmosphere
Member
My question is what do you consider good shooting with a pistol?
Winning money at league.
My question is what do you consider good shooting with a pistol?
If it is a revolver and I am shooting DA, I consider it good shooting if I hit the target. Don't care about groups just hitting the target.
Absolutely, and way to many of these folks are preaching the "combat accuracy" mantra and have no idea what a good shot can do in the time they're taking to get "combat accurate" hits.But the "combat accuracy at target speed" hybrid isn't fine - it's poor shooting, and there's a lot of it out there.
You mentioned Hickok45 and his abilities. I think anyone can do what Hickok does with just a little practice. Handguns are much more accurate than people realize. I used to hunt jackrabbits in Montana with a .22 pistol and hits up to 75 yards were not unusual with my butt on the ground and bracing the pistol off my knee. Recently I tried my SR-22 at 25 yards off a padded rest just to see what it would do. I shot a five shot group that measured 3 & 1/4 inch and if I remove one shot from that group, the four remaining measure 2 & 1/2 inches. I think the SR-22 has a 3 & 1/2 inch barrel.I confess, I am primarily a rifle shooter. I shoot rifles for fun, self defense, and hunting.
I have not gotten nearly as much trigger time with pistols as I have had with rifles. I have taken a basic ccw course, and shot pistols occasionally over the past 10 years. I find myself constantly comparing accuracy to rifles where I shoot much tighter groups at much longer ranges.
For pistols, I can get reasonable 5” or so groups at 7 to 10 yards. I can hit on the target at 25 to 35 yards in a 10” group or so.
I mostly shoot for ccw self defense proficiency purposes. I have seen people like hickok45 shoot a gong at 80 yards using snub nose revolvers and am impressed, but I know his abilities are not the norm. I doubt I am much better than an average(less than) shot with a pistol.
Shooting pistols is completely different than shooting a rifle.
My question is what do you consider good shooting with a pistol?
With A LOT of practice.You mentioned Hickok45 and his abilities. I think anyone can do what Hickok does with just a little practice.
He will often shoot in a day what most people shoot in several months.
Trigger time does matter.
My handgun shooting is in the areas of practical competition (primarily IDPA) and self defense.
The basic factor at play is that it doesn't much matter what size a group you can shoot, if you can't do it quickly enough to matter. Few discussions of handgun mastery make much sense if they don't emphasize the speed at which those skills can be employed.
IDPA has a standard classifier match format which tests accuracy vs speed at a variety of distances and compares the score (converted to time) you can produce to a given set of benchmark times.
I'd say anyone shooting that at the marksman level is a "good shot," anyone who can get to sharpshooter level is pretty decent, expert level means someone has very strong pistol skills, and master level is really quite impressive.
I used to shoot 5 shot groups to determine accuracy of my pistols/barrels/reloads but at the urging of THR members jmorris and Bart B. (who posted all shots count), I now always shoot 10 shot groups to determine accuracy.target 30 yards (60 feet) ... using the bannister for a rest fired 3 rounds ... one lower left I call the fouling round.
ScrapMetalSlug wrote:
What do you consider good handgun Shooting?
And the key word is "reliably". It doesn't matter what your smallest shot group was "once" in a blue moon or years ago.can you reliably
While I agree with you that his abilities shouldn't be put on an alter as they are pretty easily achievable with a little focused practice, I can pretty easily deduce that Hickok45 is easily capable of your 3" @ 25 yards benchmark, his 200 yard gong is 24".He might very well be able to shoot 25 & 50 yard cloverleafs on demand, but all I and anyone else have to go on is his plinking, so all I and anyone else can conclude is that he's a good plinker.
You're gonna need to define speed though softball size groups @ .5 splits isn't going to cut it, yet a lot of folks call 2 shots a second fast.Some people would call softball/baseball sized groups at 5-7 yards with sighted shooting "good shooting", especially when done with speed.
While I agree with you that his abilities shouldn't be put on an alter as they are pretty easily achievable with a little focused practice, I can pretty easily deduce that Hickok45 is easily capable of your 3" @ 25 yards benchmark, his 200 yard gong is 24".