We’re back with some gun range tips to help you balance speed and accuracy with your pistol optic while also working on more precise shooting at longer distances than the dimensions of your shooting range may allow. Target size is key to building accuracy. We’ve all shot at big targets and moved down to smaller ones as we zeroed in. We’ve also run the same target out as far as it would go, squinted into the distance at the much smaller silhouette, and worked on our longer-distance shooting. While there’s no replacement for real reps, we’ve got a couple of gun range tips to help you build and balance your speed and accuracy using your targets to simulate longer shots on shorter ranges.
If you’ve spent much time working at a variety of distances on a shooting range, you’ve noticed the longer the shot, the more time it takes you to find a first shot you’re confident in and then come back to the target for follow-up shots afterward. The more distant target takes a little bit longer to find than it does up close. You have to be more careful about your breathing and trigger pull. The result is a trade-off where the faster the shot, the more likely it is to throw a little wide, but the more accurate the shot, the longer it probably took for you to make it. That’s why so many gun range tips focus on shooting drills that train the fundamentals close first, then moving outward.
The disparity between the time needed for accuracy at shorter and longer ranges is due, in large part, to the apparent size of the target. After all, if you’re shooting the same target up close as you are far away, the target is the same size in reality. Your eyes just don’t see it that way. The closer target size appears bigger, and the further away the target gets, the more it shrinks. If you look at the target through an unmagnified reflex optic or with iron sights, however, your reticle or sight stays the same as the target gets smaller, and the ratio of this relationship is called subtension.
The good news is that subtension is constant. If a variable is constant, we can use it to calculate the ratio between the two. We’ll get back to speed, accuracy, and busting caps in a minute, but first, it’s time for some math. This is also your warning that you may want to throw a cheap calculator into your gun range bag or get familiar with your cell phone’s calculator app.
You can express the ratio of target size to range as a ratio or fraction. For example, a ten-inch target at five yards would be 10:5.
If we simplified that, it would give us a two-to-one ratio. This means if we set a ten-inch target up at five yards, a 20-inch target at ten yards, and a too-gigantic-to-believe 100-inch target up at 50 yards, all three would have the same apparent size. Now, let’s get to the big gun range tip.
That means if you set that ten-inch target up at 50 yards, it will have the same 1:5 ratio as a one-inch target sticker at five yards. The big difference is that many shooters don’t have reliable access to a 50-yard range, but even the smallest gun ranges can accommodate a five-yard target placement.
That means that because subtension remains a constant and consistent ratio, you can work on balancing and improving speed and accuracy on targets that have the same apparent size as longer-ranged objects without actually having the gun longer range to play on. You can use a simple target drill and a little math to simulate the shots you need to practice.
To put this gun range tip into action, you need to have an idea of what ranges you want to work on. It’s also far easier to do this drill with round targets as they come in a wide range of sizes, all the way down to one-inch stickers, while silhouette targets have fewer options available. The standard A-zone plate is around six inches wide and 10-11 inches tall, so a 10-inch circle does pretty well as a baseline. At ten yards, this creates an easy-to-work-with 10:10 or 1:1 ratio. If we move the same target out to twenty yards, the ratio becomes 10:20 or 1:2 because we aren’t going for identical apparent sizes but rather identify the changing ratio as we move the ten-inch target out. Using a five-inch target at ten yards (5:10) will match the ratio of the 20-yard ten-incher (10:20), so it gives us a twenty-yard apparent size at just ten yards out. Likewise, using the same method, we find that a two-inch circle gives us the same apparent size if we had the gun range space to move our ten-inch circle to 50 yards.
Mike’s video covering this speed and accuracy drill uses a six-circle paper target that gives him a range of sizes to work with before he has to re-post a target, making it perfect for exploring these gun range tips. He could easily measure each one, get the ratio, and fine-tune the apparent distance, but it wasn’t needed for his demonstration.
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Start with the largest circle, giving you the “closest” apparent target size. Draw, aim, and fire three rounds. The goal is to keep all three rounds in the circle while shooting the controlled three-round sequence as quickly as possible. Once comfortable with this range, move to the next smaller target size, effectively increasing the range you’re shooting at. The goal will be the same all the way down: to put three rounds on target as quickly as possible.
Shooting at each successive range should get a little slower, as this drill forces you to take a little longer to find your aiming point, steady, shoot, and return.
We said up front there was no substitute for actual range reds, so here’s the big disclaimer. While this drill will let you work on aiming at increasingly smaller or “further” targets all the way down, there comes a point of diminishing returns. This is because there isn’t a practical way to account for bullet drop.
After a bullet leaves the barrel of your gun, it rises through an arc before beginning to fall, pulled down by the force of gravity. When zeroing your optic, you’ll zero it at a certain range. For pistols, which have a shorter effective range due to weaker propellant charges than rifles, bullet drop barely registers at most reasonable engagement distances. Zeroing at 10-15 yards will give you less than ½” deviation out to 15 yards. After a drop of just over a half-inch at 20 yards, the ratio increases significantly as the bullet loses momentum.
Ready to get out on the range and play with apparent distance? We have the practical optics you need to improve your accuracy and speed in drills and real life. Order your red dot sights from Gideon Optics today.
