Target Practice to Improve Shooting Accuracy: Try These Tips + Drills

Those who shoot regularly do so to generally achieve a goal or purpose.  When just starting out, it might just be to get comfortable with handling a firearm and being competent enough to hit the target, but as we progress as shooters, most people desire to see their shots go where they intend on the target. 

Accuracy is an important aspect of shooting, whether it’s just plinking at the range, shooting a competition, or training for self-defense.  Not only does it feel good to hit the target where you intend, but if we don’t, it could have legal repercussions in the real world.  

Don’t confuse accuracy with precision.  They are two different concepts when it comes to shooting.  Accuracy is making the bullet impact the spot you sighted the gun to (center of the target).  Precision is how well you group multiple shots together, and may or may not be accurate.  We are focusing only on how to achieve accuracy in this article.

What goes into being accurate as a shooter?  

First and foremost accuracy requires us to have built solid fundamentals.  There are many schools of thought on what fundamental contributes most to accuracy.  Some experts say shooting is all about grip, some insist that accuracy has nothing to do with grip and everything to do with managing the trigger press, others feel that everything starts with your stance.  Who is right or wrong?  The age old answer is..it depends.  The basic fundamentals of shooting are universal, but the application of those fundamentals has to be personally tailored to what works for you.

Let’s look at fundamentals as a whole.  If we are not comfortable with our stance, grip or trigger press or if we do not have proper sight alignment or sight picture, that will directly reflect in where the holes are in our targets.  Not sure what to work on?  The Mantis X10 Elite is a tool that will help identify what is happening during your trigger press in dry fire and live fire practice and coach you on what you might work on based on the movement of the muzzle as you press the trigger.  After shooting a drill, look at the segment chart and tap for the coaching recommendations, which may range from adjusting your grip to how you press the trigger.  Movement can occur from the hands, especially adding additional pressure to the gun as we add pressure to the trigger, or that we are moving our hands to accommodate for recoil, but it might be that your stance isn’t solid and you might be swaying a bit.  If you feel like you’ve hit a plateau, you may consider finding a pistol instructor to work with you on targeted exercises to help increase your accuracy.

If you are using iron sights, it’s also important that you know the method for your firearm to obtain proper sight alignment and sight picture. Sight alignment is putting the front sight of the firearm into the notch or window of the rear sight, aligning the top of the front sight to the top of the notch of the rear sight, and keeping the front sight centered left to right in the notch.  This is where the term “equal height, equal light” is an easy phrase to remember when aligning your sights.  Sight picture is taking the aligned sights and placing them on the target to where you want the bullet to impact.  Gun manufacturers make the sights on their firearms to be placed on the target in a specific manner.  Most firearms are built to a center hold, meaning you place the top of the aligned front sight where you want the point of impact.  There is also a 6 o'clock hold, which can also be referred to as “lollipop hold” or “pumpkin on a post” where you place the aligned front sight at the bottom of the intended impact point.  The owner's manual for your firearm should state the intended hold for that firearm.

If your firearm has an optic, commonly called a red dot, you will sight the firearm differently than iron sights.  First, you want to make sure your optic has been zeroed to a distance of your choosing.  Most people zero their optic to either 10 or 25 yards.  Then you must account for offset if you are shooting at a distance other than your firearm’s zeroed distance, otherwise your point of impact may not be at the point of aim.

Shooting with accuracy might also be affected by your equipment.  It’s important that you consider the fundamentals first, but if you are looking to improve your accuracy at longer distances, then consider a pistol with a longer barrel, especially when shooting with iron sights.  A longer barrel will give you a longer sight radius, which means there is a greater distance between your front and rear sight.  A longer sight radius translates to a more granular sight alignment which can account for higher accuracy on the target.  Think about how rifles are much more suited to shoot long distances versus pistols.  Also the fit of the pistol to your hands can greatly affect accuracy when shooting.  Someone with larger hands might find shooting a smaller pistol very difficult as they may not have many fingers on the grip of the gun to stabilize it as they press the trigger.  Similarly, someone with small hands might struggle to be accurate with a larger pistol as they may have to use an inefficient grip just to reach for the trigger and subsequently move the pistol as they shoot.

How can I practice to improve my accuracy?

Dry fire is one of the best ways to develop and practice accuracy.  In its simplest form, dry fire is pressing the trigger on a firearm without ammunition (check your owner’s manual of your firearm to see if the manufacturer states specifically not to dry fire your firearm).  Dry fire requires you to follow the safety rules just as if you were at the range.  First, determine the direction of least consequence (in case a bullet were accidentally shot) to set up your target to practice.  This could be in a basement where there is dirt on the other side of the wall, or above ground it may be a concrete or brick wall in an area that has no foot traffic from other members of your household.  Secondly, make sure your firearm is fully unloaded, doing both a visual and physical touch to check the chamber and magazine well of the pistol, and removing all live ammunition from the area.  Finally notify anyone in the household of your dry fire and ask them to avoid the area in which you are dry firing. 

It is imperative that during dry fire you pay attention to your sights and see what movement happens with the front sight, or for those with an optic your dot, when you press the trigger.  Any movement at the time the trigger breaks will diminish accuracy.  Mantis Laser Academy is a great addition to dry fire if you are working on accuracy.  Using it allows you to visibly see where your shots are hitting the target in comparison to where you are aiming.  One of the best drills to work on accuracy is using the Mantis Bullseye target in a 10 shot Bullseye drill.  The rings of the target provide granularity in how accurate you were to the center of the target and to have a high level of accuracy, you want to work to hit the inside of the 7 ring of the Bullseye target.  Many shooters will also use the 9 ring (dark area) of the NRA B-8 target as a goal, which is also available now for Mantis Laser Academy.  Once you can make consistent shots within those scoring rings repeatable at 3 yards, then move your distance from the target out by 1 yard or increase the score by staying inside the next highest ring and so on.  

Once you have mastered the Bullseye drill, another popular drill to run for accuracy is Dot Torture, which consists of 2 inch circles.  Many pistol instructors look at this drill on how accurate of a shooter you are, but also how well you can stay mentally present over 50 rounds with additional skills, like drawing from the holster and single handed shooting.  

Verifying practice with live fire.

These same drills can be run in live fire, and we should always validate what we practice in dry fire to what happens in live fire.  This can be done by printing out extra copies of the targets to take to the range with you or you can purchase standard NRA B-8 targets if you don’t have a printer handy.  Start at a range of 3 yards until you have either kept all shots within the shaded area of the Bullseye or B-8 targets or can get a score of at least 45 on Dot Torture.  Then move out your targets by 1 yard until the accuracy diminishes and then focus your practice at that distance until accuracy is achieved and then push out by 1 yard.

If your range does not allow you to shoot at a distance that you desire, then consider that distance scales linearly.  Cutting a target size in half doubles the distance that you would be shooting the original target size.  This means that if you can shoot at a 4 inch target at 5 yards, it would be like shooting an 8 inch target at 10 yards, or if you can shoot a 2 inch target at 5 yards, that would translate to a 8 inch target at 20 yards.  You can scale down the Laser Academy targets when you print them by choosing “Custom Scale” within the print dialogue and choosing the percentage you want to scale them at.  For example, if you want to cut a B-8 target in half, choose 50%.  There are websites that offer downloadable scaled targets as well.  Using the linear scaling method works well for pistols, but when focusing on accuracy with rifles, because of the extended distance, scaling targets does not account for the ballistic rise and fall of the bullet.

Wrapping it up.

Consider the accuracy goal as one that is lifelong as a shooter.  All skills diminish over time if we don’t nurture them through regular practice, even as little as 10 minutes of dry fire practice 3 days a week will help keep the skills sharp.  Also as we age, we will have to practice and maybe even implement new skills or introduce new equipment to overcome more movement, less stability, less strength and diminished vision and your accuracy goals may change due to these factors.  Set attainable goals in shorter time frames to help build confidence and make the end result achievable, but never forget that the process is just as important as the end goal!