Be sure to check out Matt's article at Everyday Marksman called "Foundations of Patrol Rifle Marksmanship: Know Your Objective!" The gist of the article is to be mindful of the purpose of your training--what you are trying to accomplish and what are you goals. For instance, the author points out that shooting on the rifle range is a means to an end and not the end itself.
In his case, he is looking at training law enforcement officers who might not have any background in shooting rifles how to effectively use their patrol rifles. Thus, he has the following recommendation as levels of acceptable accuracy and targets to use. After a discussing with a friend that without context standards will often be picked arbitrarily, the author noted that his friend (John Simpson) instead "offered that we should be thinking in terms of the desired outcome against the target."
The example he used went back to the Trainfire program introduced in the 1950s. After years of research, they published a series of guidelines for the standard an infantryman should be trained to for marksmanship. Among those standards was an outside edge of 300 yards.
Lets arbitrarily assume a 12″ vital zone at 300 yards. If you do the math on that, it’s about a 4 minute of angle standard (MOA). From here, it would be easy to simply state that every infantryman should be trained to a 4 MOA standard of accuracy. In fact, many militaries have done just that.
However, John’s point would be that the target is always 12″ regardless of distance. At closer distances, say 50 to 100 yards, your goal shouldn’t be to produce 2″ or 4″ groups, but to still hit the 12″ vital zone even faster. Otherwise, you’re training yourself to slower than you should be for the sake of more accuracy than you needed.
Other good advice on some suggested drills and exercises and shooting positions, so be sure to read the whole thing.
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