Practical Shooting VS Target Shooting

I don't think it's an either/or sort of situation. I think it's more of a "building-block" approach. You start with bullseye on a square range, then Action Shooting, then scenario-based shooting with simunitions, etc.

In my years in Action Shooting I found the best shooters were the guys with a solid bullseye background. As dry and boring as it is, it burns in the muscle-memory of "front sight-press". If you think bullseye is easy try winning a match sometime.
 
About Miculek - he's shooting a revolver probably because he doesn't want to have to wait for an automatic to cycle.
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That's probably true. Jerry had the best time of all the competitors on the Pendulum stage. The other top shooters, including Max Michel, B. J. Norris, Dave Sevigny, Shannon Smith, Doug Koenig and Phil Strader, all shot "Open" class semi-autos with dot sights.
Jerry outshot the next best shooter by 0.89 seconds!
 
Many practical users of pistols are fond of making fun of target shooting, and of advice given on how to learn this branch of the sport. This attitude is well understood by the psychologist. It is founded on the unconscious jealousy of feeling of inferiority that the poor shot feels when he sees a well trained marksman making scores out of his power to equal. Unconsciously he will try to belittle that accomplishment that he does not possess, so that he will seem to his audience to be just as important and well equipped as the good marksman whom he ridicules.
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Surely I can't be the only one to see the irony in that paragraph. The OP and Gen Hatcher manage to accomplish the very thing they are deriding .
 
I haven't heard that so much about SD vs target as about hunting vs target. Many a hunter has told me that he can't hit a target at all, at any range, but that he is deadly on game. I nod and smile, as I do at a lot of BS when I know arguing will do no good. (These guys almost always still have their deer tags at the end of the season, with good excuses, of course.)

If a shooter can't hit a stationary, non-dangerous target at 10 yards, there is no way in hades he is going to hit a moving, shooting target at that range, except by luck.

I don't know Jerry Miculek, but I wonder if his skill would transfer easily to self defense. The difference is the willingness to kill. The famous Ed McGivern was once asked if he thought his legendary speed would have made him feared in the Old West. He replied that he would have failed as a gunman because those men were killers and he was not. He said something to the effect that in a gunfight, the willingness to kill was more important than technical skill in shooting. Something to think about.

Jim
 
Mindset is usually identified as more important than skill or tools in a fight. However, this thread is about skills: "practical" vs. "target".
 
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