Another article rediscovered by my Historical Handgun research team. This one, from Guns magazine in 1960, discusses a new target design developed specifically to aid shooters in improving their hipshooting skills. It discusses one- and two-handed hip shooting techniques. While most ranges don’t allow this type of practice, those with laser dry fire gear (SIRT pistol, laser “bullet”, or similar) might find it fun to try some hipshooting. Those with private ranges could give the live fire version of this a try. Keep your target close to the backstop and start any live fire hipshooting drills close to the target (3-5 yards).

You can use a KRT-3 target (print on 11×17 paper) as your “cross target”, or make one using duct tape on any cardboard backer.

I used the KRT-3 for some SIRT pistol laser dryfire hipshooting practice, and then went to the range to do some live fire hipshooting. My intention was to paint a big black stripe down the pepper popper I was going to use as my hipshooting target, to simulate the design of the 1960 target, but the black paint can I grabbed only had a little. So you’ll see the start of a black stripe at the top of the steel target.

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Hip shooting was still a part of traditional handgun training up to the 1980’s. This pic shows trainer and world champion shooter John Shaw demonstrating his hip shooting technique in one of his books from that decade.