Shooting paper targets is… fine. We’ve all done it for years, and there is indeed a great deal of satisfaction when you finally retrieve your target and you’ve shot a nice group.

Unfortunately, paper targets don’t add much in the way of tangible feedback, and require a lot of downtime as the range goes cold for folks to swap out paper targets. For those reasons (among others), a lot of people are becoming converts to steel targets.

Among the better values in steel targets are those from Recon Marine veteran-owned Renaissance Steel Research.

Jon at Chaos311Clarity did a very solid review on RSR’s targets in a video last year.

We obtained one of RSR’s $289 Ready Ship Target Hostage Head Combo. To give you an idea of the value of the system, a similar combo from another AR500 steel target manufacturer would have run me $319-$329 depending on stand height, with another $49 in shipping on the back end. The RSR system was $79-$89 less expensive.

It includes the popular AR500 steel Ready Ship Target (RST) designed to fit in a Flat Rate Shipping Box at $175 (shipping included), and the Hostage Head Add-On, a $125 6-inch “flipper” target system that flips from one side of the target to the other with a solid bullet impact, and the steel base. All you need to do is provide your own 2″x4″ in the length of your choice.

Assembled, it looks like this.

Here is a slightly closer view, focusing on just the targets.

This wasn’t a play session at 37 PSR Gun Club, but time to work on trigger control on a new gun.

I recently received a CZ P07 9mm pistol for review, and I’ll be taking it with me to Gunsite Academy’s Defense Against Street Crimes course next week. I needed to get used to the P07’s trigger, focusing on the double-action pull. RSR’s Ready Ship Target Hostage Head Combo would give me instantaneous feedback with a solid “ding” if I hit the target, and 37 PSR’s tactical bay backstop would glare at me in disapproving silence if I missed.

Shooting offhand at 25 yards I consistently pulled my double-action shots low, which I guess I should have expected since I spend the vast majority of my time writing about shooting instead of actually, you know, shooting.

Moving in to 20 and then 15 yards I was still all over the target in double-action mode, but I was making reasonably quick, if not especially pretty hits on the reduced size IPSC target.

At ten yards I was able to center up with reasonable consistency with a half-magazine, and then started tackling the hostage-taker’s 6″ head.

The flapper swung easily from right to left and back again with solid hits, and on less than perfect hits that left the 6″ AR500 steel plate hiding behind the RST, a single shot fired into the RST would make the hostage taker’s head swing to a good shooting position.

This wasn’t close to being a durability test of the RSR Ready Ship Target Hostage Head Combo, or its component parts, the Ready Ship Target (RST) and the Hostage Head Add-On.

It was a simple “first look” at a very affordable and well-designed system that I suspect that I’m going to enjoy shooting for a long time to come. I’ll be sure to write about it again after a few thousand more rounds downrange.