I was talking with a friend about the recent AT-6 class and he was saying one thing that class did for him was helping him with realizing to change your cadence when changing distance. That is, when the target is up close, you can shoot faster and still get good hits. When the target is further away, you have to go slower to still get good hits.

I’d actually simplify this notion a bit.

It’s not about distance to/from the target, it’s about the size of the target.

You have to go slow to hit small things, you can go faster to hit big things.

If you have an 8-inch circle for your target, at 3 yards it’ll be “so big” and you can go at a faster pace and still get all your hits within that circle. If you then step back to 25 yards, that 8-inch circle is going to look pretty small and you’re going to have to slow down. The target didn’t actually change size, but relatively speaking it did and that’s what matters. If you put a 8-foot circle as your target and went back to 25 yards, I betcha you could still shoot pretty fast and still get all your hits in that 8-foot circle. If you had a 0.8-inch circle, even at 3 yards you’re going to slow down and really be sure of a precise sight picture to hit that tiny target.

So it’s not really about distance to/from the target, it’s more about the (perceived) size of the target. To hit smaller things you’re going to have to slow down. If the thing is bigger, you can go faster. Implied in that is if the target size changes, your shooting cadence must also change.