Making E-targets for U.S. Shooters

One of the first questions asked about electronic scoring targets is, “What about bullets striking the electronics or wiring?” The question reveals a major difference between European and U.S. cultures.

In Europe, where e-targets are wildly popular, firearms ownership is tightly regulated; “plinking” as we enjoy it in the U.S. is virtually unknown there. Europeans who enjoy the privilege of target shooting are quite dedicated and, frankly, they don’t tend to throw their shots into berms and target frames. Yes, that’s a generalization—yet it’s true enough that poor shooters damaging target electronics isn’t that much of a concern in Europe. Here in the U.S., quite a few John Q. Plinker target shooters lack the necessary skill to keep bullets in the neighborhood of the scoring black. A glance at bullet-damaged target frames at any shooting range proves that point.

In fact, one of the speedbumps to bringing e-target technology to the U.S. was Norwegian target maker Kongsberg had to redesign acoustic targets specifically for American shooters.

“Precision target systems like ours for the general public were originally designed to accommodate national and world championship shooters—folks whose rounds do not fall outside the black very often,” CMP North General Manager Steve Cooper said. “Instead of telling Kongsberg Target Systems, ‘Your targets don’t work well in America, thank you, goodbye,’ KTS redoubled its efforts to make their system more robust, more intuitive, faster and more efficient than it was when we started this process more than two years ago.”