Listening to Vicious Circle #21 the other day and something Law Dog brought up (besides the Sapper Lizards) really made me think.
Law Dog mentioned (and I'm paraphrasing) how people tend to consider "center mass" as "torso" and if the torso is hidden behind a pickup truck, officers will try like hell to shoot through the engine block. Center mass means the center of the largest part of the target you can see. If only the dude's melon is visible, shoot for the center of that.
During this months IPSC shoot, there was one stage where 4 targets were arranged in a circle with a no shoot in the middle (kind of like a star pattern). Yes, I hit the no-shoot. Bastard should have gotten out of the way.
Anyway, the 'center of mass' was primarily the shoulders and head of the targets. You weren't going to get an A hit in mid torso without popping the good guy. So COM became the head (if you wanted A or B scores) or the shoulder. A very interesting course of fire, to be sure.
But Law Dog's point is very valid – shoot for the center of what you can hit, not necessarily the center of the target. I'm going to have to start pasting targets up differently so that the area I need to shoot isn't dead center of the paper. I also need to figure out a way to practice IPSC style shooting on my own rather than just straight range time.