If you shoot rifle in Germany, or you have picked up a BDS rulebook because your club hosts a BDS event, you will meet the 100m Ringziel early. It is the standard ring target for a whole family of BDS 100m classes, from Mannliches Sportgewehr (sport rifle) to scoped ZF-Gewehr shooting. And if your reference point is ISSF paper, it looks familiar but not identical: same square-ish white sheet, same black bull in the middle, noticeably different numbers underneath.
This guide walks through the target's dimensions, how the rings are scored, which BDS classes use it, and how it differs from the ISSF targets you may already know. If you are newer to ring targets in general, our ISSF target dimensions reference covers the classic competition cards first.
What is the BDS 100m Ringziel?
The BDS 100m Ringziel (officially the BDS-100m-Scheibe, sheet Z 1 in the BDS Sporthandbuch, article 4402) is the German Bund der Sportschützen's ring target for 100m rifle shooting. It scores rings 1 to 10 with a 34mm ten ring, a 17mm inner ten, and a 204mm black aiming mark on a 395mm square sheet. It is a BDS design, not an ISSF one.
Think of it as the federation's workhorse. Where ISSF defines one 300m rifle target for a small set of elite events, BDS runs dozens of Wertungsklassen (evaluation classes) across 50m, 100m and 300m, and the 100m Ringziel sits in the middle of that system. The classes that shoot it differ by rifle type and sighting system: iron sights, diopter, or scope. The target stays the same, which keeps club-level logistics simple. One paper, many competitions.
A note on naming, because German target terminology trips people up. "Ringziel" just means ring target, scored by ring value. The "Spiegel" is the black aiming mark, the circle containing rings 5 through 10. The "Innenzehn" is the inner ten. Once you have those three words, the spec sheet reads easily.
BDS 100m Ringziel dimensions at a glance
Here are the official measurements, as published in the current BDS Sporthandbuch target rules:
| Feature | Measurement |
|---|---|
| Inner ten (Innenzehn) diameter | 17 mm |
| Ten ring diameter | 34 mm |
| Ring width (rings 1 to 9) | 17 mm per ring |
| Black aiming mark (Spiegel, rings 5-10) | 204 mm |
| Ring 1 outer diameter | 340 mm |
| Sheet format | 395 × 395 mm |
Two things worth noticing. First, the ring spacing is uniform: every ring band is 17mm wide, so the 9 ring closes at 68mm, the 8 at 102mm, and so on out to ring 1 at 340mm. There are no compressed outer rings like on some military and pistol targets. Second, ring 1 does not reach the edge of the paper. The sheet is 395mm wide but the scoring area only spans 340mm, so a hit in the outer margin is a miss even though it left a hole.
Caliber matters at this scale. The typical BDS 100m class is a centerfire rifle, commonly .308 Winchester (7.62mm), and a 7.62mm hole touching the 34mm ten ring line scores a ten. That is the same edge-counting principle every ISSF shooter knows, and it is why close shots get gauged rather than eyeballed. Our explainer on how plug gauges and scoring gauges work covers the mechanics if you have never handled one.
How is the BDS 100m Ringziel scored?
Scoring is classic ring value. Each shot counts the highest ring whose edge the bullet hole touches, from 1 on the outside to 10 in the middle. A hole entirely outside ring 1 scores zero. The inner ten exists inside the ten ring for tie-breaking, exactly parallel to the ISSF inner ten: equal ring totals are separated by who landed more shots inside the 17mm centre circle.
Because every ring band is equally wide, precision scales in a pleasantly linear way. Moving your group 17mm sideways costs exactly one ring per shot across the whole card. There is no zone where a small wobble is punished disproportionately, which makes the Ringziel honest for tracking progress: your average tells you your radial distance from centre, no more and no less.
What the card does not tell you is shot count, because that belongs to the course of fire, not the paper. A 100m precision class might shoot a different number of shots than a timed class on the same target, so always read the class regulations in the current Sporthandbuch for the series format and time limits. We will not quote them here; BDS revises the handbook regularly and the current PDF is the only safe source.
Which BDS classes shoot the 100m Ringziel?
The BDS target appendix maps every class to its sheet. For the 100m Ringziel (Z 1), the main users are:
- 100m precision classes with iron or diopter sights, including Mannliches Sportgewehr (3101) and the self-loading rifle ZF class (3111)
- 100m precision classes with optical sights, the SG SL optische Visierung classes (3114, 3115)
- Hunting rifle classes up to and over 6.4mm caliber (3103, 3104)
- 100m timed classes with optical sights (3314, 3315)
- Several 50m precision classes, which use the same Z 1 sheet at the shorter distance
That last bullet surprises people. BDS reuses the 100m sheet for a set of 50m precision classes rather than scaling everything down, so you can meet this target at two distances. Meanwhile the ISSF-100m-Scheibe (Z 5) serves the classes that need it, including the Unterhebelrepetierer (lever action) and non-scoped double rifle classes. The takeaway: never assume which paper a BDS relay will hang. Check the class number against the appendix.
Training at reduced distance has its own rule. If you train a 100m discipline on a 50m range, the BDS target rules prescribe the ISSF-50m-Scheibe as the substitute, not a shrunk Ringziel. Ballistics at half distance change the game enough that a different card is the honest answer.
How does it compare with ISSF targets?
The closest ISSF comparison is the 300m rifle target family, and the philosophy differs more than the geometry. ISSF targets trace back to specific Olympic events with fixed ring counts and courses of fire. BDS targets serve a broad club system where many rifle types compete on shared paper, so the Ringziel is deliberately generic: ten uniform rings, one black Spiegel, generous margins.
If you already understand how ISSF scoring zones and decimal rings work, you can read a Ringziel card in about thirty seconds. The habits transfer completely: gauge close shots, count edges, use inner tens only for ties. The main practical difference is that 17mm uniform rings are coarser than decimal scoring, so two shooters with clearly different groups can still card the same total. On ISSF decimal cards that happens far less often.
Can you score a Ringziel with your phone?
Yes, and it is the natural fix for the coarse-ring problem. Photograph the card, let an app detect each hole against the ring geometry, and you get positions and radial distances that the printed rings cannot express. That is exactly what we built TargetLog for: the app includes the BDS 100m Ringziel with its verified dimensions as a supported discipline, alongside the ISSF cards. The same workflow as scoring ISSF targets with your phone, on German paper. You can read more about it on the paper target scoring app page.
For club shooters the real win is the training diary. A ring total alone tells you little week to week; the underlying group centre and spread tell you a lot. Score the same card the same way for a month and the trends appear on their own.
faq
Does the Ringziel have an X ring like NRA targets? No. The inner ten (Innenzehn, 17mm) plays the tie-breaking role that NRA "center shots" or X rings play, but it is scored as a ten. On the printed target it is a plain inner circle, not a lettered ring.
Why is the sheet 395mm if ring 1 is only 340mm? The margin gives scoring room and paste room. Scorers need clean space around the outer ring to judge borderline holes and to gauge shots that land just outside the 1 ring, and the frame clips the sheet at the edges. A hole in that margin scores zero.
