Said a bit different. We shoot groups off the bench to test our eqipment and to know what it will do. We shoot offhand at paper silhouette targets to see if the shooter is doing his part. Like not pushing or pulling or bumping the shot.
Off hand shooting at smaller and smaller circles will help you tighten your offhand "groups" and increase your capabilities. Put 10 shots in a 6 inch circle before you move to a 5 inch circle then a 4 then a 3. This will tighten up your "groups".
Goals. Another way to think of it is to make each shot a goal. To show your self a perfect shot each time. That way you will always have another goal. If you should happen to miss you still have another goal. Don't worry what you have done or want to do in the next relay but what you are doing now as you line up the shot and pull the trigger on that perfect shot.

I do shoot practice on paper. One reason is to confirm offhand zeros. Box in the "normal" group with a pencil and framing square then X through the corners. Center of the X is center of impact and used to adjust sight settings. By Normal I mean don't count the off shots for sight settings. Centered up is important and you don't want to make adjustments factoring in off shots. Other thing is to focus on "off shots" my shooting log has every shot missed in a match, logged with why it was a miss. Practice circle the off shots and note why they were missed on the practice target. I can tell you there are 3 reasons for me to miss a Critter and constantly work on not making those mistakes.

Harry Pope was quoted in 1922

" A good score is not made by a large number of perfect shots, but by the absence of poor ones. "

Boats

I am a master shooter and have shot many groups on paper.

I can shoot about 2.5 minutes of angle. That's about 1.25 inch at chickens, and 3 inches. That is about the size of the animals.

It has long been a theory of mine that all shooting sports have developed around the personal accuracy of a human.

Thus the animals are sized to match what a person can shoot. Roughly that is.

I would point out that the 10 ring in the 200 yard offhand target for high power matches is 7 inches. Or 3.5 minutes of angle.

Lucho

I have been shooting silhouette for over 30 years but I have just joined this forum.I live about 150 miles north of Buffalo NY. We get the same lake effect snow as Buffalo about 12 to 15 feet of snow.As a result I can not shoot steel in the winter. I make a couple of matches in Ridgway PA every year. I am AAA in Standard and AA in Hunter. I just bought a used 1712 and my pratice scores are in AAA. I shoot a lot of paper targets. I agree that shooting Bulleye targets is very different. I use sillouette targets to shoot at. I traced steel targets then made a template to use. I have a heated shooting shack so I can shoot all winter which starts in Novemeber and ends in April. My goal is to shoot 4MOA at all animals.