Oh I thought the comment was funny also. But on the other hand I have not heard of a camp of intruction after 1862 either. So any new recruits or Conscripts after the summer of 1862 had to be O.J.T. in the regiment.

We have both seen untrain persons with muskets in our ranks of reenacting. And not only with the musket, but also on untrained Horses, and around an artillery piece without any concept of what they were doing. So it does not surprise me that target "Prack-tizing" would be a part of that training process.

It is one of the very few times I have seen anything mentioned about doing such and I would suspect it was very rare because of the useage of a possibly limited supply of Ammuntion.