
As I’ve already written about in the past few posts, I recently attended the RANGEMASTER Polite Society Tactical Conference. One class I attended there was presented by Darryl Bolke of Hardwired Tactical Shooting, from Dallas TX. The lecture was entitled, “The Secrets of Highly Successful Gunfighters.”
Darryl talked about the legendary lawmen, of both the distant and recent past. Some of these men had been his mentors, and he made careful notes of the skills he observed these men to have in common. A common thread through all of these men was their capability to deliver extremely accurate fire, under the threat and pressure of tense situations AND/OR incoming gunfire! Having the ability to deliver, on demand, gunshots to either the fist-sized vital zone of the upper chest, or the fist-sized vital zone of the head, are the only predictable ways to cease violent or homicidal human behavior, with pistol projectiles, regardless of caliber.
Darryl also noticed that this unique group of men tended to spend their time in extensive dry-practice (which he uses instead of the term, “dry-fire,” for obvious reasons) live-fire practice on the range, AND in accuracy-intensive competition like NRA Bullseye or PPC matches. If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, it’s that this unique sample group definitely subscribed to the, “accuracy FIRST,” ideal, and it served them well.
Unfortunately, gents like the aforementioned group don’t (or cannot) exist in law enforcement these days due to our hyper-sensitive, politically correct world. Habitual gunfight survivors are cycled out of their duty positions, and modern law enforcement officers simply cannot accrue the body of experience and success that officers of past generations could, and did. Not to denigrate past or current generations of law enforcement officers, but, “They just CAN’T make them like they used to!” In the civilian/armed self-defense world, two gunfighters that stick out in my mind, are Lance Thomas of Santa Monica CA, who successfully defended his high-end watch shop from multiple armed robbers on several occasions, and Second Chance Body Armor inventor (and former pizza delivery driver) Richard Davis, who was also the victor in robbery attempts against multiple armed suspects. I’m sure that there are others, but most victims of serial robberies change their vocation, or at least their location, after having experienced multiple existential threats.
Unfortunately, I missed Darryl’s range block that covered shooting drills relative to his lecture, because my match shooting time ran over due to previous shooters having some kind of conundrum. But I took notes on what I could overhear coming off of the range!
Any of my eleven regular readers knows that I’m a big fan of Claude Werner, AKA The Tactical Professor. Claude (no coincidence) is also a believer in the 100% accuracy club. Below is a baseline performance drill Claude came up with, that has also been used by Super-Cop Greg Ellifritz from Active Response Training, as outlined here, on his blog.
THE TACTICAL PROFESSOR BASELINE PERFORMANCE DRILL (the goal, is 100% accuracy) Claude originally posted this drill here, which I have bold printed in a direct copy, for your enjoyment:
“The objective of this drill is to determine what distance you can make 100 percent hits on the vital area of a silhouette target. My feeling is that we need to work on achieving 100 percent accuracy because errant rounds in our homes or neighborhoods could be a major problem. Since I also think the first shot is the most important, I structured the session with a lot of first shots but also included multi-shot strings. A lot of people ‘walk their rounds’ into the target even with handguns. This is a huge problem and liability.
We don’t count hits on the head in this drill because they are actually misses if you are aiming at the body. The head is more than a foot away from the center of the body, if you hit the head when you’re aiming at the body, it’s just a lucky shot and doesn’t count in terms of performance measurement.”
Required equipment:
Any silhouette target; B-27, B-21, Q, IDPA, IPSC, etc.
Masking tape (preferred) or magic marker to mark the target.
Pistol, 50 rounds of ammunition
Eye and ear protection
Overview
This drill consists of five (5) Sequences of 10 shots each. The Sequences are untimed.
Setup:
Place target at three (3) yards
Start loaded with five (5) rounds only.
Procedure:
The starting position is Low Ready. This means the pistol is aimed at the floor below the target. For double action pistols, you will decock after each Step.
Sequence 1 (10 rounds)
1) Start with handgun held in both hands, aimed at the floor below the target. Spare magazine loaded with 5 rounds or speedloader with 5 rounds or 5 loose rounds on the bench.
2) Bring the pistol up on target and fire 1 shot at the center of target. Followthrough for one second, then return to low ready. Decock, if appropriate.
3) Bring the pistol up on target and fire 2 shots at the center of target. Followthrough for one second, then return to low ready. Decock.
4) Bring the pistol up on target and fire 3 shots at the center of target. After two shots, the pistol will be out of ammunition. Reload it and fire the third shot. Followthrough for one second, then return to low ready. Decock.
5) Bring the pistol up on target and fire 4 shots at the center of target. After the shots, the pistol will be out of ammunition. Hopefully, the slide has locked back if it’s an autoloader.
6) Place your pistol down on the bench.
7) Bring your target back and mark all the hits, preferably with tape but a marker will do.
8) Write on the target how many hits you made in the body scoring area. I prefer to not count the outer scoring area as I mentioned in Why I hate the -3 zone. Use this format, (3) X/10, X being the number of hits. For this drill, do not count any hits in the head, they are actually misses.
Sequence 2 (10 rounds)
1) Send the target out to 5 yards.
2) Repeat Sequence 1 but with the target at 5 yards instead of 3 yards.
3) When you write on the target how many hits you made in the scoring area, it will be (5) X/10. The number in parenthesis is the distance in yards.
Sequence 3 (10 rounds)
1) Send the target out to 7 yards.
2) Repeat Sequence 1 with the target at 7 yards.
3) Write on the target how many hits you made at 7 yards. (7) X/10
Sequence 4 (10 rounds)
1) Send the target out to 10 yards.
2) Repeat Sequence 1 with the target at 10 yards.
3) Write on the target how many hits you made at 10 yards. (10) X/10
Sequence 5 (10 rounds)
4) Send the target out to 15 yards.
5) Repeat Sequence 1 with the target at 15 yards.
6) Write on the target how many hits you made at 15 yards. (15) X/10
“When you finish the drill, record your score for each yardage. Make this a part of your practice record. Shooting this exercise will give you a good idea of what your current proficiency level is. That’s an important starting point.”
Well, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, and since some of you like software, and some of you like hardware (and I love you all) I thought that I would run this baseline evaluation test with several guns and make sure that I’m using the guns I should be! I used a paper version of the IDPA target, and I counted anything outside of the (-0) AKA, “down zero,” which is an 8″ diameter circle in the mid/upper chestal region of the target. I added an additional record to the scoring, which is the total number of rounds that actually went onto the bad guy, in even the -1 or -3 areas. You’ll notice in the photo sequence:





In summary, precision fire from 3, 5, 7 and 10 yards isn’t particularly difficult. Where the rubber truly meets the road for ME, is at 15 and 25 yards. At those longer distances, I really have to slow down, lock into that front sight and get a smooth press to send the projectile into the desired terminus. Botch any one of those segments, and the shot goes wide. Seems simple enough! But alas, as anyone who has hammered on this stuff for hours/days/months/years, “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear, well, he eats you!” Luckily for folks like me, the lone, armed citizen, shots that long are rare (albeit not unheard of!). Try this drill, see how you fare, especially with your carry guns. And if you have a gun in your safe that you shoot BETTER than your carry gun, maybe look closer at WHY you made that choice. If you aren’t under any kind of work constraint or regulation to carry a specific sidearm, consider changing to something that you can produce 100% accuracy and thus 100% accountability with. And remember the ways of the past masters…as Larry Vickers says in his classes, “Speed is fine, but accuracy is FINAL!” Thanks for reading!