A New 3-Gun Pistol Drill

Today is December 24th – Christmas Eve.  We’ve had several weeks of bitter cold weather, as you would expect for this time of year in Ohio.  Today hit the mid-40’s in temperature, so it was important for me to take advantage of the relative heat wave and get out to the range.

I decided that to try something different in my pistol practice – change things up a bit.  I wanted to add some point-to-point movement, so I spray painted two circles onto the steel patterning wall on the right side of the pistol bay, approximately the size of 3-Gun paper targets.  On the left side of the bay I would use the existing six-plate rack.  Starting on the right side at a distance of 10 yards/30 ft. from the targets, on the “beep” of the timer I would draw and shoot my two “paper” targets – two shots each.  Sprinting to my left approximately 20 ft., I would then shoot the six steel plate rack targets, for a total of ten rounds for the drill.  Here’s a photo of the steel bay at my club, set up as I have described:

Having never set this drill up before, I had no idea what a “good” time would be.  The first time I ran it, I got just over 9 seconds:

I ran the drill several more times – it was great fun, incorporated the explosive, point-to-point movement that is common in practical shooting and exposed both some strengths and weaknesses in my dry fire training.  On the plus side, coming out of the holster I was extremely fast and accurate on right side of the course.  At this point, my SIG P320 Compact which I shoot in competition still uses the factory trigger.  The groups on this next run were darn near perfect, center target hits:

I attribute the speed and accuracy goodness seen in the portion of the drill to my 3 timex weekly dry fire with my pistol.  Unfortunately, this run was also slower – largely due to the makeup shots taken on the steel plate rack.  It took 16 shots to complete a ten-round course of fire.  Not good.

Slowly, my times started coming down below the nine second mark:

The makeup shots weren’t improving though – 17 shots were entirely too many.  Still, I was really happy with my hits on the right side – check out the dead-center double tap on the left circle target:

In my best run of the session, I turned in an 8.22 second time- dropping a full second of my worst time of 9.22:

14 shots taken was an improvement over some of my worst runs, but not great. For future live fire practice sessions, I need to practice running the six plate rack – it’s a common target array in the 3-Gun matches in which I shoot.

 

For future sessions, I’m thinking that a 7 second time will be my goal which should be quite attainable with fewer makeup shots on the plate rack.   It may also be a bit easier/faster to run the drill when it is warmer and I’m not layered up with clothing:

If I go one for one, improve my sprinting, and were wearing less cloths, a six second time may be attainable.  But I’ll set a goal of 7 seconds for the time being and hope I get some more unseasonably warm, dry weather to practice this new drill.