Here at Pistol-Forum, and at any number of other forums, there is almost always a thread going on some variation of "shooting groups at 25 yards (and further)." We have had a bunch of drills of the week like Dot Torture and 300.
I appreciate the necessity of being able to shoot a group for testing ammo and pistols. Under those conditions, using a bench or taking all day might make sense. However, when considering practical shooting competition, hunting and defensive use of the pistol, taking 10 seconds or longer per shot is probably not very useful.
I have come to believe that spending much time shooting slow groups is not just a bad use of training time and ammo, but actually counterproductive to being able to shoot accurate shots under the realistic time constraints you might experience gaming, hunting or defending yourself. The reason for this is once your mind gets comfortable taking all day, it doesn't feel right to just align the sights and press the trigger through without delay.
Earlier this week, I started thinking of a drill to help me improve my ability to press the trigger without delay on a low prob target, and to try to evaluate how much accuracy I might be giving up by shooting that way. My drill was to aim in on a 3x5 at 25 yards, take the slack out of the trigger, and just press the damn trigger in one continuous motion. I would then repeat that, for a total of five or ten shots, and compare that group with a similar number of shots shot traditionally (read slowly). I had no idea how it would turn out, and in discussing this with some other excellent shooters and members here, they had no idea either.
I chickened out of putting the 3x5 on the head, as I wanted to see stray shots, and settled on taping up about a 3x5 of tape on a well used IPSC cardboard target. I decided to use a Glock for this test, as historically all the junk in the Glock trigger has given me fits on 300 drills, and I find the Glock trigger harder to press straight back. By chance, I just got back a Gen 3 G17 that Coldbore Custom cut to a 19 length, which I was looking for an excuse to shoot.
I started out shooting a slow fire group on the head (25 yards, PMC 115 ball, HD sights). Then I got with the pressing the trigger in one motion without delay and repeating. This is what ten quick presses looked like.
My SLOW fire group was maybe 60 or 70 percent of this size. Given that I have spent years doing intermittent slow fire group shooting, and this was my first outing on this, it makes me wonder why I should continue to invest any appreciable time doing traditional pistol slow fire group shooting, and instead practice what I would refer to as "practical" group shooting?