The Annoying Rightness of Bolke and Dobbs

[SweetScienceOfShooting]

Thanks for the added commentary Nyeti. Great stuff as usual, now I gotta go process it a little and do the work.

[John Hearne]

Thanks for the added commentary Nyeti. Great stuff as usual, now I gotta go process it a little and do the work.

Yeah, they're pretty smart dudes. My other observation is that some of this is hard to prepare for by yourself. For instance, in their classes, almost every drill has a shoot/no-shoot decision based on verbal information provided by the instructors. You never know whether you'll be pulling the trigger or not. This lack of control is very difficult (not impossible to pull off by yourself)

The closest I've come to by myself stuff is a variation of the Tom Givens Casino Drill. The traditional Casino Drill is shot on this target:
or any one of the variants, there are three total. The shooter loads the weapon with seven rounds and has two reloads of seven on their person. At the go signal, you shoot "1" one time, "2" two times, "3" three times, "4" four times, "5" five times, and "6" six times. Score is based on total time with one second added for any misses. The basic version is shot at 5 yards and passing is a total time of 21 seconds or less.
(Tom found a smaller set of shapes that he used for the advanced instructor class and you can always shoot the drill at 7 yards or more.)

I've enhanced the drill and made it more complex by randomly varying the magazine load - one mag of 6, one of 7, and one of 8. Another variation is to constantly change which variant of the target you're shooting so you can't memorize the sequence.

My most complex variant involves two six sided dice, one traditional and one with the labels "up" and "dn" evenly distributed on the sides. You roll and keep you hand over the dice. At the start signal you move you hand and see what you've got. The number indicates which target you shoot first and the up or down tells you in which order to shoot the targets.

FWIW, the DTI dance with it's random malfunction is a similar drill because the shooter is not longer able to follow their shooting plan.

How's that for a tag line "there are no shooting plans in gunfights."

[SweetScienceOfShooting]

Thanks for the drill suggestion John. I also really liked your ideas with the photorealistic targets.

[LSP972]

That "Casino Drill" is one of the best take-aways I've ever picked up at a class. It works just about every needed skill for defensive, concealed-carry shooting at once.

I bought all three variations of the target, take one of them (I never know which one, they are stacked randomly face down and I don't actually see it until I hang it at the range) every practice session, and shoot it first, cold. After I began to clean it regularly, I started mixing up the number of rounds in each magazine, as John described… which changes things enough to make you keep thinking and observing… and missing and/or putting the wrong number of shots on some of the images.

.

[PT Doc]

What is the recommendation for draw speed? Are we supposed to keep practicing a fast draw, or is there a risk of drawing too fast to be able to evaluate?

I can hear Brother Givens's soothing words in my head. "Draw quickly! Shoot carefully."

Meaning unless it is for administrative purposes, our draw speed remains fairly constant and as fast as we are able to do so safely and consistently. The shifting of gears comes into play based on the precision/distance of the required shot.

[Shellback]

This may be old news... The same target's great for at home work with the SIRT gun (or dry fire) and the wife. She calls a number, or a colored shape, or even something like 5 minus 3 and then you go for 2, etc. Occasionally she'll call "reload" or "you're empty" and then go for a mag change while she's calling another sequence. Gets the gears turning while you're running the gun in dry fire mode.

[warpedcamshaft]

NYeti...

I'm going to throw out a stupid question... This all makes a lot of sense, but I am curious about one thing.

If the 2 to the body, and immediate 1 to the head does not solve the issue (due to a miss, or a peripheral hit)... Do you repeat the action again and begin another 2/1, or keep engaging the head until the target drops?

Sorry, it's dumb... but I am curious.

[JodyH]

It should also be "2 to the center of the biggest available target followed by 1 into the best available target".

[TheTrevor]

Regarding hostage shots and speed of shooting:

T2 at Rogers is a full size torso+head plate with a pop-up 8-inch "terrorist" head target appearing to the left of, and slightly obscured by, the fixed "hostage" head. The point of the Rogers course is to make hits at speeds approximating human reaction time limits, which for many folks means shooting much faster than they've previously experienced.

Some of the exposures of the T2 Tango plate are quite short, in the range of 0.50-0.75s if I recall correctly. You are not-infrequently transitioning ~15 degrees left-to-right from T1 to shoot the T2 pop-up.

On most of the lanes, the upper-left quadrant of that hostage head had been shot so much that the steel had actually been pounded back until its back corner curved back to touch the pop-up plate. If there's interest, I'll dig up a picture or extract a video frame to show this.

For me, this was a sobering reminder that there's a huge difference between making fast shots on a BG's briefly-visible head with no innocents at risk near/behind, vs doing so where driving the gun a little too far to the right in the transition meant a dead hostage. I tried to let go of this and think of it as an abstract shooting problem instead of a scenario, but as a result I kept trying for hasty shots when I knew I needed an extra 0.10-0.20 to get it right.

[BaiHu]

Great thread and I'll just add my take away.

This is all about MINDSET.

If I'm wrong, remove me from this forum.

If you train to fight as if your life and the lives of your family and innocent bystanders depend on it, then you will not be chasing as fast as you kitteningly can do anything. Instead, you'll be chasing a method of guaranteeing your work at 100%.