Looking at the Magazine Well

[Pistolero]

You can exchange and load your magazines in one of two ways: (1) If you're well practiced and your proprioceptive reflexes are what they should be, then, just drop one magazine and slam in the other without taking your eyes off the target. (2) If you have trouble with the above method, it's OK to cheat a little and use your peripheral vision in order to insert that second magazine. Some gunmen will extend the pinky of their strong hand in order to give themselves an additional reference point that doesn't require taking your eyes completely off the target.

(Watch Todd Jarrett swap magazines. Jarrett is often somewhere between method #1, and method #2. When he's really hot I've watched him move very smoothly through method #1.)

[DonovanM]

(Watch Todd Jarrett swap magazines. Jarrett is often somewhere between method #1, and method #2. When he's really hot I've watched him move very smoothly through method #1.)

The only shooting of TJ's that I've seen is with him using a magwell on a double or single-stack 1911-pattern pistol. Not to downplay his obviously superlative mastery of pistolcraft, but reloading blind with a magwell is fairly low on the scale of difficulty IMO.

A better example I think would be Mike Hughes. From what I've seen he only shoots Production style guns, and when reloading them he indexes his pointer finger on the magazine with his pinky finger wrapped around the grip, and doesn't look. I think he covers it somewhere in this vid, but you can see him reload without looking in the first twenty or so seconds.



I'm still a fan of looking. I can reload either way but feel more confident if I look.

[JAD]

I messed with reloads in dry fire this morning -- something I don't often do. I found that I do reload eyes off; the gun is at eye level, canted pretty aggressively, and off to my strong side. When it goes smoothly, mag ejection happens when the fresh mag is within a foot of the gun or so. I wish I didn't have to take the gun so far off target to hit the mag release button -- another argument for H&K, I guess -- but other than that it's a reload I'm pretty content with. I need to time it, to verify that it's worth being content with, I suppose.

[socket462]

I tend to use my grip hand to guide the mag into the well-- one time my pinky was a little too close, and the force of me slamming the mag home pinched the flesh pretty good. The pad of my pinky was black for 2 weeks with a blood blister.