Bill Drill

[Ron Ankeny]

All A hits or it doesn't count. The gun is my L10 single stack, a Baer PII in .45 ACP. The loads were 230 RNL over Clays. FWIW, I don't do Bill Drills that fast on demand, but I have shot a ton of them in 1.80-1.85 with about a 1.1-1.2 draw.

Edited April 1, 2006 by Ron Ankeny

[HSMITH]

Ron, help an aspiring guy here if you would. I can pull splits like you do in dry fire only, in live fire I have a terrible time breaking .13 on my best run and .15-.17 is a lot more realistic 'on demand'.

I have been following your posts long enough to know that you come from an accuracy background and I would like to know how you 'broke free' from the accuracy requirements to go as fast as you do. I never got heavy into bullseye or PPC, but still come from an accuracy background. I have a hard time letting go enough to let the gun do what it can do. The sights are there, waiting, and yet I am not on the trigger. I can 'see' splits a heck of a lot faster than .15's but I am not getting there. Do you have a trick or a drill to help?

I realize that the potential application of these extreme splits is really limited and not likely to show up in my match results, I am more interested from a technical point of view and possibly a bleed-over into my close target times. If nothing else I would be damn proud to post a video like yours!! Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Flexmoney]

.15's - .17's are still smokin fast. Maybe you aren't breaking them faster becasue your vision is telling you it's not there yet?

Have you tried Burkett's timing drills and played with your grip pressure?

[Ron Ankeny]

HSMITH:

The splits are a by-product of a lot of work that went into curing trigger freeze. I fought trigger freeze for a long time. I finally got over failing to reset the trigger by shifting my focus into maintaining a neutral grip, and isolating the action of the trigger finger. Timing drills, Bill Drills, and paying attention to what my hands were doing cured the trigger freeze and it also resulted in some fairly fast splits.

I also had a heck of a time getting over always needing that perfect sight alignment. When I finally realized that all I needed to see was what was required to make and call the shot, I was on the road to getting over stressing over the sights. But I had to learn what constitutes an acceptable sight picture. Believe it or not, I did a lot of shooting with the sights misaligned on purpose, and the hits were still acceptable. I had let my vision dictate my shooting for years, but I was clueless about visual acceptability.

Last but not least, in PPC I used a lot of concentration. I am referring to classical concentration where you burn a hole in the target with your eys, pull them back to see the front sight perfectly aligned with the rear sight, accept the wobble zone, then think the trigger off. Replacing concentration with awareness allowed me to turn those 8 second El Pres drills into five and change. Cool stuff.

BTW, Flex is right, .15s and .17s are plenty fast enough. I have shot splits sub .10 and all they are worth is bragging rights and style points, neither of which contribute a heck of a lot to the scorecard.

Edited April 1, 2006 by Ron Ankeny

[HSMITH]

That is a good read, thanks!!

[Steve J]

All A hits or it doesn't count. The gun is my L10 single stack, a Baer PII in .45 ACP. The loads were 230 RNL over Clays. FWIW, I don't do Bill Drills that fast on demand, but I have shot a ton of them in 1.80-1.85 with about a 1.1-1.2 draw.

Ron, what PF are your loads running at, and what weight springs are you running in your PII?

Thanks.

[JD45]

Ron,

Do you grip the pistol hard? And are you a trigger-slapper?

I've been playing around with different grip tension, and trigger-slapping for a while. At times, a death grip seems to help. But on many occasions, not so much.

Trigger-slapping sometimes works well for me on 7yd. Bill Drills.

Edited April 2, 2006 by JD45