The Bill Drill 2

Anyone that has been serious about shooting for more than a couple weeks probably knows what a Bill Drill is, but just in case, it is 6 rounds on a usually 8″ target from 7 yards, from the holster. It is a fairly standard drill in the shooting community. Several years ago, Bill Wilson (the Wilson Combat Bill Wilson), came up with the Bill Drill 2. It is several repetitions, all for time, and then the times are added together and penalties assessed for poor shots. The strings of fire are as follows, with my times noted.

String of Fire	FN 509
Draw, fire 1	1.74
Draw, fire 2	1.95
Draw, fire 3	2.20
Draw, fire 4	2.74
Draw, fire 5	2.32
Raw Time	10.95
Penalties	5 x 0.5sec
Total	13.45

The target to be used is an IDPA target, and each point down is 0.50 seconds added to the total time. The score is total time for the drill plus penalties. The half second per point down is old IDPA scoring, I suppose the drill could be shot with the new 1 second per point down scoring if someone wanted to run it that way. It would just need to be consistently run that way if used for performance tracking.

I had actually pretty much forgotten this drill existed until the other day when I was looking back on my notes to review a previous score I had on another drill. The last time I shot the Bill Drill 2 was with a Taurus 605 (despite being aTaurus, that gun was actually not horrible). One of the cool things about this drill is that it is essentially revolver neutral. There are not any reloads, and the strings of fire do not exceed 5 rounds. This means I could shoot this gun with a small frame revolver, or a full size duty pistol,and get a fairly apples to apples comparison of shooting ability within the context of the drill.

I shot the drill from concealment out of a RCS Morrigan. It was not my best shooting. I have been so focused on other issues with the 509 that I haven’t spent much time working speed, and it showed. I flubbed my draw on string 4 and tried to make it up in the shooting. It didn’t go well. I had two bad misses in the -1 zone at about the 1 o’clock position. It is noticeable in the times as well because I shot 5 rounds nearly a half second faster than I shot 4 rounds. I suspect, that if I can complete the drill without flubbing a draw, I might be able to pull my time down closer to 10 seconds. That is going to be my goal anyway.