The Bane Drill

Over at Shooting Illustrated, We find an article by Ed Head, talking about something he calls the Bane Drill.  It's a simple name for an old-time practice, shooting at longer distances.  Basically, we should be able to make a head shot at 25 yards and a body shot at 50 yards.

Nowadays, most folks train at considerably shorter distances.  We all know that most gunfights are short-range affairs, but the simple fact is that not all of them are.  Sometimes the target is appreciably longer than the standard 7-yard distance.  When I was working in a high school as the resource officer, I knew the distances of all my hallways, in case (God Forbid) I had to engage a threat down the hallway, I had a pretty good idea of the distances from one spot to the next.  The longest hallway at that school was 110 yards.  That's a long way to shoot a handgun if you've never tried it, so I got a bunch of standard B-27 targets and started learning to shoot the pistol at those ranges.

Handgun hunters practice this type shooting regularly, but most concealed carriers don't spend much time shooting on the longer ranges.  It's an excuse to get out of your comfort zone and try something new.

Even is you don't have a standard target, a paper plate would suffice,  Use a 6" plate at 25 yards and a larger 9" plate at 50 yards.  Use a good, supported firing position, find a handy table, or use a tree.  Maybe drop to one knee in the supported kneeling position, or even go prone.  Do what it takes to put the rounds on the target. Five rounds each should suffice, and hike downrange to see how you've done.  In this, as in all things, practice makes perfect.  You might learn something about your shooting skills that will pay benefits in other ways.  For example, sight-alignment and trigger squeeze become even more important at longer distances.

It's an interesting drill, and I recommend it to all serious pistol shooters.