QUICK DRAW - How I learned not to shoot myself

As a teenager I was fascinated with how fast some shooters could get their gun out and go to work with it. I read Ed McGivern, Elmer Keith, Bill Jordan, Charles Askins, Skeeter Skelton and others. I saw articles about quick-draw competition and while firing blanks never appealed to me I figured if you could learn with blanks, why not learn with full power ammo?

My Dad was pretty fast also. I saw him toss a wood block out in front of himself with his gun hand, jerk his sixgun and bust the wood block before it had gone 3 or 4 feet. And I determined to learn how to pull a sixgun quickly.

I did not resort to short barreled sixguns in order to speed up my draw. My Dad used 7 ½” Colts or Rugers and told me he learned using 8” barreled Remington cap & ball sixguns. He said if you learned to do it correctly that the long barreled guns could be gotten into action nearly as fast as the short guns and in the real world, they were plenty fast. And he could prove it by what he did with them.

I was 15 years old and had a Ruger Blackhawk 6 ½” .357 Magnum. I practiced every day, drawing and dry-firing that sixgun. I did not try for speed, I practiced consistancy. Doing it exactly the same, over and over and over and over. And in time I got fairly quick.

One day on the Range I was with some friends and showing off, I tossed a wood block with my gun hand and grabbed my pistol to jerk it and shoot the block. As I pulled on the sixgun it went off! In the holster! Pointed at my leg!!!!

I looked and saw a bullet hole on the right side of my pants leg. Looking at the left side of the pants leg there was a bullet hole there. I suddenly felt weak and sat down on the running board of the pickup. My leg did not hurt and I started inspecting things, eventually pulling down my pants so I could see my leg. AND THERE WAS NO BULLET WOUND! I cannot explain how relieved I felt.

Somehow my pants must have pulled up with the holster and bagged outwards. Or I experienced a miracle. Either way it was good.

Replaying things back in my mind I realized I had gotten into the habit of putting my finger into the trigger guard when I first grabbed the gun. Cocking it on the way out, any slight hangup and WHAM! So I determined to build new habits. Safer habits.

And for the next 3 months I never tried any quick draw. Instead I practiced slowly putting my hand on the gun in the proper position, trigger finger out straight along the frame, cocking the gun as it came up and slipping my finger into the trigger guard and tripping the trigger as I poked the gun toward the target.

I did this slowly and deliberately, working to build muscle memory. I knew that speed comes with excitement or fear. The main thing was to grip the gun properly and not bump the trigger til the gun was pointing toward what needed to be shot.

And that has worked well for me the rest of my life!

Nearly 55 years later I was hunting in Tennessee with Gary Reeder. Standing in weeds and grass that nearly reached my armpit I could see hogs running across in front of me, going from my right to my left. The weeds and grass was deep enough that I could only see ears and tails once in awhile, but I got out my camera and started trying to get some photos.

As I was trying to take photos I heard a noise in the brush in front of me and looking through the vewifinder here came a hog at me from about 15 feet away. I snapped the picture, pulled my sixgun from the shoulder holster and shot the hog in the head no more than 2 feet from me. It was close enough that I pointed the gun nearly straight down. At least that's the way I recall it.

The draw and shot were total reaction. If I had thought about it the hog would have hit me. All that practice years before is still in the memory banks. Ain't nothing like adrenaline to get things moving.

And I have not had any accidental discharges since. Well …. at least not with a firearm.

The hog coming at me

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