The Three-Bullet Drill: How to Do It

The Three-Bullet Drill is designed to show your brain what it really looks like to have the gun ahead of a target coming from the right or the left. And the two pictures are really different.

Place three shotgun shells on a bookcase about 8-12 inches apart and step across the room and face the shells. With an empty gun, look at the center shell and mount on the shell to the right, which is the left-to-right sight picture for a right-handed shooter. You will see that both of your eyes are focused on the center shell that is to the left of the barrel!

Now focus on the center shell again and mount the gun on the left shell, which is the right-to-left sight picture. You will see that you are looking across the barrel at the center shell.

There are only two sight pictures. And until you have shown your brain how you want it to interpret the retinal data stream into a sight picture where you are looking at the target with the barrel in the periphery, it will be confused.

The muzzles are always in the periphery. The sight pictures for a right-handed shooter on a left-to-right shot is both eyes focused to the left of the barrel. And on a right-to-left shot, you are focused across the barrel (just the opposite for lefties).

You can’t do this drill too much or too often. In fact, the drill is the foundation of our Shotgun Training 101 course our son Brian has done in our Knowledge Vault website.

Yes, you can now learn how to shoot a shotgun on the internet throughout our Knowledge Vault. Shooters from all over the world are logging in and having amazing results. And for new shooters, their understanding of good sound fundamentals in the beginning allows for accelerated learning and improvement both on the clays range and the field.