Reed’s Calendar Recycler – also known as “Wasted Days” or “Shot-at-a-Glance!
This is a Target Discrimination training session and also a Front Sight Focus exercise for CCW Guardian that is fun and can be competitive.
Look around and you’ll easily find large, used, desk blotter sized calendars. Not little Hello Kitty wall calendars, but big 36″ sized desk calendars. The day blocks in each month are about 1 1/2″ to 2” square. Often I find full unused calendars from previous years, or used ones where the owner just folded the months under. They typically have a hard cardboard backing. You can take them to recycling, or…recycle them my way.
The Drill: You can do this on your own, with a partner, or as a competition. A timer adds even more to the drill.
Staple up a month, any month like a target. Start at the 3 yard line but back up a yard every mag change or ten rounds.
Have a partner call out your target, such as, “Tuesday!” You fire one (or a pair) at any single Tuesday’s block. “The 14th!” Hit that. “Holiday!” Find and hit the day block that’s a federal holiday, and so forth. If there’s no holiday then, hey, target discrimination, right? Hold your fire.
Advanced: Use a timer and your hits have to be on within 2 seconds. Or pin up two targets and “Waste some time” against each other. Not just who’s fastest, but also scores the best, correct hits. Then keep moving back 1 yard every ten rounds.
Front Sight Focus and Multiple Target Drill: The RSO calls out three mixed targets and then says ‘go’ or blows a whistle. You have to correctly find and engage the targets in order. It will sound like, “A Monday, the 23rd, an odd numbered Saturday, GO!” You have to find and hit any Monday block, the 23rd (regardless of the day of the week…just might also be a Monday, eh?) then hit an odd numbered Saturday.
This forces the shooter to think and discern their target under time stress (competition works here) AND accurately place their shots.
When the target is shot up, put up another month. The dates are now all changed for the next round. Ah, but where do the months go? (Sorry, couldn’t resist)
Now instead of “Save the Day” you can just blow it off.
