Snub Work: A 10-Shot Carry Revolver Quiz

The snub-nose revolver remains a popular choice for actual daily carry. There are many shooters who may compete or practice with a full- or mid-size pistol who still grab a small-frame revolver for regular carry. Another group of shooters may often carry a more formidable compact semi-automatic, but occasionally reach for the snub when clothing dictates or for a quick run to the gas station. "Snub Work" is a drill tailored to these convenient little wheelguns.

The ultralight snubs are often significantly more difficult to shoot well than the typical mid-size or duty-size semi-automatic, which many handgun drills and exercises are built around. Many shooters find the stereotypical snubbie somewhere between "less than pleasant to shoot" and "mildly painful." Accordingly, the small-frame revolver tends to be the proverbial “carried a lot and shot a little” type of arm. Snub Work takes these factors into consideration to get a quick gauge of where the shooter is in just a few rounds while providing practice in a practical context. In just 10 rounds, the drill calls for achievably aggressive pairs of shots at the most urgent distances and well-aimed singles at a little over car’s length.

The target is a standard piece of printer paper folded in half on the long edge to make a 8.5"x5.5" rectangle. In a limited-capacity defensive revolver, there is an imperative to make every shot count, so the half page works well as a vital zone. Shots are scored simply as hit or miss, with a total of 10 hits possible.

The strings each begin from the low ready, hands together on the snubbie and muzzle pointed roughly 45 degrees to the range deck with the trigger finger off of the trigger.

The Drill

The great challenge of the the flyweight snubs, such as the Smith & Wesson Airweight J-frames, the Taurus 856 Ultra-Lites and the Ruger LCR is stabilizing a 1-lb. (or lighter) revolver against a 9- to 12-lb. double-action trigger-stroke. To add to the challenge, the snubs’ grip frames are optimized for concealment and often offer a marginal grasp to support the process. 

Because the small-frame concealment revolver can be lively, recoil strings 1 and 2 call for quickly recovering the snubbie and firing the additional shot. Many snub shooters find themselves losing an effective grasp after the buck of the little .38, so Snub Work focuses on the all important first shot and recovering to trigger an additional solid hit. As the range stretches to 10 yards in the third string, the shooter is required to focus on placing the single shot well. 

Snub Work is meant to be widely applicable. Anyone who has chosen the snub should be able to place the shots within the half page most of the time. Likewise, most anyone should be able to aim the revolver and aggressively cycle the double-action trigger within the times allowed. The art is being able to make the hits within the times.  

Some broad tips for success:

• Practice smartly snapping the revolver into the line of sight. To make the times, the gun needs to get there so that the time is spent on the shot process.
• Consciously grip the wheelgun not just firmly, but hard. You need a firm anchor to counter the scant grip, light weight and the heavy pull through the distance of the trigger arc. What seems like an extra hard grasp will keep the snubbie in place for the second shot.
• Accept a moving sight picture that may only be "good enough." Particularly at the 2.5- and 5-yard lines, the snub’s (often scant) front sight may never settle fully and perfectly into the notch. As long as most of the front sight is in the notch at the moment the hammer falls, the impact will be well within the target. 
• Dry fire until you have a sense of "weight-plus-one" pounds of pressure to aggressively compress the double-action trigger. On a nominal 11-lb. trigger, it is difficult to gradually stack 11.1 lbs. of pressure under tight time limits. On the other hand, slamming 18 lbs. of pressure through the trigger will make time but often drag the hits off target as the 7 lbs. of excess force translates into movement. If a shooter can quickly collapse ~12 pounds of pressure (weight plus one), the hits will stack near the sights. 

Snub Work is a useful framework for comparing different defensive loadings. A shooter may perform much better or more consistently with one load than another. The drill gives a good window into whether a +P load, which looks better on paper, is just too much for the shooter to handle well out of the lightweight snub.

I would like to see shooters getting seven or more hits on the drill. A perfect 10 is achievable and rewarding. Many shooters will find that much of the practice to get from whatever starting point to eight, nine or 10 hits can be done in dry fire.

Variations
Once the shooter has reached the level where 10 hits are possible, the intermediate step is to try to keep the 10 shots in a fist-size cluster on the half-page target paper. A step beyond that is to fire one repetition at each yard line with a normal two-handed grip and the second repetition with the strong hand only. 

There are few places in the shooting world where the distance between average and expert is as large as when shooting the small revolver. The snubs can be difficult to shoot well, but an expert wheelgunner can make one sing such sweet music that it belies the difficulty. For the advanced shooter, there is a more challenging level of Snub Work.

My friend Wayne Dobbs is a noted trainer who was instrumental in setting up the annual Pat Rogers Memorial Revolver Roundup event. He and guys like the American Fighting Revolver crew who started their law-enforcement careers in the revolver days have been trying to spread hard-won knowledge about the revolver before that information fades from the scene. Wayne can shoot a snub at the master level and has a variation of Snub Work he likes to use. The strings are similar, except the target shrinks to a 3"x5" card and the time limit at each yard line is just 1.75 seconds. 

At the recent American Fighting Revolver Snub Summit event at the Sawmill Training Center, roughly 50 shooters got a chance to shoot the Advanced Snub Work in Wayne’s block of instruction. You could see that the basic flow of the drill across the three defensively rooted distances clicked with the snub shooters. 

My hope is that Snub Work proves useful to those shooters who may carry the snubbie and are looking for a simple way to practice with it. A stack of the targets are likely already in every home, and the typical 20-round box of defensive ammo provides two complete runs and great practice.