Modfied Devil Drill
(6-6-6)

The Devil Drill was created by Larry Vickers. It is a simple, low round count drill that works in a drawstroke, a reload, and accurate shooting. There’s only one string of fire for this drill too. We’ve modified it for competition purposes, using a fixed reload point and hit factor scoring. 

Setting Up The Drill: Shooter begins by loading 4 rounds into a handgun magazine, and loading their pistol with that magazine. Holster the gun, and load a second magazine with at least 2 rounds. Stow that magazine on your person. Place your B-8 target 6 yards away from the firing line, and prepare to shoot the drill. 

Drill Instructions: Shooter begins in traditional surrender position (hands above head). On timer beep, shooter draws their pistol, and fires 4 rounds into the B8. Once those 4 rounds have been fired, shooter performs a slide lock reload, and fires 2 more rounds into the target.

Scoring & Penalties: We’re doing hit factor scoring for the drill. There are handicaps and penalties for our modified version of the drill.

• Shooting from an open rig (unconcealed holster and reload) incurs no time penalty.
• Shooting from a duty holster and reloading from standard open mag pouches has a .2 second handicap (remove .2 seconds from your final drill time).
• Shooting from concealment (concealed holster and reload) has a handicap of .4 seconds (remove .4 seconds from your final drill time). 
• Shooting from low ready (reloading from a pouch or a magazine on a table) has a penalty of 1 seconds (add 1 seconds to your final drill time). Low ready in this drill is defined as 45 degrees (this may not look as low on camera)

My View of the Drill: The standard Devil Drill is called that due to the 6 yard distance, 6 second par time, and 6 rounds fired. In the original version, the reload would happen randomly between the 1st round and the 5th round, adding an element of surprise. Scoring was also “all in the black” of the B-8, rather than HF scoring. 

I mention all of that, as Vickers made this drill during the “iron sights only” era. Modern guns with modern components may make some drills seem easy, but I want you to look at them with a mindset from 10-20 years ago, when your handgun was lacking a lot of these modern niceties. If you’d like a deeper dive into the drill, check out my 2023 article on it here.

– Paul Whaley