Thell Reed
One of the unspoken facts about the sport of Fast Draw is that it’s true roots are in the combat sports. Preceding the wax bullets and blanks ammo we use today Single Action Fast Draw was practiced using live ammo in combat matches dominated by shooters using double action and semi auto handguns. Many of the founding members of the sport we know today came from that group of pioneering gunfighters who had the audacity to step up to the line with the best combat shooters in the world shooting live ammo from the hip with a single action revolver. Thell Reed was one of those men.
Thell Reed, Jr.
Excerpt from Guns and Ammo Magazine 1964
Written by Elmer Keith
Times change with the years, and I well remember when any man who was really fast with a gun kept the fact to himself as much as possible, did his practicing alone, and was quiet and soft spoken. To have advertised the fact would have invited a gun fight. Today these fast cap-snappers and drug store cowboys advertise on billboards, their cars and neon signs that each and every one is the “world’s fastest.” There is a vast difference between wholesome, healthy competition against “robot” gunmen, flashing light signals or opponents armed with blanks when your life is not at stake as compared with bucking armed opponents who will kill you at the drop of a hat.
There is also a vast difference between timing a man with an electric timer from start of his draw, when his movement breaks the contact tape or wire to when the hit of the slug stops the timer, as compared to time taken from a flashing signal of some kind. Men differ greatly in reaction time. This is the time it takes for the brain to telegraph the signal to the hand and for the hand to react and draw and fire the gun. Some men have fast reflexes and some do not. Thell Reed’s reflexes are lightning fast. In an actual gunfight, the man who starts first usually wins. When two equally fast gunmen used to go up against each other, both usually died though one may have hit his opponet first.
If one has much faster reflexes than the other, he may win, provided the other is not a slip-gun shooter like old Jack Newman. When his thumbs held back the hammers on his two 2″ barrelled .45 S.A. Colt slip guns in his pockets, it would have been no use to shoot him as when his thumbs relaxed their grip the other gunman would undoubtedly have received his two hits also. Jack’s wife usually wore a fortune in jewels, but with him along and with one hand always holding a stubby .45 gun in one pocket or the other, no one ever bothered them.
Thell Reed was started on shooting and accurate sixgun pointing by his father when he was just seven years old. He is just past 20 now and has practiced handgun combat shooting with live ammunition thirteen years. He is no cap snapper, nor wax bullet shooter and uses blanks or wax bullets only when forced to do so by competition rules. He is a slim, quiet, unassuming youth of small stature and rather small-boned. He has beautifully shaped hands with rather long fingers, ideal for gun handling. They have never been stiffened by injuries and are as supple as those of a fine violinist.
He has perfected a system of knocking the empties out of a Colt Single Action and reloading it faster than any man I have ever seen. We timed him firing six shots, reloading and firing six more—all hits—in 10 1/2 seconds!
Some competitions require that he empty the gun, reload and empty it again and he can do so with single action guns faster than most shooters with double action, simultaneous ejection S&W or Colt guns. He can also thumb the hammer of his .45s while the gun is in recoil and get off that second shot faster than any man I have seen work with just one hand. He never fans a gun, does all work with the one hand involved. His special gun rigs are made by Andy Andersen of North Hollywood, Calif.
Spinning sixguns on his fingers simultaneously with both hands, the so-called “border shift,” throwing one gun to the other hand and all kinds of fancy gun juggling, he has mastered perfectly. He went through his repertoire of such tricks for us and did not drop or fumble a gun at any time. Spinning guns on the fingers and fancy gun juggling won’t buy any chips in a gunfight, but is good for show and movie business and also to keep the hands and fingers supple and limber. He has also mastered the old gun fighters’ trick of passing a gun to an adversary butt first and then instantly reversing it and shooting. However, he is the only fancy gun juggler I have ever seen operate that did not quite often drop a gun or fumble a draw. We watched him draw and shoot .45 Colt ammo all afternoon and there was never a suspicion of a fumbled draw.
His favorite guns are a pair of 4 3/4″ .45 S.A. Colts. He does all his own gunsmithing and these guns require constant work if they are to be kept in operation in everyday practice with full loads. His mainsprings are worked down light but still amply strong to fire with certainty and his trigger pulls are very light–in fact lighter than I personally like for my heavy, work-hardened fingers. The outside edge of his trigger guards have also been filed narrow to allow his fingers to slip into the guard freely as the gun is drawn. He uses the old hammer draw exclusively. His holsters, however, carry his guns well to the front side of his legs with butts topped far back and muzzles ahead and out of line with his legs. The holsters are cut out rather deep in front to allow shooting with the barrel raised to the minimum to clear leather.
In his draw the muzzle of the gun is never pointed at or near his legs. Holsters are steel lined and shaped to fit the guns. I never liked the hammer draw myself, as most men have to almost do a back somersault to get their guns out and in action. It is no doubt, however, the fastest possible draw of all for the single action, for close range work. Across a card table or at five to seven yards range Thell Reed is absolutely without peer. At five yards he shot for the head only of the silhouette man-target and placed all five 250-grain slugs well in the head of the target. At this range he is unbelievably fast and I know can and did split a quarter-second many times drawing and hitting with full loads. He also did the same shooting at the central chest or heart area and placed all five well in the center.
Back at seven yards his groups spread some but were still all good, killing hits. I think virtually no man ever handled a gun who could beat his time, draw and hit, at five paces. His hand is held just above his gun and in the draw the thumb knocks the gun straight back from the holster and he flips up the muzzle and fires it as fast as any man can do so. I noticed when shooting at the head of the target at five paces, his shoulders jerked back to elevate the gun as he was firing just as the gun cleared the leather and powder burns marked both his shirt and gun belt over his holster from barrel and cylinder junction.
While this is the fastest possible single action draw and good at very close range, I would never favor it for longer range. I much prefer the butt tipped forward and the gun thrown forward in the draw and pointed at the target. With his hammer draw, either singly or both guns at once, his hands move the very minimum so that the guns just clear the holster and tip up in line with his targets. I believe he has gone as far as any man can ever go on this type of hammer draw and still have the ability to hit with full loads. He can also slap in a second shot about as fast as most good double action men can do with well-tuned S&W double action guns.
For longer strings, however, the double action would be the faster. He can, however, empty a single action or two at once very fast and keep his shots well in the killing area of the target at close ranges of from five to seven yards. His reactions are lightning fast and on a “go” signal, his shot will blend in with the verbal signal. For speed and accuracy I believe his hammer draw with his .45s is as fast as humanly possible at close range with single action guns. Whether it is as fast or faster than Bill Jordan’s double action draw could only be proved on electric timers.
Reed barely clears his holsters for his fastest speed, but for longer ranges, seven to 15 yards, throws the gun farther forward in front of his holster and locks his arm there as he fires. His hammer draw with barrel tipped well forward and butt of gun tipped well back is, no doubt, safer for the shooter than the butt-tipped-forward method especially for amateurs as the barrel is never pointed near his legs during the draw. The butt forward draw, however, with gun thrown toward the target, pointed and fired all in the same motion, is a far more accurate draw at any but very short ranges. Equally good grouping can be accomplished with the butt-forward-draw with the gun thrown forward at the target at three times the range than the hammer draw is practical. Due to more gun, hand and arm movement, however, it is also slower—but still very deadly in a gun fight.
Reed has practiced the hammer draw exclusively, but I would like to see him take up S&W double action guns and practice and perfect the butt-forward draw. I am sure he would very soon become one of the best men in the game as well as one of the fastest of all time. He has also been working with the .45 Colt Auto, shooting it with the same position of holsters, butt to the rear, and is phenomenally fast. Starting with the side safety on, he can draw and fire just as fast as with his single action, but I noticed he had a much harder time getting his shots up high enough as the .45 Auto is the poorest of all guns for hip shooting.
He has perfected one .45 Auto draw that is very good and very accurate. He draws the gun and raises it to eye level while the left hand comes up for added support. With this draw he is a very deadly shot with the .45 Auto. In fact, he can bring the pistol up to eye level and use sights, with both hands, about as fast as most men could use the gun barely clearing leather. He can also empty it, with good grouping, very fast indeed and simply has a string of empties coming ont of the top, reminiscent of a sub-machine gnn, his slugs ripping through the target.
Enough practice with any one type of draw and holster will result in great speed and I remember Fitzgerald of Colt’s was also very fast with his cross draw 2″ .45 New Service Colts. He also barely cleared leather and shot across his body pointing the gun by body movement with arm locked across body. Fitz’s draw was more accurate at longer ranges, 15 to 30 yards, than is any hammer draw of the single action I have yet witnessed. He shot with either hand and always out to the side of his body.
Reed is a practical sixgun man. Loads all his own ammunition, casts his own bullets in gang molds and lubricates and sizes them. He uses Star reloaders to load them. This for both the .45 Autos and the .45 Colts. He is also a good long-range shot. G&A Editor Tom Siatos let him try his fine .470 Lang double-barrel rifle at 200 yards and Thell hit exactly center, where we told him to hold, and the recoil of the big elephant rifle bothered him none at all. He enjoyed shooting it.
Though he has to drive a long way to shoot, he practices three days a week and has burned up more sixgun ammunition in 13 years than most men would use in a lifetime even though they were persistent shooters. I believe he has gone as far as any man can go with the .45 Single Action Colt. Now I, for one, would like to see him take up double action shooting with revolvers and suitable holsters using .44 Special or .44 Magnum or even .357 Magnum. For his small hands I think the Combat Magnum .357 Smith & Wesson, or a pair of 1950 target 4″ .44 Specials would probably be best. If he will now take up these guns and practice steadily with them with gun butts to the front in Jordan-type holsters, I honestly believe he could and would become a second Ed McGivern. I would estimate his fastest hammer draw and hit with the .45 Single Actions at 5 paces to be around ten-hundredths of a second, from start to bullet impact. Of course, if he started at a given signal, reaction time would have to be added, but this lad’s reflexes are so fast he could kill you during the time it would take you to wink your eye.
On his first try at standard trap shooting, he broke 48 x 50, which is good even for veterans. He is good with any gun and very good at standard 50-yard slow fire pistol shooting with target guns. He has killed both deer and javalina with his .45s and also hunted and killed a fine grizzly in Alaska with two shots at long range from a rifle. He has been on tour in Japan with the Casey Tibbs Rodeo Show doing exhibition shooting and bareback bronc and steer riding. He has won a great many fast draw contests, including the Big Bear, California combat firing contest, shooting against the best in the country. He has also won several running deer contests with sixguns. He averages about 500 practice rounds of .45 ammo per week. Tom Siatos and I watched him perform one whole afternoon and we came to the conclusion that here was a lad who would go far in the shooting game, if he stays with it.
Back of Thell Reed’s phenomenal success is Thell Reed, Sr., “the man behind the gun,” so to speak. Thell Reed, Sr. started his boy at seven years of age with a .22 rifle. By the time he was nine years of age, he had him shooting a pair of .45 Colt Single Actions with good effect. He has put up all the money for the lad’s practice over the years and encouraged and coached him in every possible way. Coaching and instructions has been not only with guns, but also on being a sportsman and a gentleman. Reed, Sr., is a fine shot as well and is one man who believes that starting a youngster in the shooting game is the best way to make a man of him and eliminate any possible tendencies toward juvenile delinquency. I would say he has done a fine job on all counts. Thell Reed Jr., is a lad to watch in the years to come and one who I believe will be one of the best all-around shots of this or any other era.
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