In Call of Juarez, there are five basic things you need to know about dueling unless you want you and your one-eyed snake buried six feet deep ifyouknowwhatimsayin.

• Hand Placement (Speed)
  
• Focus
  
• Drawing
  
• Shooting
  
• Dodging

Before we tackle each one of these parts and how they work as a whole, first I would recommend going into your options and turning up the "Dueling Sensitivity" setting. This will make it much easier to stay focused on your target.

You can find it under

• Help and Options ---> Controls

If you prefer to use inverted controls, that's all you cowboy.

Please feel free to click the pictures. They'll just enlarge for you. The resolution is 2560x1080 so you'll get a much better view of what's explained.

DISCLAIMER
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If you plan on doing the challenge, you have 6 lives total. If you can manage to keep your lives when you finish the challenge, you will earn extra points.

If you want to get the "Trick Shot" achievement for shooting a chicken while winning in a fair duel, the first duel, "Pat Garrett" is your man. The chickens will move randomly so there is an element of luck. Try keeping your speed at 100% while keeping your focus about 50-75%.

If you want the achivement for drawing under 0.6 seconds, your TOTAL time must be under this value. That means you need to draw and shoot in under 0.6. Read the guide if you are having trouble. Understanding the mechanics will go a long way in getting this achievement.

Let's move on with the first step, how to control your hands.

The first thing you want to master (especially if you plan on playing True West difficulty, which leaves you with no HUD indications even when dueling) is the placement of your hands. Higher speed means a faster draw.

The key is we want our hands on top and as close to our gun as possible. We need to find that sweet spot where we can achieve both.

Hand placement is completely independant of focus. You CAN get 100% Speed with 0% Focus.

Before the displays for your speed or concentration even come up, you can immediately hold down the "A" key to move Silas' hand left toward his gun.
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Your goal is to place Silas' hand on top of the gun, if you do so correctly, your Speed will begin to skyrocket, but if the duel just started or you are playing on True West, you will get no indication so it's something you have to feel out.
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Notice as the duel progresses, and my Speed goes up, Silas' hand is coming down closer to his gun. This is a crucial point to understand as you can see at a glance when you're in the right place at the very start of a duel or on True West mode. The more his hand goes down, the closer to 100% speed you are until it has almost reached the grip of the revolver. Keep in mind, Silas' hand will begin to stray around so you need to keep an eye on it to ensure it is staying in proper position. Use the "D" key to go right and the "A" key to go left to maintain proper placement of the hand directly on top of the gun's grip.
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You DO NOT want to be all the way left because then Silas' hand won't be on top of his gun but on top of his hip/side....you will begin to lose Speed dramatically here. Our goal is to have our hands on top of our gun so we can draw it quicker, not to tickle our sides.
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Once you get a feel for how the speed function works, and can successfully hit 100% Speed, we can move on to combining Speed with Focus.

The second aspect of dueling we need to master is Focus. This is simply keeping the cursor over the opponent as accurately as we can. This will become harder as our focus grows because we have less room for error and slight adjustments can cause focus to begin to wane. Focus is also independent of Speed. You CAN get 100% Focus with 0% speed. It would be wise to increase your mouse dueling sensitivity as noted in the preface. Please refer to the remarks page for additonal tips.

You will lose focus for a variety of reasons. These include not counteracting the random directions your cursor is pushed in properly, not keeping your cursor over the target (white), stagnating the cursor (not moving), or moving too quickly.

As with Speed, we can immediately begin building our focus before the prompts indicating our values even appear. Simply move the cursor over the target and track him as best as you can.
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Some opponents move around, so you need to be ready to react quickly and counter their movements. Try to keep the cursor on center mass (their torso) as they walk around, don't go straight for the head. As you begin nearing the drawing phase and your focus is well built, move up to their head so you can get a quick, easy, and clean headshot. Be careful though, as your cursor will move and your opponent will stop much quicker than you think. Don't move too fast but don't move too slow either, both can be detrimental to focus.
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Note here, my cursor is white. If your cursor is not continuously spinning or if it is white you are NOT building/LOSING Focus. Keep this from happening. One tip for cursor stagnation is to wiggle your mouse around in little circles or move it left and right in rapid succession (jittery) whilst keeping over your target. This is a dynamic system and you need to continuously be moving. You can NOT stop at any time as your cursor will constantly be pushed. Jittering your cursor in circles or going left and right will allow you to feel where you are being pulled easier and allow you to compensate accordingly.
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Now you must master building focus whilst keeping your speed up. This will take practice. Neither is really more important than the other so make sure to give attention to both. With experience, hand placement will become almost second nature, allowing you to, no pun intended, focus on focusing more.

Before we move on to drawing, let's take one more look at Focus and Speed together.

As I mentioned previously, you can attain:
100% focus with 0% speed
AND ALSO (not at the same time obviously)
0% focus with 100% speed
Let me break down the difference for you.

Speed will allow Silas to physically draw quicker. No matter how quick your reaction time is, Silas will draw slow if your speed is low. You could potentially win a duel with no focus and 100% speed, but you would have to be fast as a fox on your draw and shot. It's damn near impossible.

Focus, for lack of a better explanation, will basically slow down time more the higher it gets, giving you a much larger buffer window for drawing but not the physical time of the game if that makes sense. With no speed, the game will run in slow motion, but your clock will tick down quickly as time were moving normal because of your lack of speed (meaning you will lose points). For example, if you had 100% focus and 0% speed, even if you click to draw extremely quickly, time will go into slow motion but Silas physically will draw extremely slow.

If you want a simpler breakdown

It is much easier to win duels with just high focus.
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It is much harder to win duels with just high speed.
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If the inserted videos don't work, here is the direct link to the videos
High Focus: https://youtu.be/OEe_PxEO7V0
High Speed: https://youtu.be/HbXJbsWcM2g
Note that even when I won the duel at 100% focus and 0% speed, I nearly was still nearly shot by my opponent. You can bet opponents who draw quicker than Pat Garrett will kill me. You must use focus in conjunction with speed in order to be most effective.

Thanks to CrouchingLemur for bringing this up.

Drawing is by far the most important part of the duel and very well determines if you win or not. Even with low speed and focus, a quick reaction on the draw is essential to winning duels.

Keeping speed and focus high is key; however, to attain a quick draw. You need fast reflexes period but the higher your speed and focus, the higher buffer window you have and the quicker Silas will get his gun into position to take a shot before your opponent begins shooting at you (or kills you).

Listen carefully for the heartbeat to begin. Once you hear the heartbeat, your opponent is close to drawing. You need to let them draw first in order to win honorably. Be careful, some opponents like Jessie James will test your patience, waiting a considerable amount of time before drawing even when the heartbeat goes off. Other opponents, like Emmett Dalton, will draw almost immediately after the heartbeat begins.

Keep an eye on your opponent's hand and listen for the heartbeat. Once they draw, precision is key. CLICK ONLY ONCE. You don't need to mash the draw key, just press it once or else you will end up shooting a bullet into the ground and leave yourself open in addition to putting yourself in a state of crisis. Just relax because you still need to take aim and shoot. Clicking a bunch of times doesn't help you relax.
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The quicker you draw, the quicker you can shoot, and the more points you will accrue.

Sometimes it helps to do a challenge over to get a feel for when your opponent will draw. This can lead to some seriously quick drawtimes as seen below.
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Once you can quickly and surgically draw, now it's time to put a bullet in your opponent.

As speed is to drawing, focus is to shooting. In order to have a much smaller crosshair, thus a much smaller area your bullet has a chance of spreading to, you need to build a high focus.

Focus will also slow the clock down, allowing a larger window for you to be able to shoot in before your opponent fully draws.

Once you draw, your crosshair will be located where your focus cursor was last, so it's a good idea to build focus by tracking your opponent's chest since it's easier to stay on target, then when you start to hear the heartbeat, move toward the head so you are already in position to nail the shot. Once you have clicked ONCE to draw, take aim and click ONCE to fire. With good focus, speed, and reaction time, the shot should be fairly easy to make.

Keep in mind some duels require you to shoot more than one opponent, so be ready to shoot multiple times. Namely the final duel with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the Dalton Brothers.

Other than that, there isn't much more to shooting. If you miss, simply readjust your crosshair and fire again (in addition to dodging if need be, which we'll get to).

If you do happen to miss, don't fire a flurry of bullets. Dodge and allow your crosshairs to re-focus for a more accurate shot.

Aiming for the head will score you a bonus amount of points, becoming worthwhile to do in the later duels (all if possible) if you are trying to achieve a high score.
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Finally, we'll move on to dodging.

The best thing I can say about dodging is that you should NOT have to do it. With a quick enough reaction time, enough speed, and enough focus built, you can plant your opponent before he even fires a shot. However, we're not all perfect and sometimes we need a second chance.

Dodging is simply done with the "A" and "D" keys after you draw. No longer are these keys used for speed adjustment as we've pulled out the weapon already. HOLD the key in the direction you want to lean and you'll dodge the bullets as they come. Dodging requires coordination with shooting. Some opponents will always shoot right first, some will always shoot left first. Others will shoot where you happen to be so an actual dodge is required.

Silas dodging left.
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Silas dodging right.
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Be quick about dispatching your opponent. Dodging is a last resort and a crutch that you should learn not to fall back on but can be convinient in winning at the end of the day. Remember, the more time you take to shoot, the longer the clock runs and the less points you recieve.

I hope this has given you a better understanding of the duels and made them less confusing/frustrating but rather enjoyable. I have some final remarks to recap.

Firstly, check out this guy, he knows his ♥♥♥♥.












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Secondly, try to familiarize yourself with the challenges. It's ok to lose until you get it right. Knowing what direction your opponent is going to walk or approximately when they'll draw can be the difference between winning and losing. For instance

• Emmett Dalton shoots quick

• The Dalton on the right when facing the two Dalton brothers draws first

• For the final duel, pay attention to who is looking at you during the Mexican standoff

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Thirdly, adjust the sensitivity as needed. Your duel sensitivity can be seperate from your in-game sensitivity so don't be afraid to change it.

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Finally, don't be intimidated by the challenge. Have fun with it. Six lives is more than enough when you get the basics down.