Herk

Hello? Beuller?

What I've always disliked about the "sheepdog" allusion is that, in the case of the armed Citizen, it is often forgotten or ignored that a big part of the sheepdog's job is terrifying the sheep into "staying in the herd". This aspect is at least as big a part of what defines a sheepdog's job as protecting the herd from wolves. I guess that this is what makes the "sheepdog" allusion work so well for Grossman's target audience (LEOs) but rather imperfect for someone like me: a guy who desires to be left alone not only by "wolves", but also by "sheep" and "sheepdogs". That's how I feel anyway; let the flaming begin.

Still nothing? :(

http://criterionbarrels.com/about.html

Hey Jgun, I guess that it all depends on what you're trying to set your rifle up for. It sounds like you're setting yours up for either 3gun-style competition, a battle rifle, or the classic, "do everything" setup that all of us pursue but never quite achieve. Depending on what you're looking at the weight of the 6x ACOG might or might not be an issue. I personally plan on carrying mine around on the ranch during calving season to plug any coyotes who might be so careless as to let themselves be seen by me. For that reason alone I want to have a lighter setup. My friend has bought a Leupold 2.5-8x pistol scope and he's going to see if it will work as a makeshift magnifier. If so then I think it will be a pretty decent "do all" setup. As for me, I think that I will mount a Shepherd P210 scope that I have lying around and see how it performs on my Fulton when it gets here. If that proves unsatisfactory then I'll be getting a Burris 1.5-6x scope, perhaps? I won't know what works for me until I've tried it. I'll probably back up whatever magnified optic I settle on with Deuck Defense 45 degree sights. Regardless of what we decide works for us we'll be sure to share our results with everyone here.

My experience with the extended eye relief scopes is that, as a rule, they give you not only greater (i.e.: longer) eye relief but also a greater range of eye relief (e.g.: 8-12", 4" range, for the Leupold 4x scout vs. 3.8"-4.3", 0.5" range, for the Leupold 1.5-5x Mark AR). You are probably correct that some FOV would be lost when going from true 1x (unmagnified RDS) to any magnification greater than 1x but I think that this would be the case regardless of whether the magnification was achieved via a magnified RDS or a 'cranked up' conventional variable magnification optic, though perhaps for different reasons. I realize that by adding magnification into the mix I am sacrificing many of the advantages of a RDS but in the process I would be gaining most of the advantages of a magnified optic. By using a QD scout magnifier I believe that I could minimize the disadvantages while retaining most of the advantages. It's a theory that I want to test anyway.

Thanks for your reply. Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that you are not familiar with the "Scout" optic concept? It is an intermediate/long eye relief scope that was developed to be placed in front of the action of a bolt action rifle to give the shooter a greater field of view. This is somewhat similar to handgun scopes. The very reason that the "Scout" style magnifier is desirable to us for this purpose is exactly what you mentioned: conventional magnifiers lack the eye relief to be mounted in front and even when they are mounted in the conventional position they have very poor eye relief when you consider what a low-powered optic they are. Here's a link where you can learn more about the "Scout" rifle concept and the optic that has come to be synonymous with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scout_rifle

The XPS is what my friend is rocking and here are some issues with the conventional magnifier: 1) Very poor eye relief, especially for such a low-powered optic. 2) Incompatible with NVDs, partially due to the eye relief issue. 3) Magnification of the RDS's reticule. Yes, I know, the rest of the image is magnified too so I know that it "doesn't matter" but the whole purpose of a magnifier is to make longer-ranged shots more precisely. A smaller dot in relation to the magnified image would help this. I am almost reluctant to even bring this point up since people tend to fixate on it and ignore the rest of the theory. 4) Receiver real estate is in low supply due to the magnifier's length and low mount. The BUIS on this rifle was actually mounted IN FRONT of the XPS 3 due to the lack of real estate and clearance issues. If feasible, a "scout"-style magnifier would eliminate or at least minimize all of the above downsides. On a different board a poster hypothesized that parallax would be an issue with this type of setup but we've not yet heard from anyone who has first-hand experience with it. We're still waiting to hear more.

So no integral trigger guards on these lowers, right? Where I'm living I'd pretty much need a larger-sized trigger guard at minimum, if not the ability to fold the trigger guard out of the way to use with mittens.

I've not played around with red-dot sights much at all but I can certainly see the utility of them. I have always liked having magnification for target ID and longer shots and the only way to get this with a RDS is to have a magnifier behind the RDS. What I've been wondering is if it would be possible to get a long eye relief scope (i.e.: "Scout"-style) and mount it in FRONT of the RDS and get the same magnification benefits as with a normal magnifier without magnifying the RDS reticule too. To test this concept I've placed a spare scope that was lying around in front of a friend's Eotech and looked through both optics. The magnified scope was not attached to the upper but it gave me a vague idea of how this concept might work. I didn't actually do any shooting like this but it made me think that this concept is just so crazy that it might work! I have difficulty believing that nobody else has thought of this before and yet I've never seen anyone else do this. Can anyone tell me why this concept would NOT work? I suppose that the two reticules might interfere with one another or that they might be confusing under stress but if one could get his hands on an appropriate scope with no reticule at all then that would take care of that problem. Of course, the magnified optic would need to be in a QD or "flip"-style mount so, just as with a conventional magnifier but that shouldn't be too difficult. Since the RDS would be used as the sighting system even when magnified the zeroing of the magnifier would be a non-issue. Again, ideally the scout scope in this scenario wouldn't even HAVE a reticule! So tell me: would this work? If not then why?

I did some martial arts as a kid. Some was practical some...not so much. I fell out of it in my mid teens but got into boxing in my late teens. That wasn't so much good fight training as it was a kick-ass workout! I lost 45lbs in a very short amount of time while I was boxing. Lately an Army Ranger vet was living in my AO who had been a combatives instructor for Ranger Batt. He and his wife (who was pretty good at H2H in her own right) would come over to visit and my room mates and I would get a free H2H lesson! He was a great teacher and the only reason that we stopped is because the guy moved several hours away. I'm in kind of a remote place right now so I'm struggling to find any H2H teachers.

I'm glad that you enjoyed it. Thanks for taking the time to read it! <thumbsup>

I forgot to mention the Teuller drill: one guy stands on the target line, far enough down from the shooter to be out of danger, while the shooter stands on the firing line 21' away. A signal is given to the runner that the shooter cannot see so the shooter must react to the runner when he moves. The shooter has to make a hit to the target's heart box before the runner makes it 21'. I can't recall if anyone pulled this off but the lesson that I took away from this was that it is foolish to stand your ground and attempt to draw your pistol faster than a runner can cover 21'. We redid the drill with our guns already drawn and saw everyone's accuracy improve and every shooter got his hit faster than the runner could cover 21'.

Advanced Fighting Pistol: This was a new class for me. In the two days before Advanced Fighting Pistol I had taken Fighting Pistol for the second time but this was my first Advanced Fighting Pistol experience. The first day started out on the range with no classroom time before hand. We got right into shooting from some awkward positions. We'd done fighting to our feet from supine in Fighting Pistol but now we got to try the same exercises with the target oriented somewhere besides right in front of our feet. I don't think I'd ever shot at a target with my head upside-down while lying on my back before! I had taken Fighting Pistol back in 2008 and back then drawing from a dominant-side holster with the support hand was part of the curriculum. It seems that Tactical Response has decided to move this technique to the Advanced class. After making sure we could do this safely and correctly we expanded on the whole theme of losing use of an arm in a fight by doing plenty of shooting with both right- and left-hand shooting, a theme that continued throughout the rest of the class. Students were expected to fight through all one-handed drills with only one hand. If you shot with, say, your left hand only then any reloads or malfunction clearing was to be done with only the left hand. Andrew (aka: Magnum) seemed to always want to get both his hands involved in some way in a one-handed drill. This brought about another Yeagerism: "Stop using your other hand! I've never had to restrain a male student before and I don't want to start now." :bow: Precision was expected regardless of what hand was being used. Students that had problems with their eyes had to find what worked for them to get their hits. I try to do a fair amount of practice left-handed and one-handed and I didn't feel like I had to fight to make my hits. I certainly couldn't shoot as fast with only one hand but that shouldn't surprise anyone I don't think. At the start of the day I saw a pair of boxing gloves being taken out of Yeager's truck. I had the sinking feeling that those gloves were going to be used on us and I was correct. I made the mistake of standing on the far right end of the firing line so Yeager selected me to go first and got to see what he could do to make my life miserable for a minute or so before he was tired out from doing the same to other students. The drill was to shoot a mag at your target and then perform a reload while being attacked from behind with grabs and blows. I managed to get my spare mag knocked out of my hand while trying to reload and had to recover it from the ground while getting pummeled. Repeated smacks to my arm kept me from seating the mag into the gun until I finally got it on what seemed like the 100th time. This drill really made me see the hazards of being "gun focused" in a hand-to-hand melee. I've got to say though, that I've never had more fun while getting punched! Perhaps the only thing more fun was watching my fellow students getting the same treatment. Next time video! Another drill that really got me thinking was a similar drill where students were choked out from behind while trying to empty a mag into their target. I made a point of shooting as fast as I could to see if I could get to slide lock before passing out. As it turned out I did and didn't actually black out at all. Still very easy to see how easy it would be to panic in a situation where you are being attacked and can't even breathe. A similar drill was conducted with the instructor pinning the student's arms to his body, forcing him to point shoot from waist level. Not too difficult at all but something that needs to be practiced all the same. Now what to do about all of these attacks from behind at close range? Well, there's a trick for that too. Just point your pistol under your support-side armpit while covering the back of your head and neck with the support hand (just like retention position) and shoot him off your back. Well, for whatever reason I would have failures to feed when in this position. I tried with both hands and with two guns and got the same result. I had Yeager watch me while I did these drills and he couldn't see anything that I was doing wrong so we hypothesized that I was somehow not correctly supporting the frame of the pistol when holding it that way. What I'm going to take away from this is that if I do need to shoot someone off my back then I've got only one shot (well, two if I'm carrying my BUG) so I'd best make it count. I'm going to practice this drill more to see if I can get the correct technique down. After class Peter announced that his lovely wife, Elaine, had made us all dinner down at the CLETC pro shop! Another great day of training capped off with another great evening of hanging out with my fellow classmates. The only way that that could be better? With fresh salad and home-made pulled pork. I made sure to go back for seconds and would have eaten even more if there'd been any left! Thanks Elaine, that was the best meal I've eaten in a long time! Day two started out in the classroom again. James delivered another very informative lecture on vehicle, home defense, low-light, and medical issues. While there was not a low-light range component to this class I think that I have a lot to think about now just after this lecture. I took quite a bit of notes and was writing pretty much non-stop the whole time. James seems to be able to pack a lot of info into a lecture so bring your pens and pencils and some paper to his classes! The first aid lecture was also very worthwhile. After the Tucson shootings I put myself in the shoes of that CCW guy who got on the scene a few seconds after the shooter had been subdued. I put myself in that guy's shoes and wondered what I could have done. With the shooter already subdued and disarmed there would be no way for me to use all of my expensive firearms training to save lives. So what could I have done? I could have stood around and watched people bleed to death. Since then I have been trying to get to an Immediate Action Medical class but haven't done so yet. I think that with the knowledge that I got from even this short lecture that I could do a much better job of helping an injured person than before but I know that there is so much more that I still have to learn. There is talk of bringing Tactical Response back to CLETC to teach this class and if that is true then I will certainly be there! Back on the range we did another drill that had been in Fighting Pistol the last time I'd taken it but, apparently was now in the Advanced class: the Allen Dot drill. James explained to me that the student who would take Fighting Pistol but not Advanced Fighting Pistol was typically not a student who appreciated the Allen Dots. If you don't know, the Allen Dots are about 1.5" in diameter and are shot from the 5 yard line. If you "make" the gun shoot instead of "letting" the gun shoot then you will probably miss an Allen Dot. It takes a lot of concentration to make your hits on a target this small, time and time again! Some other pure marksmanship drills were covered. If you've watched Shooting Missology then you've probably seen some of these: holding the gun in the left hand and pressing the trigger with the right index finger (then doing it again with the finger inserted all the way up to the knuckle in the trigger guard), holding the gun upside-down and shooting with an inverted sight picture, bending over and shooting between your legs, the list goes on. What is the point of all of this "trick shooting"? To show that very good hits can be made as long as you line up the sights correctly and press the trigger correctly. You need not worry about stance, grip, what part of your trigger finger rests on the trigger, etc as long as you can get proper sight alignment and trigger press. On the subject of the sight alignment, another drill involved us deliberately getting the front sight "too high", "too low", and "too far to the sides" in the rear notch. Guess what? At typical combat distances you can still hit someone where they need to be hit with those sight pictures. That type of sight alignment is not what a shooter should strive for but nor is it something that he should get too wrapped around the axle about either. There were several movement drills that involved keeping one's feet moving while shooting with both hands and then one hand only, each hand (including gun manipulations). These drills forced the shooter to divide his attention between not crashing into obstacles while moving and making good hits on the move as well. The shooting fundamentals that had been pounded into our heads all day made concentrating on the front sight easy for me and I got most of my hits in the heart box of the target. After learning of the danger the day before of focusing on the gun too much when a hand-to-hand fight is happening, we brought out a punching bag. There is an old saying: "How long 'one minute' is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're standing". Well, we were going to find out how long thirty seconds lasted. The heavy bag was placed on the ground in front of a target on the firing line and, one by one, students would straddle the bag and rain blows down on the bag for thirty seconds. Open-hand palm strikes were stipulated over closed-fist punching as the latter can more easily result in a hand injury. Elbow strikes were also allowed and I decided that that is what I would use due to the devastating damage that they can do. After thirty seconds the student was to draw his pistol and engage the target in front of him with an entire magazine and then jump up and reload. There is an aspect of this drill that I wanted to also talk about because it relates to a couple of interesting experiences for me. While one student was actually striking the bag all of the other students plus the instructors were to yell encouragement to the student. James explained that this was because the voices of your teachers can come back to you under a stressful encounter and you want those voices to be helping you. If the student was tiring then we would yell at him to hit harder and not give up. If the student seemed to not be giving 100% then we would yell to stop rabbit punching and to hurt that son of a bitch! Now there's two reasons that I found this aspect interesting: firstly, I have never been in a lethal encounter before but there was a dream that I had where I was in some horrific-looking place (if Doom 2 had had better graphics it would have looked like this) and I was being attacked by some massive demon-like beast. I drew my 1911 (that's what I carried at the time) and shot it until it jammed. I went to fix it and, as I had the tendency to do then, I looked down at what I was doing. In the middle of this weird dream I could hear Tactical Response instructor Kyle Lynch (who was one of my instructors at Fighting Pistol in 2008) yelling clear as a bell: "Shawn, keep your fucking head up!" Again this was only a dream but that voice was unmistakable and in that dream I managed to fix a type 3 malf while keeping my eyes on the threat! The other aspect that was interesting is that I experienced auditory exclusion. I decided that I was going to make an impression on that heavy bag and for 30 seconds I landed as many of the hardest elbow strikes that I could muster on it. In retrospect I can recall that there was yelling in the background but at the time it was just me and that heavy bag. I had heard of people experiencing auditory exclusion in gunfights and even while hunting but this was the first time that it had happened to me. We did more work with the heavy bag afterwards that was less physically intense. One drill involved straddling the bag in the same manner as before but then shooting it about 5 or 6 times from retention and then emptying the mag into the bad guy's friends (paper targets). After this we went on to pistol whip the heavy bag for a few blows until a cease fire was called. We also did some experimentation with contact shots on the heavy bag. Pushing the muzzle against the target will push the slide out of battery and not let you fire so the shooter must press the slide shut from the rear to get it into firing condition. Another neat thing we learned was that Hollywood actually wasn't making up the whole pillow-as-a-suppressor thing. After a sufficiently large hole was blasted in the heavy bag the muzzle of the pistol could be inserted and a round could be fired comfortably without ear protection! Not sure that that will ever come in handy but it was still a neat thing to learn. There was a practical medical aspect too. We were shown how to put a tourniquet and an H-bandage on ourselves, not another patient. If you are badly wounded in a gunfight then you cannot count on someone else to help you. You need to be your own medic until someone else can take over. After doing a practice tourniquetting (Is that a word? It is now!) and H-bandaging we did a drill where we had to shoot our guns dry at an attacker, put on a tourniquet, THEN reload (you have about 70 seconds before you bleed to unconsciousness from arterial bleeding), then shoot off another mag, then apply an H-bandage, THEN reload. If the tourniquet doesn't hurt then you're doing it wrong. I really should start carrying a TK4 and an H-bandage around. I'm around guns and shooting all the time and that means that I could one day have to deal with a gunshot wound. Even if I'm never around someone who's been shot, those medical items could be life-saving in a number of other instances. We finished with a drill that involved moving safely around people with a gun in your hand. The idea that we should not "break 180" when training for a fight is stupid. Shooting ranges are the only 180°, bystander-free part of the world. If you're not training to win a gunfight on the firing line of a shooting range then you shouldn't train that way! If you might have to move around others with a gun in your hand then don't make the first time you have to do the first time that you ever do it! Train like you'll fight! This drill was done in a totally safe manner and I never felt nervous the entire time. I'd been shooting with these guys for four days straight and I knew that they could put their rounds where they needed to go. This drill also demonstrated the utility of the muzzle up movement position. It prevented the muzzle from pointing at anyone's legs or toes, including the guy holding the gun. Sometimes muzzle up is the right way to go and sometimes it's muzzle down. Yet another thing that isn't worth getting into a debate over. Pick which one works and use it. There is a reason that Tactical Response's Alumni avatar includes Rodin's Thinker: there is a lot of stuff to be thinking about after the class ends and I am still rolling things around in my mind. I think that if Tactical Response were to rename some of their classes they could call Fighting Pistol "If you carry a gun you NEED this class" and they could call Advanced Fighting Pistol "Psst, hey Warrior, wanna see how fucked up things could really get for you one day? Also wanna see how to prevail when those situations arise? Then take this class". Too wordy? Perhaps but I think that that gets the point across. I guess that you could say that Fighting Pistol is a Mindset class and the Advanced Fighting Pistol is a tactics class for those who already have a fighting mindset. I was very impressed to see that Tactical Response's curriculum has evolved over the last three years. The Fight and Immediate Action Medical are very high on my list of classes to take and hopefully that will happen soon. Way Of The Pistol seems like it would be worth taking too but that will have to wait I think. To everyone at CLETC: it was a real pleasure meeting all of you and shooting with all of you. I know that I will be doing more training at your awesome facility in the future. Everyone else should go to Cor-Bon's website and check it out online. To James and Steve: thanks a ton for letting me know what I didn't know and for providing a bad-ass learning experience. See you next time you come up here or maybe even next time I come to Camden! To Rebecca & Elaine: thanks for taking all the sweet photos! I look forward to seeing more. To my fellow classmates: post your AARs, fuckers! :whip:

Glad you liked the review. If you're not a member at getoffthex.com then it's free to become one. There's lots of good info there and a very low tolerance for BS getting in the way of people learning. Check it out!

BTW this is the link to the "official" thread on getoffthex.com: http://getoffthex.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=817104881&f=6321031321&m=194006435001&r=556004535001#556004535001 Lots of pics in the thread and other's reviews too.

I just finished Tactical Response's Fighting Pistol and Advanced Fighting Pistol classes, four days of awesome training. I'll be posting my AARs here. Okay, here goes the AAR: When I walked into the classroom at CLETC and saw Yeager I wondered what kind of teacher he'd be. After all, this was the guy who proudly set his karma title to read "I'm not an center of uranus, I'm a dick." I guess that the people who walk away from meeting Yeager thinking that he is a dick have very thin skin. Yeager might call you a dipshit, but only if you're being a dipshit. We started off day one by introducing ourselves to the instructors, James and Steve and them introducing themselves to us. After getting our course handouts James began with a lecture that covered everything from emergency planning, firearm safety, course objectives, survival principles, range commands, marksmanship fundamentals, grip, draw, re-holstering, and assorted gun manipulations. Just a side note on the course handout: if you are planning on taking Fighting Pistol (and you should be) then remember to keep track of this handout. It is full of good info that you will want to revisit after the class if you are a serious student of pistolcraft and gunfighting. I took Fighting Pistol back in 2008 and managed to lose my course handout somewhere along the way. I have repeatedly wished that I could have that handout ever since. Keep your handout! Anyway, back to the lecture: I think I have minor ADD or something since I always seem to zone out when I'm listening to a speech or lecture. Even, or maybe especially, when the lecture is about a subject that I care about. I did not have this problem with James. He is articulate and has a real talent for explaining things so that you'll get it the first time around. He is also very quick to use humor and is capable of bringing out the laughs at unexpected times. As I said, I've taken Fighting Pistol before but that was three years ago. Tactical Response is not a school that allows it's curriculum to stagnate nor are they afraid to mix things up a bit to see what makes for a better learning experience. Some drills that we'd done in '08 were excluded this time around (some of those we wound up doing in Advanced Fighting Pistol) and some were gone altogether. One thing that was different this time around (if memory serves) is a greater emphasis on support hand only drills. Many of these (like type 3 malf clearances) truly suck to do and so, in general, we don't. I'm glad that Tactical Response made us do these drills that, by and large, we are too lazy to do on our own. Another difference was a short lecture on winning the legal and emotional fights that always come after the first fight. This is another "boring" subject that we don't devote enough time to. To me this is an intimidating subject to think about but one that I am probably intimidated by because I don't think about how to deal with it enough. Other topics were covered from living wills to de-escalation to the legal requirements for using deadly force. After class we went out for dinner in Sturgis at one of the new restaurants there. I think that if you're planning on going to a class that you should make a point of going out for dinner with your instructors and fellow students. The combined knowledge and experience of all of those people is a very worthwhile learning experience in it's own right and it has also been my experience that regardless of what we choose to discuss that I always have a great time hanging out with "my kind of people". As we were getting ready to leave Peter announced that he had already paid for everyone's meal. I wish you would have told me that you were going to do that Peter; I would have ordered something more expensive! ;) Seriously though, thanks so much for all of your generosity and for helping to make this whole class experience even better than I'd imagined! At the end of the first day we were given a homework assignment: ten minutes of dry practice and several pages of reading in the course handout. Since Chris, Brian, Andrew, and I were all staying together we were able to work on the dry practice together and to discuss the topics that we read about in the handout. It's always good to have someone to bounce ideas off of; bring a friend to Fighting Pistol! Day two started with another excellent lecture by James, this time centered on Warrior Mindset. This is the aspect of the class that puts "Fighting" in Fighting Pistol. This is the part of the class that forces you to either "get your head right" or admit that shooting is just your hobby and not truly a way of defending yourself. The latter is okay to admit and, in fact, it's probably better for someone to realize ahead of time that they are not Fighters or Warriors than to find that out when they're looking down the barrel of a bad guy's gun for the first time. This lecture doesn't only apply to fighting though. It permeates your entire way of thinking about everything in life. It has taught me to choose my battles in life and to win those battles unconditionally. After lunch we got back on the range for some shooting and moving drills. While I seem to remember a little less moving in the '08 class, I think that there might have been a slightly greater emphasis on keeping one's feet moving during "stationary" drills when there was no shooting going on. The hollers of "Move your fucking feet!" from Aaron and Kyle still ring in my ears after three years. If I could offer a suggestion it would be to yell more at stationary or slowly moving students; some of us are slow learners and need to have something yelled at us repeatedly before we get the point. :ermey: The shooting on the move have become far more natural for me since I first tried it in '08. Being told that the best way to move and shoot is to walk/move as naturally as possible while putting rounds on target sounds too simple to be true but I guess it is. All the fancy tactical Groucho walking that I tried in the past was really a waste of time. I've been practicing walking all my life so why should I try to learn a new way to do it? After the last shots were fired James debriefed the class and dismissed us for the day. All but two of the students would return for Advanced Fighting Pistol the next day. We went out for dinner again and spent that time learning almost as much from each other as we had in class. A great end to a great day! Lessons learned: - At one point James looked at my target and told me that if I was shooting that good then I was sandbagging. I decided to speed up and found that I was able to get almost as good hits at close range with a flash sight picture and the most rapid trigger pull that I could muster. I attribute this to the thumbs-forward grip that Tactical Response teaches (this greatly controls recoil/muzzle flip) and good marksmanship fundamentals. - During a left hand only type 3 drill I managed to tap the (partially depleted) mag hard enough to make two rounds shift 90° inside of the magazine! Imagine my shock and confusion when my left-handed type 3 drill not only failed to clear the problem but also also left me to glance into the ejection port of my pistol and see two headstamps side by side! :runaway: If you're going to wail on something really hard with the butt of your partially-empty pistol then you need to recognize that there is the possibility of this type of malfunction occurring. - I am a firm believer that only perfect practice makes perfect and so I try to make my sight alignment and trigger press as perfect as possible when I dry fire or go to the range. The less-than-perfect sight alignment that I was getting at close range still allowed for very good hits at statistically typical gunfight ranges. Making very good hits immediately is better than making perfect hits in a few seconds in a fight. - I had never before seen the technique to clear a cover garment with both hands before drawing. This is very helpful with many of the shirts and other cover garments that I wear. - I need a living will. - There are three more Ts in "FASTTTT" than I remember being told about in '08. Take cover, Treat injuries, & Talk. - "Shoot only to save a life, never to take one, and there will be no regrets." I would also like to add that this class was a very different experience from the first time I took it in '08 due to the different teaching styles of the different instructors. Getting told the same things in a different way helps you to learn lessons that you might have missed before. Thanks to James, Steve, and all of my fellow classmates for making this a kick-ass experience!

Hey all, If anyone is in the Black Hills (western SD, eastern WY) and is looking for someone to shoot with then let me know. The local bros like to put on an organized shoot every month or so and newcomers are always welcome. -Herk

Day 6: This was the first day of Precision Rifle. As I owned no suitable rifles for this class I was lent one by Mark Fricke. As with most of his firearms, his sniper rifle was a little dated and rather minimalist. It was a Remington 700 PSS in .308 with a Harris bipod, an Uncle Mike's nylon sling, and a Leupold 3-9x40mm scope. No target turrets, no mil-dot reticule, 1" tube, 0MOA STD bases and rings...something that one might envision on a deer rifle rather than a SWAT sniper rifle. Furthermore, Fricke claims to have fired over 11,000 rounds through this rifle without changing any parts. I had purchased Federal Gold Medal Match 7.62x51mm ammo (this is what it was labeled, not .308 ) loaded with the 175gr Sierra Matchking projectile. Mark also lent me a shooting mat so that I didn't have to try to make do with a sleeping pad. There was new shooters on the line for the first time since I'd showed up. Unlike the previous classes, there was very little down time in the Precision Rifle class so I didn't get as much of a chance to know them. After getting the rifle from Mark I hitched a ride up to the same spot where we had shot our carbines out to 600yds the day before. We put out our equipment on the line and then got a small folder of information from Mark. We also hung around while Mark passed out the dope sheets that he had calculated for us if we'd requested such (which I had). Marty, a guy that I knew form many gun shows and shooting events and the guy who'd given me the lift up to the range, said that he was going to set up his "people magnet". I asked what a people magnet was and he smiled and said "you'll see". What it turned out to be was a metal-framed awning to keep the sun off. Marty brought two and another shooter brought one. After setting them up all of the shooters made a bee-line for them with their folding chairs to get out of the sunlight. 'People magnet' indeed! Mark delivered a lecture on the head-spinning plethora of information that a sniper needs to know just to make his bullets hit where they need to. What is even more intimidating is that I've always heard that accurate long-range shooting is only a small part of being a sniper! We covered the effects of wind, light, humidity, altitude, upward or downward angles, barriers, rifle and ammo temperature, and many other subjects that I'm not remembering without my notes right now. After getting this information we headed to the firing line. After confirming zero at 25yds we moved back to 100yds to make doubly sure of our zeros. We shot 5-shot groups at all times throughout the class. We progresses throughout the day steadily to 600yds in 100yds increments. All of our shots were on paper on the first Precision Rifle day and I could see my performance improving as we went along. Two gear lessons: 1) Get a rifle that fits YOU. Borrowing a rifle from another shooter will mess you up and make you have to fit yourself to the rifle rather than vice-versa. 2) Leaving a black rifle in the sun will make it get HOT! Cover it up between strings of fire! I think that I could have concentrated on my shooting a little better with a rifle that fit me better. By the end of the day my neck was aching from trying to get my head steady in position behind the scope! The whole day had been very calm, sunny, and hot but a very small amount of cloud started rolling in along with a gentle breeze. As we were packing up an ominous cloud rolled in over the hills to the north. We were unconcerned since the wind seemed to be blowing north and we went on packing up. Suddenly, the wind shifted direction about 180° and went from being about 5mph to probably more than 40! Full coolers blew over and tumbled away and Marty's people magnets caught the wind and their metal frames got twisted to wreckage. I had fortunately brought very little gear with me so I was quickly packed up and I had to struggle to put on my Dropzone Recon Smock due to the strong wind. It was a good thing that I got it on at that moment, however, since the rain began immediately after. After throwing all of Marty's stuff into the back of his truck we both climbed inside to take cover from the rain. Soon the rain turned to marble-sized hail, however, and Marty drove his truck into a small patch of trees to minimize the hail damage. We sat and waited for about half an hour for the hail to turn to torrential rain and then for that to turn to merely very heavy rain. At some point Daryl came walking along, soaking wet. He had been standing in the field taking down targets when a bolt of lightning had struck the ground about 50' from him! Since Daryl had been the tallest thing in that field it was a miracle that the lightning hadn't hit him instead! After the rain calmed down somewhat Marty took me back to the main assembly area over some pretty washed-out road that my car would have never made it through. I got back to my car to discover that I'd left the driver's side window open due to the high temperatures that day. I had planned to camp out that night but I took the storm as a sign that I should just return home that night! Day 7: The night before I borrowed a Velcro-on cheek riser from Derka to put on Fricke's rifle. This alone made the rifle fit me much better. Since I wasn't camping (it was the last day of the classes) I left my backpack in my car while I took the rest of my essential gear to Marty's truck. It was only after I got to the shooting site with Marty that I realized that I'd hastily crammed all of my data books into my backpack the evening before so that the strong and sudden winds wouldn't blow them away! Luckily, one of the other shooters had a ballistics program for his iPad that he could look up the dope for my loads with. I didn't know the sight offset for sure and I don't think I got the muzzle velocity right either so the figures were off (I could tell that they were higher than the ones that I'd gotten the day before). I just scribbled down the come-ups and the wind drift in MOA for each 100yd increment out to 1000yds and had to rely on this for the day. We started out at 100yds again to make sure that our scopes hadn't been bumped since the day before. After that we went right back to 600yds for more practice there. After that we moved onto a 200-600yd drill on 12" steel silhouettes. I had shot reasonably well on paper at 600 but I wasn't able to connect with the steel. The target was smaller and I was running off of incorrect data (I had to reduce my come-ups between 10-15% depending on range) so perhaps that can be my excuse? Once we got our results recorded we dialed in our scopes for our Holy Grail: the 1000yd shot. There were two 1000yd targets: a 12" silhouette and a 36" gong. Since I had enough difficulty with the 12" steel at 600 I decided to go for the 36" at 1000. I had two 5-shot magazines worth of ammo to hit it and didn't even come close. The wind had picked up a little and the faulty dope had me relying on a spotter to walk my rounds onto target. Furthermore, Mark's scope was only a 1" tube (less adjustment than a 30mm or larger) and it was mounted on a 0MOA base so I couldn't actually even bring my cross-hairs to the correct elevation. This was further exacerbated by the plain duplex-style reticule of the scope. Needless to say, I didn't make the 1000yd club. After shooting out to 1000 we headed off to "The Grassy Knoll" to do some shooting with a more severe downward angle in the mix. We shot 200yds out to 600yds once again on 12" steel. The rough terrain forced us to get into 'jackass' shooting positions to make our hits. Again, the 600yds target eluded me (although I did pretty well out to 500yds) and I was beginning to get annoyed with myself. Brian offered to let me shoot his tricked-out M1A with a Leupold Mk.4 3.5-10x40mm on it shooting Federal Match 168gr. I agreed and as I was walking to my selected shooting position Brian informed me that I was welcome to use his rifle and ammo but that I would owe him a drink for every shot that I missed. I agreed as long as he bought me a drink if I hit on the first shot. After getting settled behind the rifle I instantly appreciated the superior TMR reticule of the Mk.4 scope. I took my time getting into position, read the wind as best as I could and broke the shot. Before I could hear the ringing of the steel I heard Mark excitedly yelling that I had owned 600yds. I rolled over and asked Brian what the Ponderosa had on tap. With a scowl he replied: "I hope you like PBR!" That was the last shots of the class. I will summarize the lessons that I learned and the overall impressions of the classes later.

I'll try to highlight the lessons that stick in my mind rather than remember every little thing that was done. Anyone who has done a pistol course would be familiar with the general layout anyway. Okay, the classes started on the 18th with the basic pistol day. I was informed that this day was truly basic and that I would be disappointed if I showed up expecting to learn much of anything. Well, at least they were honest and so I didn't attend until Sunday the 19th which was the "Home Defense Drills" day. Some background: I learned about AFTT from Jared and Beulah, both of whom are AFTT alumni. I not only respected the opinions of both Jared and Beulah about the classes but I also saw that there was a precision rifle class on the schedule that I thought would be rather relevant to Wyoming terrain. A friend of mine, Konrad, has been in email contact with me since I moved to WY and through this medium I informed him of the classes. He expressed interest in taking them and made the trip down here. Day One: Jared, Konrad, and I set out for the Home Defense Drills class on the morning of the 19th of June, 2011. This day was free to attend to anyone who had signed up for at least one other day of classes. What I had envisioned for this day was a house-clearing type of scenario, possibly with airsoft guns. What it turned out to be was an IPSC-style 'match' where the group of about 25 students went from stage to stage shooting steel and paper silhouette targets. I thought that there was more down-time than necessary and that the stages of fire were somewhat basic. I was fine with a day of getting outside, hanging out, and doing a little shooting but at the same time I was pretty glad that I was getting the experience for free. I ran my G34 with XS Big Dots and Konrad ran my G27 with Big Dots and a 9mm Storm Lake conversion barrel. Jared, a.k.a. "Rimfire Robby" ran his delightfully beat-up G19 with a .22LR conversion kit. No issues with equipment except for Jared who discovered a burr in the chamber of his .22LR barrel that was causing reliability issues. After seeing this he switched to a 9mm G19. Day 2: This day went to a more conventional class setup where we lined up on targets on the range and ran some basic drills on paper targets. The police experience of the two instructors, Mark and Daryl, was a very interesting one and the reasons for doing what they did were certainly unique to their experiences yet also had elements that were applicable to the armed Citizen. One ready/scanning position that I learned that I had heretofore not known of was the "safety circle". Daryl was a big proponent of the safety circle over such positions as Sul and "Sabrina" (compressed down and up respectively). This position was achieved by going to a very low ready (arms at 45°, if not lower; I have derisively referred to this position as "television low ready" in the past but Daryl and Mark have found a use for it) and rotating the muzzle straight down by moving the wrists but not the arms. This position allows for safely scanning 360° while keeping the gun pointed in a safe direction. The very low ready (simply called low ready by Mark and Daryl) was used for challenging a bad guy without actually pointing a gun at him any higher than his lower legs. More importantly, it doesn't obscure your vision of the bad guy in case his hands are doing something down by his pockets/waist. I'm not 100% convinced that this can't be accomplished by holding the gun higher and more ready (based on distance, of course) but it gives me something to chew on. Some Modern Technique stuff was included into the program which I thought was interesting. I've always heard that Modern Technique was dated and dogmatic but the instructors seem to have some valid reasons for including it into their teachings and their "on the street" bag of tools. For example, the Weaver stance seems to give a shooter some options for using a flashlight in conjunction with a handgun that Isosceles does not. I've always tried to shoot from the waist up and not be too concerned with what my feet and legs are doing as long as they are stable enough so this lesson was more of an upper body positioning one. Another Modern Technique staple which has been gone away from recently is the double tap. Back in the day when revolvers and single-stack autos were dominating the scene it might have made more sense to shoot twice and then stop to see how good you were but with the advent of the "Wundernine" there seems to be little reason not to simply shoot an opponent to the ground with as many shots as it takes, right? Well Daryl and Mark both said that they never needed to shoot anyone more than twice with a handgun to make them stop and Daryl said that his team's SOP was to give a double tap to the body followed by a single shot to the head if necessary. He claims that the head shot was occasionally needed but the third shot was always the last. Furthermore, shooting two to three times was, in their experience, easily justifiable in court. Again, I'm not too sure that I'd trust a lowly pistol to get the job done with so few rounds but I have not experience to look to either way. Shooting from the retention position was something that I'd not done in a while and I was hitting too low. I'll have to concentrate on getting the muzzle higher. I was shooting the tightest groups in the class (instructors included) and I was far from the slowest shooter in the class either. One student noticed my groups and opined that if I was shooting that well in these types of scenarios then I was shooting too slow. I tried to speed up after agreeing with this statement and found that I was shooting about as fast but with much reduced accuracy. I think I should find a way to drastically improve my speed even if it's at the expense of a little accuracy. After about 25yds my shooting accuracy really declined. I attribute this to the XS Big Dots that I had mounted on the gun that day. These are pretty fast up close for fighting but too course for general use. Day 3: Jared's work schedule meant that he couldn't attend this day. This day started out with a drive to a different part of the IPY Ranch for an outdoor lecture with detailed drawings on the proper techniques for clearing a building. This sort of thing is almost impossible alone, very difficult and slow with a partner, and (we were told) potentially dangerous no matter how many friends you brought with you. Mark made several drawings on an easel to illustrate his points and to give some ideas on how to approach and clear a building. He continually emphasized that he did exactly this countless times throughout his life only because it was his job to. If he "had to" clear a house/building today he would instead call the police to do it instead if such was at all an option. After hearing the lecture we went into an old decrepit homestead building (the "kill house") to put what we'd learned into practice. We were given Wal-Mart airsoft pistols and sent in in pairs to locate and take out the paper targets inside. All of the windows were blocked off, forcing us to make use of the flashlight techniques that we'd been taught. Brian and I were the first team to do this and we were able to do so without getting "killed" or making any truly egregious mistakes. Pieing the corners while trying to see a bag guy before he could see us was a staple of this exercise. Taking things slow was the way to stay out of danger. Communication with one's partner to make sure that they watched your back allowed you to concentrate on the task at hand. After the kill house we went down the road to do a jungle walk. The original place that had been selected for the jungle walk was rained out and deemed too wet to safely run around in. The targets were placed in a nearby location instead. Konrad and I had met at Tactical Response and had learned bounding overwatch tactics there that came in very handy on the jungle walk. We moved through it swiftly and used cover well while taking out all of the targets. The next exercise was to shoot at moving targets that were moved laterally on a pulley system. The range was close (<15 yds) but far enough to make a difference if you didn't aim for the leading edge of the targets. Several exercises of this nature were performed with the pulleys and I came to the conclusion that at that range making hits on a mover was fairly easy. The kill house was taking far longer than anticipated and so there was a lot of down time. I would have been more upset by this if there weren't a bunch of folks to shoot the poop with outside of the kill house. There was another jungle walk set up at some point and Brian's daughter, Kiana (I'm probably misspelling that), was the odd student who needed a partner to shoot with so I volunteered. I got to do the jungle walk a third time (again with Konrad) after targets had been moved around. The third time the targets had been placed more towards the end so that there was quite a bit of suspense while we hunted for them. Towards the end of the day we did some revolver drills back at the main range. There were a lot of old guys there who hadn't been informed of the invention of the semi-auto, apparently, so AFTT was catering to their interests. Since I no longer own any revolvers I simply ran the drills with my G34. The night before this I had installed Warren Tactical sights on my G34 instead of the Big Dots and I got a chance to run some drills to get a close comparison of the two. I think that I will be selling off the Big Dots. The last exercise of the day was long-range handgunnery. We shot at 50, 100, 150, and 200 yards. I am usually pretty capable of hitting out to 100 with a pistol but the new Warren sights were too far to the left for me to hit reliably. Clem, the 72 year-old guy who sold me the G34 in the first place managed to be one of two people to hit at 200 yds. Day 4: This was the first day of the Tactical Rifle class. It's been a while since I've seen so many fixed buttstocks and fixed carry handles on ARs but hey, what do you expect from guys who were shooting .38 Specials the day before? The drills were pretty typical with loading, malfunctions, and sight offset at close range (with a 50 yd zero) being discussed. No shooting beyond 50yds was done the first day but that would be corrected in spades the next day. Day 5: We started at the kill house area in the morning but Konrad and I were late due to construction and traffic being worse than anticipated that morning. Furthermore, the road conditions two days before had been horrible due to mud and we didn't want to drive Konrad's Honda through that terrain. We went as far as we could and then threw our gear on and jogged the last 1/2 mile or so to the kill house. Along the way I lost the cleaning rod that I'd lashed to my rifle's handguards. Upon arrival we were told that we would be running the kill house again but this time with real firearms. We would be restricted to pistols and rimfire rifles (the latter were provided along with mags and ammo). There was a twist on how the kill house would be run this time: the windows that had previously been darkened to force us to use low-light techniques were now open and there were steel targets outside. Now we didn't just have to clear a house; we had to clear the whole world! The only stipulation was that we were not to point firearms past a 90° arc lest we endanger the rest of the students who were waiting their turn to shoot. I ran the drill with Konrad and we did fairly well except for Konrad failing to notice a target off in the distance at the end of the drill. As a side note, if you're considering getting a S&W 22/15 rifle then I would do it. The one I ran was very "life like" and reliable. Again, there was an odd student (this time Brian) and we ran the kill house together. Mark took me aside and said that the targets hadn't been moved around this time so I would be getting no surprises and that it was more for Brian's benefit. I tried to hang back and let Brian do as much of the work as possible. The kill house portion of this day was considerably shorter than the kill house portion of the pistol day and we headed back down to the main range. We spent some time engaging movers again with the pulley system. We shot first at 25yds and again at 50yds. Konrad and I were the only ones who wore our deuce gear and I think I pissed off a former Canadian Mountie who was running the pulley. He made our targets move considerably faster then the rest of the students' targets (Konrad claims to have overheard the Mountie saying that he did so since we were obviously "high speed"). The joke was on Dudley Doright though: Konrad and I both made our hits. One part that I'd really been looking forward to was shooting at longer range. Until this day I'd never shot beyond 400yds but this time we shot from 100-600yds in 100yd increments. 100-400yds was old hat to me and I don't think I missed more than once. I was shooting my M4gery with an ARMS BUIS and Tula 55gr FMJ. Konrad was running my WASR 10/63 with the stock irons and Tula 123gr FMJ. I made my hits out to 500yds but couldn't quite make it happen at 600. Konrad actually landed two or three rounds from that AK within about a foot of the 12" steel target that we were shooting at! After the long-range stuff I was really impressed at the trajectory of the .223 out of a 14.5" bbl. I used to have a hard-on for an optic with a BDC for the Wyoming terrain but now I'm not so sure that such is necessary. I'm not 100% sure what it is that I should get but now I think that my options are more open. Furthermore, I'm not so sure that I should ditch the AK now. After seeing how Konrad was able to run it I think that there might be room in my battery for it after all. Konrad had to return to AB after this day so I was alone for the next two days.

Sorry I haven't replied until now, I haven't gotten on here much lately... I've actually been putting all my spare cash into ammo and tuition for training; in my neck of the woods a lot of great training opportunities have cropped up and I'd rather invest in them right now than another rifle (although, I would still like the rifle... ::) ) If nothing else I'll put up some class reviews/AARs in the training section here. Hopefully you alls won't mind if it's mostly 5.56 & 9mm instead of .308, right? ;)

I EDC a Glock 34 and a Glock 26. I might trade the 34 for a 19 though.

I wasn't allowed into the military due to a medical condition :'( but I've taken some private sector training. I'm taking a rifle class from Ken Royce this summer followed by a pistol class, a carbine class, and a precision rifle class from Mark Fricke a couple of weeks later. My NRA instructor class is coming up soon this month and hopefully I can start doing some entry-level training in my area. A buddy of mine in CO is talking about doing a Magpul Dynamics carbine class for his bachelor party this fall so hopefully I can swing that. In the course of typing this post I just remembered why I'm single... <laughs>

98Z5V: Thanks for all of your suggestions! I didn't know that Fulton Armory did AR10 stuff! Very cool and just what I'm looking for. It looks like it will cost more than I'd anticipated but at least I know that what I'm looking for is out there.

Thanks guys! It's starting to look like a good .308 AR is going to take some money to put together. It could be a while before I get all of the right stuff together. Here's another way I'm starting to look at this: is there any make of AR for about $1200 or less that I could get into and then build up easily into what I want? The DPMS and Bushmaster offerings look like good candidates but I don't know how they'd hold up to the stresses of carbine classes like those offered by Suarez International or Tactical Response. Can anyone comment here?