AFTT AAR

[Herk]

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.

[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.

[Madhouse]

Thanks for taking the time to write that out!  I felt like I was there.  I would love to attend something like that one day.

[imschur]

Thanks for posting this