BassCliff
Professional
Howdy Buckaroos!
It was a cool, drizzly Spring day here in Lake Country, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. I'll take a little rain. Seems the last time I drove this way for a skills clinic there was snow everywhere.
Yeah, like this. Brrr!
But Spring has sprung. I doubt there will be any more snow. I arrived a little early for the clinic so I was able to park in the front lot. I still took the farthest spot so's all the old guys could park closer.
Our instructors got us started right off with an El Presidente drill. We ran this twice as a warm-up. John and Ashley were timing both our runs. They've been tracking our performance for a few months now, off and on, checking for improvements and problems.
Then we all got our own target. We shot a lot of single hand drills tonight, both strong hand and weak hand.
First John reminds us how to transition the pistol from the strong hand to the weak hand and back. His procedure is very similar to the way Ken Hackathorn demonstrates in his 2-2-2 drill. <<<Youtube link> I use the Hackathorn method.
We started off pretty close, drew with our strong hand, three hits, transition to weak hand, three more hits. We ran this a couple of times from the 3Y line.
(Note: The 3 yard line is more like 5 or 6 yards because the targets are located all the way to the end of the rail, not the zero line in the bay.) Then we moved back to the 7Y line to run the drill again.
It's a bit more challenging at this distance so most of us slowed down a little.
The instructors complimented me on my accuracy. I let one flyer get out of the upper thoracic area but I think I did some adequate damage to that paper.
It was a full class today. They like to keep the class size to 12 both for safety and for time's sake.
Now this is something I'll bet a lot of you don't practice. John shows us the procedure he wants us to use in order to place our pistol on the floor in front of us so we can practice picking it up, using either strong hand or weak hand, while keeping eyes on the target, then bringing the gun into action.
We started these drills fairly close, then moved back. We took turns picking up the gun with our weak hand and strong hand, then firing three to five shots on target.
After picking up our guns a few times we practiced walking in line, back and forth, and drawing/firing with one hand from different distances. It's important to keep your line straight so no one is shooting behind anyone. I didn't have any bad flyers this time. I'm still going to make it a point to practice more single hand shooting.
The class calls for "up to" 200 rounds of ammo. I brought 250 just in case. We shot closer to 150. I had no malfunctions at all with the 2A Warehouse Capitol Cartridge. (I bought this batch in loose bulk, hence the reused ammo boxes.) I even ran through a mag of my carry ammo just to make sure it still works.
OK, just a few more drills for this session. We practiced shooting around cover and transitioning from strong hand to weak hand in order to present the smallest target possible. The first time we used only one barrel and pretended it was a large pole or column.
The next set of drills used stacked barrels for a more realistic scenario.
The last set of drills involved actually carrying something while shooting around the barrels with one hand. Of course, I had to do a slidelock reload, ensuring my precious cargo was behind cover while I switched mags, then pick it back up before engaging the target. There was a lot to remember on this drill.
John had mentioned that he thought about buying twelve large dolls for this class but didn't want to look silly walking out of Goodwill with that many girly toys. I think this drill would've been really funner with a baby doll in my arms. Don't you?
We left all our brass strewn about the bay. When I was training outdoors we'd always police our brass at the end of the session. I guess they'll sweep it up tomorrow and sell it to reloaders.
We were planning to shoot from retention but ran out of time. We'll do that next time. It was a good session. I'm glad I had practiced a bit of one hand shooting last week. I did not totally suck this session. All three instructors were very complimentary of my performance. It kinda makes you want to come back and spend more money on another class, right?
That's just what I'm gonna do. I need to training and practice anyway. I signed up for two clinics next month. One of them will be another session for live fire practice with my Garrison. I might want to carry it sometimes. Until then, thanks for hanging out with me. If nothing else, I hope you can learn something from my bad examples.
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
It was a cool, drizzly Spring day here in Lake Country, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. I'll take a little rain. Seems the last time I drove this way for a skills clinic there was snow everywhere.
Yeah, like this. Brrr!
But Spring has sprung. I doubt there will be any more snow. I arrived a little early for the clinic so I was able to park in the front lot. I still took the farthest spot so's all the old guys could park closer.
Our instructors got us started right off with an El Presidente drill. We ran this twice as a warm-up. John and Ashley were timing both our runs. They've been tracking our performance for a few months now, off and on, checking for improvements and problems.
Then we all got our own target. We shot a lot of single hand drills tonight, both strong hand and weak hand.
First John reminds us how to transition the pistol from the strong hand to the weak hand and back. His procedure is very similar to the way Ken Hackathorn demonstrates in his 2-2-2 drill. <<<Youtube link> I use the Hackathorn method.
We started off pretty close, drew with our strong hand, three hits, transition to weak hand, three more hits. We ran this a couple of times from the 3Y line.
(Note: The 3 yard line is more like 5 or 6 yards because the targets are located all the way to the end of the rail, not the zero line in the bay.) Then we moved back to the 7Y line to run the drill again.
It's a bit more challenging at this distance so most of us slowed down a little.
The instructors complimented me on my accuracy. I let one flyer get out of the upper thoracic area but I think I did some adequate damage to that paper.
It was a full class today. They like to keep the class size to 12 both for safety and for time's sake.
Now this is something I'll bet a lot of you don't practice. John shows us the procedure he wants us to use in order to place our pistol on the floor in front of us so we can practice picking it up, using either strong hand or weak hand, while keeping eyes on the target, then bringing the gun into action.
We started these drills fairly close, then moved back. We took turns picking up the gun with our weak hand and strong hand, then firing three to five shots on target.
After picking up our guns a few times we practiced walking in line, back and forth, and drawing/firing with one hand from different distances. It's important to keep your line straight so no one is shooting behind anyone. I didn't have any bad flyers this time. I'm still going to make it a point to practice more single hand shooting.
The class calls for "up to" 200 rounds of ammo. I brought 250 just in case. We shot closer to 150. I had no malfunctions at all with the 2A Warehouse Capitol Cartridge. (I bought this batch in loose bulk, hence the reused ammo boxes.) I even ran through a mag of my carry ammo just to make sure it still works.
OK, just a few more drills for this session. We practiced shooting around cover and transitioning from strong hand to weak hand in order to present the smallest target possible. The first time we used only one barrel and pretended it was a large pole or column.
The next set of drills used stacked barrels for a more realistic scenario.
The last set of drills involved actually carrying something while shooting around the barrels with one hand. Of course, I had to do a slidelock reload, ensuring my precious cargo was behind cover while I switched mags, then pick it back up before engaging the target. There was a lot to remember on this drill.
John had mentioned that he thought about buying twelve large dolls for this class but didn't want to look silly walking out of Goodwill with that many girly toys. I think this drill would've been really funner with a baby doll in my arms. Don't you?
We left all our brass strewn about the bay. When I was training outdoors we'd always police our brass at the end of the session. I guess they'll sweep it up tomorrow and sell it to reloaders.
We were planning to shoot from retention but ran out of time. We'll do that next time. It was a good session. I'm glad I had practiced a bit of one hand shooting last week. I did not totally suck this session. All three instructors were very complimentary of my performance. It kinda makes you want to come back and spend more money on another class, right?
That's just what I'm gonna do. I need to training and practice anyway. I signed up for two clinics next month. One of them will be another session for live fire practice with my Garrison. I might want to carry it sometimes. Until then, thanks for hanging out with me. If nothing else, I hope you can learn something from my bad examples. Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
