Short Review : Advance Tactical Rifle with Pat Goodale

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i-SHOT

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Guys,

Thot I'll share this with you.....we just got back from a 3-day Advance Tactical Rifle Class with Pat Goodale who owns and operates PFT (Practical Firearms Training) in Alderson, WV (4 hours drive from NoVA). The criterion for this class is anyone who has taken at least a tactical rifle class either with Pat or another instructor. The cost was $450 and my final round count was about 1500 (5.56 alone, pistol was another 250).

As is with most of Pat's advance classes, the first day is usually dedicated to zeroing of the weapon (a lot of us came with new purchases), re-cap of what we've been taught in our basic classes, drills and Pat adding new layer after layer to the drills that we've shot in the past. We ran back and forth between paper and steel (up to 200 yards). As Pat puts it, 'steel makes us fast but paper keeps us honest'. You get a chance to try out all the different shooting positions, shooting varying angles (some steel targets were up the hillside, etc.)

Day 2 started with a warm-up, followed quickly with a lot of shooting on the move; straight lines, turns, diagonals, etc. You get a chance to practice all the different types of reloads and then he mixes your reloads, your transitions, your malfunction drills and moving forward, backwards, sideways, etc in the various stages.

Pat's big on getting your heart rate up first before he gets you to run any drills. For instance, he makes you move at 'Warrant Service or HRT' speed from A to B (no shooting) and the moment you get to B, you make a hard right turn, slow down (at least I did ‘cos I can’t shoot for nuts on the move) to 'Covert' speed and start shooting at the steel targets down range. He then proceeds to explain various situations with two shooters (team) and then gets you to run drills where each shooter continues to cover one another as they retreat and another in which one goes down and the other shoots to cover and drag the injured shooter to safety. Covering strong hand only while your support hand drags your partner was quite a challenge. I was sweating buckets!

Latter part of the day saw the group broken into 2 with one running drills like El Prez, etc while the other group gets a shot at 'looking for tangos' outside the shoot house. We also saw a lot of moving targets including a course where you shot on the move and from cover at pop-ups with balloons in the down zero zone.

The day ended with a night shoot that lasted till past 11 p.m. The night shoot included room to room clearing in the shoot-house and firing from various positions from behind a vehicle.

Day 3 moved so fast that I'd rather let you check out the video and see for yourself the kinda mess we got ourselves into :)

VIDEO

As always, Pat never failed to amaze us with his knowledge and experience. This is one man who has (if I may borrow a phrase from Pat Rogers) 'Been There, Done That'. Almost all the drills that he makes you run is a result of either something that took place in the past or past missions he's been on. With Pat you get more than just an instructor; you get someone who knows first hand what works and what doesn't in the real world.

For more info on Pat and his training, check out his website at http://www/pgpft.com/
 
I may be showing my ignorance here and please be kind if I am but the double taps seem slow at the begining of the tape. Is that the way it was instructucted ? It appears the targets are about 50 yards away. I too am looking for a refresher course on tactical rifle and would be using an open sighted government model A2. Please don't take this as being critical it just seemed that target engagement could have been faster but then I wasn't there.
Jim
 
Jim, no worries. That is a very valid question.

If you're talking about the gent (in tan) shooting the El Prez (he did it clean in 11.4 secs), I personally felt that that was a damn good time. Unless you're a pro, I would be hard pressed to agree that his pairs are too slow 'cos he needs to make every single shot count (ping on the steel). I did mine in 10.4 but it was useless 'cos I had two misses.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could run it faster :)
 
i-SHOT,

Great review and video.

I second your notion that the student who shot el-prez did a fine job. He made clean hits and his reload was smooth. Afterall, he was a student and was more than likely there to learn. I wasn't trying to push myself during classes.
On the otherhand, once all the material had been absorbed, then it was time to turn up the heat.

-Jim
 
Fully understand guys thanks for the info. I thought maybe they were shooting alternate targets or something like that. Then again being there doing it is alot different than sitting in this chair watching.:)
Jim
 
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