Travis McGee
Member
Last weekend I attended a two-day Carbine Operator course on a big farm near Lake City, Florida. The instructor was Russ Adler, and there were seven students. This was an ideal number for one instructor to handle. The big farm venue was ideal. There was so much private farm land behind the berm that overshooting just wasn't an issue. Any bullets would land on the owners own forests! Instead of a berm built up above ground level, there was an acre-sized bulldozed pit about 15 feet deep with sloping sides. At the back of this pit was the berm, bulldozed up from the pit bottom to just above the surrounding ground level. This sunken pit shooting area permitted a wide variety of 3D tactical movements that you could not accomplish on a flat range.
On Saturday we began with a quick zero confirmation. Everybody was already dialed in. There were 2 SCARs present, the rest were ARs. About half of the class was shooting brass ammo and half Wolf steel ammo. There were some "issues" with Wolf ammo in some rifles. My Bushmaster and most of the rifles had no problem digesting Wolf, but the point is that you must make sure that your rifle's internal dimensions are compatible with steel ammunition. Two shooters went with iron sights, the rest had EOTechs, Aimpoints or similar, and one had a 4X Trijicon ACOG.
It was truly a joy to be trained by a professional, where the students were already very skilled shooters. This meant that Russ could treat us like adults, and we moved quickly into very "high speed" training. We were firing at ranges from point-blank (at paper) to fifty yards (at steel plates.) Russ had some very creative portable barricades, and we were firing right and left handed, including side-prone firing under a ten-inch barricade simulating the bottom of a car. This is very humbling, trying to get the red dot on the target with the off-eye, while sand and dirt were exploding from our muzzles back into our faces.
I won't run through every drill that we did, but I'll say that it was at about 90% of what special ops guys will do. We stopped at live fire and maneuver, that is, we didn't shoot right next other shooters already downrange. (I'd call that the 100% specops training level.) I did that 30 years ago as a SEAL, but you will not do that in a two-day civilian setting. But we did everything else, just short of that level. That is, we did a lot of live firing while the seven of us were on line, advancing, moving sideways, moving backwards etc. We also did 1+1 and 2+2 man drills, running and shooting. If you haven't had the experience, it really lifts shooting to another level when you are blasting through 30 round magazines at steel plates with shooters a yard or two from each of your shoulders also firing, while moving!
You can't just focus on your target, but must also be aware of your buddies on each side and staying on line. We did a lot of transition to pistol work also, and after the first rifle-to-pistol drills it was SOP to transition to pistol when a rifle mag ran dry or there was a stoppage. You just kept fighting, period. No whining, no complaining, you fixed your rifle or pistol and kept going. This really came into play when doing two man drills, with one shooter running to another position while the other shooter provided cover fire down range. If there was a stoppage during these drills, it became very apparant. The point was, we all learned how to keep our guns running no matter what.
There was sand and grit in everything after the first hour, so the guns got a real shakedown. I even had a factory Xd mag fail to push the bullets up after it bound up with internal grit. I had a spare mag on my leg holster, and rolling around, sand go into it. Lessons learned!
Saturday night we did light fighting in the dark. Let me just say that if you don't have a good light for your rifle, you need to get one! Using a handheld light with a pistol might work to some degree, but with a rifle at 50 yards it's really hard. It just diminishes your accuracy and effectiveness to a great degree. If you think you might ever use your rifle at night, get a light that you can mount on the rifle, and practice with it. I also had a laser and it was very effective, but it tended to distract the other shooters. The 4X Trijicon plus a light also proved to be deadly, pinging the steel plates just as fast at night as during the day. Since some shooters only had handheld lights, it was easy to see what a disadvantage they had. If you don't have a good light and laser on your rifle, you will be at a severe disadvantage. Period. (IMHO.)
In summary, I would state flatly that this was the best two days of rifle training that I have had since my SEAL Team days in the 1980s. It went just as far as you could go with seven civilians on the firing line. Safety was paramount, but we were treated like advanced shooters, and we all pushed ourselves to our limits. I would say that my skill and effectiveness with a carbine at least doubled simply by attending Russ Adlers's two day carbine operator course. I'd recommend that anybody with a carbine try to attend a course like this. It was worth every dollar, hell, it was worth much more. And we had a lot of fun and we all made some new friends. The only downside was how sore my 53 year old body was last night, after two days of trying to hang in there with the young guns.
On Saturday we began with a quick zero confirmation. Everybody was already dialed in. There were 2 SCARs present, the rest were ARs. About half of the class was shooting brass ammo and half Wolf steel ammo. There were some "issues" with Wolf ammo in some rifles. My Bushmaster and most of the rifles had no problem digesting Wolf, but the point is that you must make sure that your rifle's internal dimensions are compatible with steel ammunition. Two shooters went with iron sights, the rest had EOTechs, Aimpoints or similar, and one had a 4X Trijicon ACOG.
It was truly a joy to be trained by a professional, where the students were already very skilled shooters. This meant that Russ could treat us like adults, and we moved quickly into very "high speed" training. We were firing at ranges from point-blank (at paper) to fifty yards (at steel plates.) Russ had some very creative portable barricades, and we were firing right and left handed, including side-prone firing under a ten-inch barricade simulating the bottom of a car. This is very humbling, trying to get the red dot on the target with the off-eye, while sand and dirt were exploding from our muzzles back into our faces.
I won't run through every drill that we did, but I'll say that it was at about 90% of what special ops guys will do. We stopped at live fire and maneuver, that is, we didn't shoot right next other shooters already downrange. (I'd call that the 100% specops training level.) I did that 30 years ago as a SEAL, but you will not do that in a two-day civilian setting. But we did everything else, just short of that level. That is, we did a lot of live firing while the seven of us were on line, advancing, moving sideways, moving backwards etc. We also did 1+1 and 2+2 man drills, running and shooting. If you haven't had the experience, it really lifts shooting to another level when you are blasting through 30 round magazines at steel plates with shooters a yard or two from each of your shoulders also firing, while moving!
You can't just focus on your target, but must also be aware of your buddies on each side and staying on line. We did a lot of transition to pistol work also, and after the first rifle-to-pistol drills it was SOP to transition to pistol when a rifle mag ran dry or there was a stoppage. You just kept fighting, period. No whining, no complaining, you fixed your rifle or pistol and kept going. This really came into play when doing two man drills, with one shooter running to another position while the other shooter provided cover fire down range. If there was a stoppage during these drills, it became very apparant. The point was, we all learned how to keep our guns running no matter what.
There was sand and grit in everything after the first hour, so the guns got a real shakedown. I even had a factory Xd mag fail to push the bullets up after it bound up with internal grit. I had a spare mag on my leg holster, and rolling around, sand go into it. Lessons learned!
Saturday night we did light fighting in the dark. Let me just say that if you don't have a good light for your rifle, you need to get one! Using a handheld light with a pistol might work to some degree, but with a rifle at 50 yards it's really hard. It just diminishes your accuracy and effectiveness to a great degree. If you think you might ever use your rifle at night, get a light that you can mount on the rifle, and practice with it. I also had a laser and it was very effective, but it tended to distract the other shooters. The 4X Trijicon plus a light also proved to be deadly, pinging the steel plates just as fast at night as during the day. Since some shooters only had handheld lights, it was easy to see what a disadvantage they had. If you don't have a good light and laser on your rifle, you will be at a severe disadvantage. Period. (IMHO.)
In summary, I would state flatly that this was the best two days of rifle training that I have had since my SEAL Team days in the 1980s. It went just as far as you could go with seven civilians on the firing line. Safety was paramount, but we were treated like advanced shooters, and we all pushed ourselves to our limits. I would say that my skill and effectiveness with a carbine at least doubled simply by attending Russ Adlers's two day carbine operator course. I'd recommend that anybody with a carbine try to attend a course like this. It was worth every dollar, hell, it was worth much more. And we had a lot of fun and we all made some new friends. The only downside was how sore my 53 year old body was last night, after two days of trying to hang in there with the young guns.
(pun intended)