atek3
Member
THR's own Zak Smith's suppressor company TBAC put on a great precision rifle class in Elkton, Oregon last week. The course had 8 students and 2 instructors, Ray Sanchez and Shane Coppinger. The curriculum was focused on making fasts on unknown distance targets out to 1000 yards.
The first portion was a fairly standard class room orientation to the discipline of long range. The course had strongly varying experience levels, from people like me, who've been competitive shooters for a decade with no long range experience to folks who'd killed Bull Elk from 500 yards with a 338 Win Mag who'd never seen a steel target. The class even had a national 1000 benchrest champ who decided to come lay in the dirt with us.
Since this was the first time TBAC offered the class at this facility there were naturally some teething pains (I'm looking at you shady target boxes!
), but other than those the class moved very smoothly. After starting on a known distance range from prone, we moved to an unknown distance "field" type course, again from prone. Then the instructors added time and consistancy pressure, including a few miniature "shoot-offs." On the third day, due to the generally high skill level of the participants Shane and Raydog went through improvised "field" shooting positions like shooting sticks offhand, shooting sticks reverse kneeling, sitting, and other positions a competitor/hunter/tactical shooter would likely encounter in the field.
The class was also an incredible sales pitch for suppressors. Shooting a bolt gun in 308 with a can and a 260 with a muzzle brake side by side was very illuminating. With the can attached I could easily spot my own hits even on 12x. The sharp blast with the brake made it much harder.
I really need to move to a more liberal jurisdiction.
Thanks to the TBAC class I went from shooting well at 200 yards to ringing steel at over 900 yards away.
atek3
