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AAR Part 1, Randy Cain Practical Rifle, Lakeland, FL, 7-9 Dec 09

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#1 · (Edited)
You may be asking something like, “What is a thread (and a long one at that) about a rifle class doing here on a 1911 board?"

The answer would be this: If you’re reading the Training section, you probably have an interest ranging from moderate curiosity to diligent attendance and practice about how to use a firearm for defensive purposes. And like many of us, you probably own at least one bolt action rifle in a caliber suitable for man stopping. As discussed on Training Day 1, that bolt gun is arguably the last type of weapon that an over-zealous government would attempt to prohibit and/or confiscate. And everyone knows that compared to things such as AR15s and pump shotguns, bolt guns are hopelessly slow to fire, clumsy to handle and pretty much worthless for anything except the annual zero and deer hunt, right? No place in the arsenal of a really serious defensive tactician, right? Wrong on all counts. And that’s not a big surprise, given that Randy Cain is a rifleman at heart, and his love of the long gun shows not only in his carbine and shotgun courses (“are we really going to shoot all these slugs he told us to bring?”), but particularly in Practical Rifle (http://randycain.com/Rifle.htm).

Unlike most of my AARs from Southern Exposure, this one has zero pictures in it. That’s because from the minute the class began, we were either under the overhead getting schooled (beginning with the non-negotiable subject of safety), on the range running and gunning from near contact distance out to 200 yards, giving our rifles a quick cleaning at lunch, inhaling water and Gatorade, trying to take notes about the massive amount of information Randy put out, or putting our rifles back in their cases at the end of a long, physically demanding day. Even after dinner, it was time to take the rifles inside the motel and clean them well for the next day’s training. It took about six seconds to fall asleep each night….

There were eight of us in the class, ranging from a couple of fellows in the Tampa Bay area who’d done some serious long range, precision shooting, to a hunter who’d driven over from Mississippi. Our bunch included an orthopaedic surgeon, a pilot for a major US airline, a salon operator, and the owner of a great motorcycle shop (if you’re looking for a Beemer or a Duck in Tampa, Joe’s the man at EuroCycles). It was quite a diverse group. Rifles ranged from a box-stock Winchester Model 70 Featherweight in .308, a Browning A-Bolt with one very tapered, thin barrel, a Remington LTR with 20 inch fluted tube, a couple of Savage Precision Carbines (20” medium taper barrel and AccuTriggers, one .223 and one .308 with an AccuStock), plus a couple more, including one with a bipod hanging on the front of it. Several of the rifles sported Ching slings from arguably the best in the business, Andy Langlois (www.shottist.com).

The Model 70 was one of the new ones, built almost to a T like the sweet pre-64s: Mauser-like claw extractor and controlled round feeding. All rifles were .308 Winchester, except for the one .223. Optics included a Nightforce 2.5-10x32, a Nikon Monarch, a couple of Burris scopes, and a few Leupolds, one of them a Mark IV Tactical 1.5-5 with illuminated reticle (the NF had the other lit reticle). More later about hardware.

Since all three days ran together for me, I can’t give you a detailed account of each TD, so here’s a summary while it’s all still reasonably clear in my mind. After the safety conversation and initial discussion about the utility of bolt guns, we took some ammo to the 50 yard line and began the first step in establishing a good zero. All rifles save one were pretty much on paper and close, so between that and the time required by some of us to pull together decent groups, there was no flurry of adjustments made to the scopes. After a while, Randy told some of us to make a few adjustments.

We shot a number of close-in drills from offhand that would be familiar to students from a carbine or pistol class – shots to the body, shots to the head (don’t forget to hold over when you’re up close, or all you’re doing is putting a round in the bad guy’s mouth – painful, but not instantly decisive), failure drills. We covered moving at low ready, forwards, searching, backwards, easing away, all with fire commands and occasional admonitions to keep the line straight and not let anyone wind up in front of it.

To Randy’s way of thinking, the essence of a good rifleman is the ability to select, get into, and accurately shoot from different positions. The closer you are to the ground, the more stable you’ll be when you press the trigger. Not surprisingly, we spent a lot of time practicing the positions and shooting from them. First he covered military prone, then Olympic prone. We spent a fair amount of time wrapping our heads (and bodies) around the concept of natural point of aim. It’s easy to get intellectually, harder for most to put into practice, but once you find it, your crosshairs stop moving back and forth – they only move up and down with your breathing, or with the position of your support arm elbow or hand on the forestock. You’re no longer muscling the gun onto target, it just falls there easily, without tension. Randy then covered several variations on sitting, all of which provide skeletal support for the rifle.

From there we learned the squat, which gets you quite low and can be very stable. For those of us who’ve had a few too many trips to the ortho docs for our knees, it was a challenge, but everyone hung in and executed. From there we went to braced kneel, again challenging the less flexible among us (our oldest shooter was 60, and there were several in their 50s). And finally, we shot some more offhand. Works real well at relatively short distances, but the next time some blowhard tells you about the deer he dropped on the run at 325 yards from a standing position, your BS detector will probably be shaking itself to pieces, and for good reason.

We shot again on the zero targets at 100 yards, and the groups opened up somewhat. Randy showed us how to use the Ching sling to best effect (and how the guy in a gun shop who wraps his arm around a carry strap isn’t doing himself any favors). In theory, you get a 15% improvement with the Ching sling or other loop-type sling that ties the front of the gun to your upper arm/body. I was amazed at how much steadier I could hold and shoot with it. More adjustments were made as long as the groups were consistent enough to warrant them. Then more drills. Up to this point, Randy had pretty well given us time to top off the rifles in between drills. He showed us how to keep a bolt gun topped off, similar to keeping a pistol running during a handgun class. By the end of the third day, we had gotten real good at sneaking in one or two more rounds in between drills. When your magazine only holds four or five rounds (and one in the chamber), every round really matters.

TD2 included the night shoot, which began at the onset of dusk, at about 75 yards. We began learning to shoot with each other at exactly the same time, something that the SEALs off Somalia did to great effect earlier this year in rescuing the captain of a hijacked ship. After that, Randy told us to assume a firing position we’d be comfortable holding for a while (all of us went prone, save for one shooter who went to sitting). He said that we were to keep our crosshairs on the vital zone of the target, ready to shoot at his command. Minutes (which seemed more like hours) went by, as the light gradually faded from the sky. The evening chorus of birds and bullfrogs was occasionally shattered by “Fire!” and rifles fired in response, bolts run in unison like a percussion section. “When you can no longer hold your position, when you can no longer see your crosshairs or your target, or when you can no longer guarantee a hit on a vital zone, clear out your rifle, leave it on the ground bolt handle up and forward, and step behind the line.” There were a couple more iterations of “Fire!” followed by silence and increasing discomfort. Finally, there was one shooter left on the line, and Randy commanded him to fire.

(continued in Part 2)
 
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