CLASS REVIEW-AAR: Field Craft & Survival: Gun Fighter Pistol 1, CT, 6-6-21

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Field Craft & Survival
fieldcraftsurvival.com
Gun Fighter Pistol Course Level 1
March 6, 2021
Instructor: Raul Martinez & Chris Galls
Location: Academi, Salem CT
Weather: Indoor Range
Round Count: 400+/-
Students: 20
Time: 9am – 3pm
Cost: $375

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We started off in the upstairs classroom with Raul Fieldcrafts Director of training introducing himself and the other instructor Chris. No lunch break will be given, eat snacks as you are loading mags. He made it clear that the class was going to be playing by big boy rules, if you shoot yourself first try to treat your own wounds. If the injury were beyond your skill level, they would step in. I was not sure if they were joking or not. Raul gave a short safety brief, and a medical brief was done by the local range host.

The group was broken up into two ranges. Students who had never taken a class before and students who had taken a least one other pistol class. I was in the “advanced” of the two groups. We had 14 students in our range. We ran two groups of seven on the line and Chris was our instructor. Once we were on our range Chris gave us a short bio of himself. Former Marine with multiple deployments and a Florida SWAT officer and SWAT trainer. www.ttogllc.net/christian-galls

Chris demoed the cold drill at seven yards shooting 10 rounds as fast and accurate as we could deliver them from the holster into a standard cardboard humanoid IDPA target. One by one we all step forward and ran the drill.

We worked on grip emphasizing what they call the CLAMP method rather than the typical squeeze of the pistol grip. Not using your pinkies and 90% of the strength comes from your thumb and f*** You finger. Holding the gun hard enough that no one could take it from you if they tried. Chris showed us how to stand so our balance would be stable, and he came up and down the line lightly pushing our bodies or pushing the gun to mimic recoil. The big takeaway from that block for me was to lock my right leg tight as it was rear of my left leg. A fighting stance.

We worked on making our draw efficient. Getting the gun out of the holster as fast as possible and slowing it down on presentation. We shot single shots and worked our way up to multiple shots in a rapid cadence. This was a gunfighting class and emphasis was on getting acceptable hits. Precise hits were not as important as fast combat effective hits.

Once we had an efficient draw down, we moved to break the shot at 50% extension. Getting the first acceptable hit in a gunfight was the most important thing. A full draw was not always necessary. As soon as you pick up the dot (or sights) break the shot. This was a new skill for me. I am used to a full presentation before even putting my finger on the trigger. We practiced this at a lot of different speeds and at different distances from the target. Started off at 3 yards and walked it back to 10 yards. We did it as a group and individually against a shot timer.

We did drills where we would shoot rapidly while moving forward at different speeds while keeping all our hits into the A zone of the targets. Again, focusing on our grip and our cadence.

A major portion of the afternoon was spent on what they called “prioritizing or cheating in the gunfight” other schools call it a form of point shooting or kinesthetic shooting. Focusing on the target and not looking at your sights while you cranked off a series of shots into the center mass of the target. We practiced holding the gun out in the 50% presentation area center of our body (some schools call it the third eye) at three yards and finding the correct spot for center mass hits. Once we figured out where the gun needed to be, we burned that in with multiple iterations, and then we did it from our holster. We walked it back as a group to five and then seven yards and then did it individually against the timer.

We worked with strong hand only focusing on our grip and multiple shots as fast as we could from three, five, and seven yards.

At this point in the class, the instructors switched groups so we could be taught by the other one.

Raul set up a series of targets that we would have to weave in and out of, touching them with our support hand forcing us to break our grip moving around the target, and engaging a target at the berm. We did this with cold guns twice and then went hot shooting a single shot once we passed the piece of cover. We each did it twice forward and backward. We then did it shooting a string of three shots once we cleared the obstacle. My previous training taught me to point the gun up when moving, but I was told that was a wasted motion. Keep the gun pointed at the target so I could shoot once I cleared the obstacle.

The last drill of the day was set up with two shoot targets and six pieces of cover each numbered. Raul would call out a number, the shooter would have to locate the numbered piece of cover, use the cover effectively shoot the closest target 2-4 times. This drill went on until you went through all your magazines. It was a long drill, and you were running all over the range as Raul called out numbers. I was winded after all my mags were empty (91 shots)

We cleaned up the range and took a class photo.

This was a good class that I enjoyed. It was a different type of class that I was used to taking. Speed was emphasized. Looking back on the class, I realized that the first half of the day was fundamentals, and the second half of the day was gunfighting. My group of shooters and had skills that allowed us to keep moving through blocks of instruction fast. The instructors were super knowledgeable, funny, and down-to-earth, good dudes!
 
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