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Lessons Learned at the Range

2K views 22 replies 17 participants last post by  BobR1 
#1 ·
I played hooky from work last Monday since it was a beautiful day and I decided to go to the range and finally practice more realistic shooting scenarios. I normally go as a guest to a private range, but there you can't really draw, move and fire without creating a dangerous situation for yourself or others.

So, I went to the Coosa County Wildlife Management Area range north of where I live. It's a very primitive 100 yard range with no monitoring, no cover, no bathrooms and with just three shooting tables.

I had the whole place to myself that Monday afternoon!!! :banana:

Things I learned:

1) You really have to think about moving and shooting! I had to keep telling myself, "Get off the X!" to do it correctly.

2) Shooting one-handed makes it very hard to shoot accurately.

3) Drawing from an IWB holster wearing a T-shirt is hard...

4) Drawing your gun and still having the IWB holster stuck on the gun is scary and embarrasing! :embarassed: It only happened once, but my thoughts on a new holster have reached new heights.

5) Reloading a magazine from a Velcro belt pouch is slow.


All-in-all I learned a lot, improved on that pesky flinch and put 175 rounds of re-loaded .40 through my SIG P2022 without a hiccup.
 
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#3 ·
I did - I learned it takes longer to recover your brass than it takes to shoot it! :smile:

Seriously, not ever trying to shoot and move and then reload and re-engage made this a very interesting day.
 
#6 ·
Sounds like you had a great experience AND learned a lot!

I agree...there are a lot of things we can practice without shooting. I actually have one of those blue guns that is exactly like my real pistol.....it is great to practice drawing from my holster and getting on target!
 
#8 ·
No offense, but I think Id toss the velcro mag pouch, and buy some better suited for a fighting pistol. If you like dressy looking ones, Galcos are beauts. If you like more utilitarian looking, bladetechs offer some nice features.

IMO, one needs to be be able to draw from a mag, knowing which way the bullets are ALWAYS facing, and do so without velcro, or whatever, keeping focus on the target, and not looking at the mag on the way to the weapon.

Also, there are good dvds out there for the kind of practice you describe I have the Tactical Response DVDs, and have taken their fighting pistol course. Highly recommend.
 
#9 ·
Thank you for sharing your experience. It should inspire others to get out and practice these things (and more) also! And, yes, there sure are a lot of things you can practice without actually shooting, including the challenge of drawing from an IWB covered by a t shirt or more layers. Best wishes as you continue your progress! :bier:
 
#10 ·
A day at the range is great in my book and having the solitude to work out different scenrios is great too. One thing that cant be taken for granted is safety. Your out there in the middle of nowhere shooting what I presume were reloads. Suppose 1 was double charged which when fired could have caused great injury to yourself. Its a good idea for safetys sake to shoot with a buddy just in case something goes wrong. Just playing devils advocate.
 
#11 ·
Sounds good, its been below zero around here for so long, I have not been shooting with the wind chill. ( I refuse to pay and wait hours for the indoor range).
Plus we can't draw at the indoor ranges. I know you could draw and dry fire at home, but nice to see where you hit on that first shot.
 
#14 ·
Well, the absolute first thing I'd suggest is not giving up simply because you had less than expected results during your trip to the range. Do you practice regularly drawing from concealment? I'm talking at home, with a safe, unloaded pistol? If so, how much have you practiced? Drawing from concealment, aiming (or point shooting) and dropping the hammer, so to speak, is very much a learned skill. And it's one that you pretty much never get so good at that you can stop practicing altogether.

Since you mentioned that your holster came out with your weapon once, I'd probably say that you need to rethink your holster choice, but I don't know if it means that you should give up on IWB completely. IWB is much, much better for concealment and while it's probably easy to think about 'cover garments' now, while it's February; come August, you'll stop carrying if it means that you're having to wear two shirts constantly... A good IWB rig will conceal beneath a t-shirt. That sort convenience cannot be written off. It's easy for a lot of folks to stop carrying because it's just not convenient, so I try to make sure people understand what their choices may lead to when they start to close off options that maybe shouldn't be closed off.

Good luck and keep practicing!
 
#19 ·
My problem with IWB is it seems that no matter what holster I use, I get an itchy rash.

This never happened unitl I bought a Remora holster. After my "Remora Rash", anything against my side causes issues - even if I have a t-shirt between my skin and the holster.

So, with the prospect of buying a fourth holster for this gun, I'm thinking concealed, but on my belt.
 
#21 ·
I did the same thing today. Sighted in my new AR, my 30-06, and brought about 500 rounds of 40/9mm and worked through drawing from concealed and firing from my hip, from my chest, in close, and fully extended,
Then added movement. I will say this... With my shield, I couldn't move and acquire the target quickly. With both my G2 and my G27 I am far better.


Then the real fun, we set up used shotgun shells at 200 yards and shot them with my new 597 HB (thoroughly impressed with that rifle btw)

Anyways, I'm with you. Drawing is hard but I start slow and I practice at home in the dark and with my eyes closed. I want to be able to get my shirt up and my draw hand on the grip the same way everytime!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#22 ·
2) Shooting one-handed makes it very hard to shoot accurately.
Continue to work on this skill.

Realize that your support/reaction hand could be doing a number of different things aside from helping your weapon hand hold on to the weapon: everything from pushing/pulling/controlling a loved-one at that moment to fighting off the aggressor at contact-distance to pulling out a flashlight to aid in low/no-light.

The goal for practicing is to get better at what we're already good at and to get good at what we were not-so-great at, right? :image035:

3) Drawing from an IWB holster wearing a T-shirt is hard...
Drawing from concealment adds a whole other level of complexity to the game; this is why most instructors/schools do not start novice students from the draw. Now, if you're actually training towards your reality - how you would normally dress and using your everyday gear - as you should :wink: - this will add yet another level of difficulty.

As many others have said, this is not something that you'll necessarily have to be at the range to practice. You can certainly practice this in the comfort of your own home, dry-fire. Everything from going slowly so as to burn-in "muscle memory" for the appropriate steps and to confirm safety to trying to beat your shot-timer is well possible.

The only real caveat here is that you'll need to come to an understanding of what is safe for you to "shoot through" and what kind of effectiveness on-target you can get from doing so. This is something that will require either going live-fire or the use of a training tool such as an airsoft or even a laser trainer.

Realize that not every draw - or any other manipulation or technique that involves you in your everyday concealment clothing and gear - will be perfect: on the streets, you can't say "oh no, that draw sucked" or "that reload sucked, lemmie do it over." If you snagged your shirt on the draw or reload or the base-plate of your "flush" carry magazine for your sub-compact carry gun managed to take a bite of flesh out of your emergency slide-lock reload, you need to understand that this can well happen on what's already the worst day of your life, and you need to have the mental wherewithal and physical skills necessary to understand what you can safely "fight through," and what may need a bit more to compensate for (i.e. seeing that the shirt snagged your rear sight, you'll expect to be able to get off the first shot, but that you may have to follow-up with stoppage reduction techniques so that you can effect follow-up shots).

Certainly, you can instead change what you wear and how you carry - you can alter your lifestyle. But you'll want to be honest with yourself in whether this is actually a change you can go through with as well as maintain.

Oh, and to tie back into your second observation - on single-handed shooting?

Try also using only your weapon hand to clear your T-shirt and draw.

I didn't really start in heavy on this until after my first combatives class, when I realized that there's a whole lot of things I could be doing with that other hand other than using it to clear the T-shirt from the front of my gun.

4) Drawing your gun and still having the IWB holster stuck on the gun is scary and embarrasing! :embarassed: It only happened once, but my thoughts on a new holster have reached new heights.
New holster? or a new way of fastening your existing holster to your belt? Do you just need to use a "C-clip" instead of a "J-clip?" Or is it more that the over-the-top clip you have now not have sufficient tension to hold on to the belt when you draw?

Or is it actually the interaction of the holster/belt that's the problem? Does the lip of the clip not reach over the belt, and is therefore just riding on top via friction instead of being able to positively grab the other end of the belt? I've got some top-dollar holsters that just don't mate well with particular other top-dollar belts? It's not really the fault of either piece of gear, just how they interact - for example, my Garrette Silent Thunder Slim II's "standard clip" is just not big enough to accommodate the thickness of my Zlogonje Gunleather dual-layer belt, but yet it fits great over my Beltman belt.

But in all reality, unless you've got some kind of mounting setup that virtually guarantees that your holster won't come off the belt with your gun (i.e. a solid belt loop that's attached to the holster via reinforced or multiple hardware), you've still gotta plan for potential failures - however unlikely they may be. How do you get that holster off the drawn gun safely and efficiently? Where should you grab it? Can you effect a first-shot from within the holster, even if it didn't completely come off as you executed that "failure drill?"

As with changing the way you dress, the impetus to address your current problems via hardware revisions will be strong. Certainly, that's not wrong, but you also need to take a moment to look at the further realizations of what your practice session revealed to you. :smile:

Oh, and speaking of scary things associated with drawing from concealment....

It's also quite possible for you to snag so hard on your concealment cover-garment that you literally torque/spin the gun right out of your hand.

Should this happen, resist the urge to reach out and grab it as it's falling. Just let it fall.

A good modern defensive pistol is drop-safe.

But a finger that accidentally finds its way into the trigger guard as the gun's falling through the air? That's no good!

5) Reloading a magazine from a Velcro belt pouch is slow.
to which StormRhyder responded:

No offense, but I think Id toss the velcro mag pouch, and buy some better suited for a fighting pistol. If you like dressy looking ones, Galcos are beauts. If you like more utilitarian looking, bladetechs offer some nice features.

IMO, one needs to be be able to draw from a mag, knowing which way the bullets are ALWAYS facing, and do so without velcro, or whatever, keeping focus on the target, and not looking at the mag on the way to the weapon.
[Aside @ StormRhydr - Just because a magazine holder has a cover flap over it does not mean that the magazine within cannot be indexed properly and consistently. Look at the magazine holders that many professional gunmen wear - the overlying flap is simply to further secure the magazine, that's all.]

Yes, it's slower than reloading from an open-top carrier. The same idea goes for drawing from concealment versus without.

So if that's the case, then why do you bother with concealment? :wink:

Is that VELCRO overflap keeping your magazine securely on your person? and would you be less likely to tote a spare mag if not for that security? If that's the case, then I'd trade speed for knowing that you'll have a spare mag to work with. For as unlikely as the average law-abiding civilian is to get into a gunfight, how much less likely is it that you'll need to resort to your spare magazine? But as the late Paul Gomez once said, when you do find that you need your gun, you'll need it in the most absolute manner - and it is with that in-mind that I frame my preference for carrying a spare mag.

But if you are comfortable going with an open-top carrier, either IWB or OWB, then there's really no need for the extra VELCRO.

And again, realize that speed is a function of being well-practiced. Yes, it's going to be slow at first and it's going to be "hard," but with practice, you'll get better and faster.

Sounds good, its been below zero around here for so long, I have not been shooting with the wind chill.
I don't think that any of us need to risk hypothermia, frostbite, or even really discomfort - but I do believe that it is very important for us all to be honest about the realities of our surroundings. :smile:

Many of us are now still in the midst of a rather cold and snowy winter.

One anecdote that I like to cite comes from Jack Leubba (aka Failure2Stop on M4C.net) of F2S Consulting (*F2S Consulting). In a training session where he was teaching some of our nation's super-ninja-killers, it was noted that their gloved hands were inducing malfunctions on their handguns - that the glove was snagging portions of the slide, causing various stoppages as these men were executing what is arguably a "more robust" technique. The fix? He had them start using a technique which was technically "less robust" - but that technique resulted in the guns getting back up and running, without stoppage.

Gloves will change your interaction with the gun. If you wear gloves, practice with them so you understand what to expect.

There are also anecdotes of shooters whose gloves become trapped by the route of the trigger (typically most commonly between the tip of the trigger and the gap to the trigger guard below it) or those who like to shoot with various specialty "shooting gloves" but then find themselves unable to rack the slide or accomplish other basic manipulations without gloves (especially if their hands are sweaty or wet at that time) because of the differences in traction/friction/contact. At the most basic level, you'll want to make sure that your gloved finger can get inside that trigger guard without touching off a round too early, and that your gloved hands can properly work all control surfaces.

Don't forget the reload, too. Indexing the magazine may be harder with gloves. It's also possible for the glove material to become trapped in the magwell/base-plate gap as you insert the mag and drive it home.

On the flip side, look at what one of our - adric22, posted a while back:

adrick22 said:
My wife and I went to the range today and I decided to shoot my little Taurus TCP 738. I actually rarely shoot that gun, because it is not fun to shoot. But with the hot weather lately, I've been carrying it more and more because it is much easier to conceal when wearing shorts and a t-shirt. So I figured if I carry this thing, I should put some rounds through it. Well, as many know it has been quite hot around here lately. It was 102 degrees outside today. When I first got into the range, I was still sweating from being outside. I was unable to chamber a round in that TCP because the slide is so small, has such a strong spring, and my hands were sweaty. My hand would literally just slide right off the slide like it was coated in vaseline or something. My wife tried and also was unable to do it. After I rubbed my hands on my shorts to dry them off a bit, I was finally able to do it. I could just see myself trying to chamber a round with sweaty hands while the BG is trying to kill me.
But remember also that the weather can affect our weapon, too.

If you live in a colder area, be sure that the lube you've chosen for your gun doesn't gum-up and render the gun either un-usable or prone to stoppage as the temperature drops.

For example, a buddy of mine and his fellow classmates saw freezing rain at a one-day pistol class a few years ago. At the time, his and a couple others' were running the "Lite" formula of Slide Glide - their guns eventually slowed to a halt and started experiencing stoppages. A quick switch to a liquid lubricant immediately solved the problem.

Train hard, but train with *YOUR* reality in-mind. :smile:
 
#23 ·
We shoot a Defensive Pistol Match on Saturday one month and a Reactive Steel Challenge Match the next month. We also shoot an ICORE Revolver Match every month on the Sunday following the Saturday handgun Match. This is my Practice.
We have a Snub Division, as well as a Rimfire Division in our Defensive Pistol Match. Unlike IDPA we shoot the normal course of fire including reloads. This is one thing about IDPA I have never figured out. I know a lot more folks who conceal carry something that would be considered to be a Snub Revolver or Small Compact semi auto than I do full size handguns. It would seem that IDPA does not want anyone competing with a REAL Concealed Carry handgun. They do have Snub Side Matchs, but do not encourage anyone to use a Snub with reloads during the main match.

Doing realistic training will help get the bugs out. You figured out that drawing from under a T Shirt was a pain. Solution, either wear a more draw friendly shirt, OR practice with the Tee Shirt till you get it worked out.
Same thing with reloads. Work the bugs out. If it requires some different equipment to get it right then get something that works for you. OR Make changes to make what you have work.

You can also practice at home. First get all LIVE ammunition out of the Training Room. Work on the draw from concealment. Go through the Steps slowly picking up speed over time. Sweep the cover garment, get a Good Grip, getting a 2 Hand Grip on the handgun, then the Push Out, and get on target for the shot, then the trigger stroke. Work on the details till you get it right.
Keep your finger off the trigger till you are committed to engaging the target.
Practice your reload.
Go Advanced after a while and stage some malfunction drills to clear.

We can all get in a great deal of training at home without firing a shot, if everyone would dedicate some time to doing it.

Just My 2 Cents.

Bob The Revolver Guy
 
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