“Every shotgun is a snowflake.”  –Erik Lund

Having previously taken a rifle class from Erik Lund, I welcomed the opportunity to take his Performance Shotgun course.  Erik was assisted in this class by Tod Lit.

Of note, I have been firmly camped on the Remington 870 side of the Remington versus Mossberg question for several decades, but I won a Mossberg 590A1 in a drawing, and rather than learning my way around it in privacy, I thought it a much better course of action to trot it out in front of a group of people so that they could witness the process…

I did carry along a trusty 870P just in case I needed my security blanket.

The 590A1 in question has been upgraded to a Magpul forend, a Dave’s Metal Works aluminum follower and a Big Dot sight.  From previous experience, I have found that the Bog Dot sight works really well for buckshot, but slugs at 50 yards start to become a challenge as the sight covers up so much of the target.

This class was not a basic or introductory class in that we didn’t spend time on basic loading and unloading drills or rudimentary discussions on shotgun ammo.  Erik did take a few moments to dispel a couple of shotgun myths.  One of these was the oft repeated notion that the sound of a pump shotgun action being worked was enough to win an encounter.  Another was the myth that a pump shotgun was more reliable than a semi-auto shotgun.  While this may be mechanically true, it is not true of shooter induced malfunctions.

As for technique, Erik is a proponent of consistency across platforms.  As such, his stances for pistol, carbine, and shotgun are all similar.  He stresses being balanced and having your hips oriented towards the target.

After the introductions and safety briefings, we jumped right into the shooting.

We began with a patterning drill.  Erik described shotguns as “every shotgun is a snowflake” stressing that even across the same lines of ammo and firearms that they will perform differently in each shotgun.  This was proved correct during the patterning drill.  As for buckshot, the clear winner for tightest pattern was the Federal Flight Control 00 buckshot.

From there, we did a few basic manipulation drills making sure that everyone was up to speed with the operation of their particular shotgun, and then we moved to reloading drills; a lot of reloading drills.  Both strong and support hand drills were taught.  After we worked through all of theses different drills, Erik told us to pick the one we preferred and to use it for the remainder of the class.   We worked predominantly from a sidesaddle.  Most of my previous shotgun work has been done using a belt mounted ammo carrier.  While I prefer loading from a belt mounted carrier, I do believe that working from a sidesaddle makes more sense as the ammo goes wherever the gun goes.  It is a much simpler equation to simply grab the shotgun and go than it does to take the extra steps of affixing belt carriers.

Personal note:  I strongly suggest using a sidesaddle that attaches by means other than the action pins.  These are often installed incorrectly, usually due to over or under tightening  of the pins, causing malfunctions.  I’ve also heard of the additional stress on the pins leading to their breaking.  I once had an issue to where the action wouldn’t lock, but everything looked fine. 

As to reloading techniques, we predominantly focused on those that would be used by the typical armed citizen or peace officer, but we did get to play around with a few of the competition oriented techniques, and Erik and Todd worked individually with any of the three gunners who wanted to work specifically on those techniques.

After the extensive reloading work, we shot slugs at 25 and 50 yards and practiced slug integration (slug exchange, select slug, etc) techniques as well as handgun transitions.  A note on the Big Dot sight is that using the top curving edge of the sight at distance makes getting hits at distance a more reliable prospect.

We wrapped up with a few fun-and-gun drills.

As for the 590A1, all in all it performed well.  I experienced no mechanical malfunctions.  The difference in the location of controls did get me a couple of times.  The guy shooting next to me commented on one such occasion,  “It looked like you got into your truck but somebody had moved the seat.”  As the day went on, it did begin to become less awkward.  It never quite got to the point where it pointed as naturally for me as does an 870.

A couple of things that I prefer about the 590 are the lack of a loading gate and the fact that the ejector can be replaced with a screwdriver rather than returning the firearm to the factory.  I will also grudgingly admit that location of the safety switch has some advantages.   If an identically equipped 870 and 590A1 were next to each other on a rack, and I had to grab one and go, I’d probably grab the 870, but after this class, I would feel comfortable picking up the 590A1.

“Under stress, you have got to have skill… Situational awareness is the single most important skill.” –Ken Hackathorn

Eighteen shooters turned out for a rainy Saturday and beautiful Sunday of shooting with one of the foremost instructors in the business. Participants came from at least three states, and the class was a mix of private citizens, federal agents, and the Sheriff of a Georgia county.

Ken Hackathorn 2014 – Tactical Handgun in Atlanta, Georgia

We began with a discussion of common elements found in self-defense incidents. That was followed by a discussion of current trends in the firearms industry and the firearms that he is most commonly seeing coming through his classes now.

We then moved on to the live fire portion of the class and did some basic shooting and assessment drills so that he could see where we all were as shooters. The drills were pass/fail drills shot against a standard. We shot these as a mix of individual competition and the entire class shooting the drills altogether. We also shot some pivot/turn drills as well as some reloading drills. After a supper break, we had a low light session.

Sunday was a full day of shooting. The focus was primarily on shooting while moving. Added to that was some strong-hand-only and support-hand-only work.

Of note, we shot some point shooting drills. One of these drills involved a lot of movement and with our sights taped over. We then shot the same drill using sights. The evolution in which the sights were used had better results. Imagine that; that little bumpy thing on the muzzle end is actually there for something…. might as well use it. (Note: that is a poke at people that say you don’t need your sights inside certain distances. It is not a poke at the drill or the instructor.)

As for what he was packing, Mr. Hackathorn was toting a Hackathorn Signature Series 1911 from Wilson Combat. There was quite a bit of friendly banter back and forth on this issue as he is an unabashed fan of the 1911 platform.

Ken Hackathorn 2014 – Tactical Handgun in Atlanta, Georgia

I enjoyed the opportunity to spend a couple of days with someone as venerated as Ken Hackathorn. I particularly enjoyed the back and forth banter and all of the historical insights.

Ken Hackathorn 2014 – Tactical Handgun in Atlanta, Georgia

And now for a bonus science lesson:

“Reactive shooting is shooting in the target’s time and not the shooter’s time.” –Bill Rogers

The Rogers Shooting School is one of the most prestigious shooting schools in the world. Some of the world’s most elite military and law enforcement units come there each year, and “The Test” is well known among the shooting community. I won’t go into a detailed explanation of The Test. Rather, click here to go to Todd Green’s site for an excellent break down and videos of each stage. A minimum passing score is 70 plates and earns a Basic rating. An Intermediate rating is earned by getting 90 or more plates, and an Advanced rating is earned by getting 110 plates. There are 125 total plates possible in The Test.

During my trip to Rogers, I was witness to a memorable event in shooting history. Now in its third decade of operation only two people had ever shot perfect scores on The Test. The founder, Bill Rogers, has done it twice, and the legendary Rob Leatham has done it once. In my class, two perfect 125s were shot. One was by Gabe White, and the other was by noted USPSA shooter Manny Bragg. If that wasn’t enough, Gabe White did it shooting from concealment.

I think the best way to describe Rogers is that it forces the shooter to maintain a strong mental focus. Any lapse leads to a cascading collapse of fundamentals and numerous steel plates taunting you as they drop out of sight.

Shooting my advanced run under the watchful eye of Gunsite’s Ken Campbell

I am happy to report that I earned an Advanced rating.

Participants in the class came from as far away as Alaska. We also had participants from Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Indiana, California and Florida. We had a full gamut of weather from short and t-shirt weather on Sunday evening followed by rain on Monday and Tuesday to freezing temperatures on Wednesday and a beautiful day on Thursday. We managed to finish on Friday before another round of rain hit.

“You don’t have time to miss.”

I could stop right there and sum up the essential lesson from the class, but that wouldn’t make for much of an adventure through the blogosphere.

Tom Givens of Rangemaster brought his Combative Pistol I class to my proverbial backyard. He was assisted by John Hearne, Jeremy Younger, and the lovely and gracious Mrs. Lynn Givens. There were 24 students in the class, including one who came all the way to Georgia from Pennsylvania only to be topped by another student who came all the way from New Mexico. The class was a mixture of private citizens and peace officers.

Due to logistics, we did all of the classroom work on the first morning of the class. The classroom portion consisted of a safety briefing followed by discussions of several real world incidents and the lessons learned from them. We then moved on to a discussion of basic techniques.

After lunch, we convoyed to the range and began the shooting portion of the class. We began with warm-ups and then moved into drills all designed around specific teaching points.

Day two consisted completely of shooting drills, and other than the initial warm-up, everything was shot from concealment.

Rather than going into the specifics of each and every drill, I’ll simply say that each drill had a specific purpose, they built upon one another, and they gave the students a structured way to practice in their own range sessions. We also shot several scored tests to assess our skills and our progression, and there were several drills where we shot on our own against the clock with everyone watching to kick up the stress factor.

Now I can move to the most important part of the class review:

The firearms training community is full of devotees to schools of thought who are not bashful about espousing their particular chosen sacred cow and then dogmatically defending it. Tom did a very good job of explaining why he teaches what he teaches, and he also explained many of the other schools of thought often including their origins and how they have been misinterpreted over the years. The focus was on efficiency and precision rather than such things as a Weaver versus Isosceles or  caliber debates. The pace was quick with students either shooting or loading magazines with no downtime other than a few short breaks, and the discussions were all brief and on point with the lesson at hand.

I’ve been in a lot of classrooms over the years between my academic pursuits and professional training, and Tom is absolutely one of the top teachers I have experienced. His lessons are more than proven. Over 60 of his students have successfully defended themselves in violent encounters. The very, very few that have lost failed to have a firearm with them when they needed it.

Below are my results on two of the tests:

Recently, I had the opportunity to take Erik Lund’s Dynamic Fighting Rifle class. I met Erik several years ago as a fellow student at an IALEFI Master Instructor Development Program and was happy to get the chance to take a class from him. For those not familiar with his background, the brief overview is that he has been a peace officer for over 20 years, is a USPSA Grand Master, and shoots on the FNH USA Professional Shooting Team, and he has numerous championships to his credit.

The students for the class represented four agencies in Georgia, and most were either firearms instructors, members of a tactical team, or both; so, after the introductions and safety briefing, we jumped right into the material. The class had a high shooting to discussion ratio, and was fast paced with around 700 rifle rounds fired per shooter plus some pistol work, and if we weren’t shooting, we were loading mags. It was a full day of training, and I don’t think any student left with the feeling that they didn’t get their money’s worth. We did a lot shooting while moving and from unconventional positions as well as some optics failure drills (no biggie for me as I was running iron sights exclusively).

The shooting community is not autonomous. There are those who only believe in the validity of “tactical” training, and often those of this ilk shun the competitive shooting world; usually with a “competition will get you killed” thrown in for good measure. The competitive shooting side of equation is not replete with spotless lambs as too many of them want to use punching holes in paper after a stage brief and a walkthrough as the exclusive measure of one’s ability with a firearm when, to be perfectly blunt, they have never had to go through a door with a true life or death shooting problem, to include a shoot/no shoot decision, waiting for them on the other side. These are broad generalizations to a certain extent, but they are illustrative of diametric mindsets that too often prevent the lessons learned from one being applied to the other.

Erik is one of the few out there that can successfully walk through both worlds with equal credibility. Frank Proctor of Way of the Gun is another such person. With the above in mind, Erik addressed the debate by saying that competition processes can be applied to tactical applications. In other words, the things learned about techniques and equipment from the competition world (processes) can be applied by those who must use tactics. A gunfight is solving a tactical problem at speed. That is not saying that you learn tactics in competition; rather, it is saying that you can combine the lessons of how do the important things faster in combination with sound tactics.

Among the so called tactical crowd, there is a debate over accuracy versus speed. This debate actually is in part based upon wound ballistics theory. I have been in some classes where the instructors made a case for intentionally spreading the wounds around the torso to create as many wound channels as possible. I have also been subjected to the notion (an absurd notion in my opinion) that if you are shooting a tight group that you aren’t shooting fast enough and that you are worrying too much about accuracy. Erik’s philosophy is that “accuracy is damage at speed “and that “damage is damage is damage”; however, he was clear in that the bad guy just might not present his entire torso to you and he might not give you a lot of time to aim; so, you better be able to make tight shots and do it in a hurry.

Paired with the debate about speed, the tactical side of the house debates over when confronted with a threat whether or not a shooter breaking for cover should concentrate on making it to cover or should they shoot at the threat while moving. Erik is definitely a proponent of putting shots on the threat. An illustration of this is included in the accompanying video.

Erik is also not a fan of the “shoot two and assess” model. He says that too often people want to run a rifle like it is a pistol and equates this to driving a race car at 55 MPH. He stresses driving the rifle hard and to keep hammering the threat until it is no longer a threat. Again, accuracy is damage at speed and damage is damage is damage. Unless a drill had a specified number of rounds for a specific training purpose, we were expected to shoot between two and six round on every fire command with the caveat that we could not fire the same number of rounds twice in a row.

Erik does not treat the pistol as if it is a secondary weapon. He refers to it as a complimentary weapon. He says there are times when it may be advantageous to go to the pistol instead of the rifle if in a very tight space or other such similar situations. We did do some work on transitioning to pistol and at any time a shooter experienced a malfunction and ran out of ammo during a drill they were expected to transition to their pistol in order to complete the drill. He did expect us to be doing tactical reloads to keep our rifles fully stoked so as not to be running dry.

In conclusion, this was an excellent class. If you get the opportunity to train with Erik you should take it. You will most certainly get a high return for your training dollar and your ammo expenditure. For all of you instructors out there, you will also come away as a better instructor as you will pick up a lot of teaching points that are readily adaptable to other platforms.

Recently, I had the opportunity to complete the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI) Master Instructor Development Program. This course was sponsored by the Georgia Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (GALEFI) and was held at the Clatyon County Police Department range. All participants in the class are currently firearms instructors, and true to IALEFI being an international organization, there were a several participants who teach outside of the continental United States.

The program is a 24 hour workshop with eight hours devoted to pistol, rifle, and shotgun respectively, and the rifle and shotgun portions included some transition to handgun drills. Most of the drills were conducted on a par time standard, and there were quite a few drills run on a competitive basis.

One of the participants in the course was Erik Lund, a USPSA Grand Master. Erik was a good sport in the face of friendly but merciless harassment for the duration of the course. Erik was also nice enough to let an out of shape Chief Deputy type sneak up and beat him on a drill (sorry Erik, you know I had to include that 🙂 ). The drill is called “The Crucible”. It consists of a pistol loaded with two rounds with a reload magazine with four rounds. At the start signal, the shooter draws and engages the IALEFI-Q target with two rounds to the head, performs an emergency reload followed by four shots to the body all from a distance of five yards. Erik’s time was a 4.92, and mine was a 4.87 for a whopping .05 second win. He turned it up after that, and I didn’t beat him again, but I do now claim the title of “the guy that shot next to Erik Lund”. This was the first drill that we shot on the pistol day. We shot it again at the end of the day. He got his score down in the 3.3 seconds range. My time on the second run was a 3.89 seconds, but one of my shots was an eighth of inch outside of the circle for the head shots.

While we did some accuracy work, most of the pistol drills were focused on speed based on the adage that most law enforcement shootings consist of three to five rounds fired at three to five feet in a time frame of three to five seconds. Some of these drills consisted of one shot and two shot draws at five yards on the clock. The par time standard for a one shot draw was 1.25 seconds, with my time being .89 seconds, and the par time for a two shot draw was 1.75 seconds with my time being a 1.14 seconds. Other drills consisted of shooting on the move and one handed shooting.

In the rifle portion of the class, we began by checking to make sure our rifles were zeroed properly. We then worked through a series of drills involving one-handed manipulation, multiple targets, grounded weapon, support side shooting, and shooting on the move. We did weapon transition drills in which dummy rounds were randomly loaded into our magazines. As we proceeded through the drills, anytime we got a failure to fire due to our rifle feeding a dummy round, we transitioned to our pistols to complete that drill.

For decades, the shotgun was the prevalent shoulder weapon available to peace officers. Traditionally it consisted of a pump action shotgun with a cylinder bore barrel and buckshot and maybe slugs. In recent years, the patrol rifle has supplanted the shotgun, but the shotgun still has a place due to its versatility. In addition to buckshot and slugs, the shotgun is also capable of delivering a wide range of less-lethal munitions.

Our drills with the shotgun also mostly revolved around speed, but we also concentrated on some one-handed manipulation and transition to handgun drills. One drill that we did on the clock involved five steel targets. We were loaded with four rounds in the magazine and had to put one shot on each target with the fifth round being a combat load. My time on this was 3.88 seconds shooting a Remington 870P. This was topped buy another participant who was also shooting an 870P. He broke the 3.0 second barrier, and the aforementioned Erik Lund did it in 2.5 seconds shooting a Benelli semi-auto.

We finished up with an extremely fun drill called Rolling Thunder. We formed teams of five shooters. Each shooter started with a loaded pistol and one round in their shotgun. On start signal, the first shooter fired their shotgun round, then it went down the line. After each shooter fired their shot, they combat loaded two rounds. When the fifth shooter fired, they gave a “clear” command and it started over with each shooter firing their two shotgun rounds. This continued all the way through the combat loading of five rounds, and on the final relay each shooter combat loaded one round and when their turn came they fired their shotgun round and transitioned to their pistol for one round.

All in all this was a very good experience. Some of the material was dated, but the friendly competitiveness on the firing lane more than made up for it. The shooter that you were competing against one moment was legitimately trying to help you improve the next. The professional connections made were invaluable. I already have commitments from several of the other instructor for some training for the Sheriff’s Office, and I brought back quite a few ideas to improve our own in-house training.