I took Brian's class this last weekend with my teenage son and I really enjoyed and valued it. It was a three day class that started on Friday, but Brian accommodated my son and I and another father/son pair that with a day earlier this month so that the kids didn't miss school. That day covered the classroom ballistics and theory. The Saturday was spent on 22lr rifles in the morning and zero and chrono while prone work out to 1000 yards on centerfire guns. Sunday started out reviewing the prone work out to 1000 and then onto 4 level gate, spools and other support with targets from 200-600y.
The 22 and centerfire zeroing were on the 200 yrd range and wind wasn't really an issue. That afternoon on the KD1000y range we had 10-20mph. Sunday it as gusting above 20. We were behind a tree break which made reading the wind downrange important.
Brian has a great teaching style that gets you thinking with out feeling stupid. A great skill he has is to spot for you and tweak your position, some shooting fundamentals, watch the misses and walk you onto some hits on target. And then have a discussion and pointers about how to improve. A great feedback loop.
I'll write later about the specifics but in general I was really happy with the class. I don't think that Brian sells it this way, but there were three father/teen-age-son pairs in the class. It was a great first class for my son to unlearn all the bad stuff that I taught, or didn't teach right. I didn't have a centerfire rifle specifically for my son, so we borrowed some guns from Brian. A JP 224V the first day and a 223AI bolt gun the second day to get a feel for both. Of course, the boy wants both.... Brian is great with new shooters, and while I've worked a lot with my son on basics and mechanics, we really haven't gone over ballistics theory and application- mainly I'm not good at it. Brian got us both really tuned up on wind and ballistics. The use of the Kestrels for shooting data was really interesting and something that was new to me. Pairing that with reading wind- and having 10-25mph winds to play with- it was a real education.
The best thing is that Brian can tailor the class and the interaction with you based on your skill level- and what is ailing your shooting. That and he is a great guy.
