As I sit here writing this AAR, I think of other classes I’ve had and the post-class glow we get when we complete a course where we are better from it. I can say that this is certainly the case here as well. The RO PR1-2 combo course is worth every penny if you are serious about becoming a better rifleman.
The class was Monday-Saturday. I drove down on Sunday and stayed in the team-room. Met up with some guys who were there already. Some more guys showed up as the evening went on and some came in on Monday morning. The class started at 0830 and finished up around 1700 every day, cept Sat.
The class itself was great! If you take an honest approach, then you can use what you learn to get a good true representation of where you are with a precision rifle and determine what you need to work on. We started in the classroom with a safety briefing. Once that was complete, we were on the 100yd range for a 5 shot eval. I shot like crap for the eval. Dunno why, but my fundamentals were all off. Once complete we were back in the classroom for the rest of the morning till Lunch. We went over the fundamentals of marksmanship, trigger school, body position, scope adjustments, pre and post-shot checklists, range estimation methods, short class on wind and some external ballistics lecture. It was quick and well presented.
That was the last time we were in the classroom till graduation. Every other lecture or training cycle was on the range. We spent the afternoon working on our fundamentals and zero’s. There was some working out issues with rifles and leveling scopes and such. The instructors would shoot the rifles if there was any question about issues.
The rest of the week we would check our zero’s in the morning, then move onto other drills. The 20 round 1” dot drill was and is humbling if any part of your fundamentals are off. This is where you shoot one round per dot. I’m going to focus in on this drill for the next 3 months of rifle shooting till I can get it down. We would single load and put the ammo behind us to we’d have to get up and re-create our position each time. This is where it was apparent that I should have been shooting a bolt gun as my gas gun skills are weak. But as they say, fundamentals are fundamentals so it was certainly the nut behind the rifle. We then shifted to our left side and shot a 2” dot. Then onto the 1” dot drill from the left side.
We moved onto positional shooting using a sling and the barricades. I liked using the rear bag on the folded bipod a lot for some of the positional and barricade shots. The 550 support cord was great and I’m going to add it to my rifle for stability on awkward support. We shot from both the right and left sides throughout the course, except for prone on the tower.
Throughout the week, we did 100yd movers (hard), 100yd movers kneeling with a 550 cord support on the barricades, positional shooting at 100yds, movers at 400, 500 and 600. We went to the tower and got our dope out to 1K.
We determined our hold overs and hold unders for the Chaos drill. We dialed our 400yd dope and engaged 5 targets. The 1st one was a 400yd steel mover, then ~230yd tiny steel using a hold under, then a ~330yd tiny steel again using hold under. The 4th target was a ~620yd Larue, then back to the mover for the 5th shot. On the last day this was one of the competition drills and was shot in 60 secs.
We did unknown distance on the tower, then moved into the field and did UKD from the berms. The wind was howling and the Schmage was a godsend during these conditions.
Movers. We did 100yd movers first on 5in dots. This was hard since the ~ 2-3mph target moves pretty fast at 100yds. We learned what our lead should be by measuring our shots with our reticles. Then we could apply that during a couple of runs. The semi-auto’s allowed for a larger volume of fire, but some my shots were out of the dot so I’m not sure that is that big of an advantage. We moved back to 500 prone on a steel mover. Then back to 600 with a smaller steel mover. We also did a 100yd barricade 550 cord supported head mover (only the head was shown, head on a stick) with a paper backing to show the hits after we were done. One of my primary reasons for coming to the class was to shoot movers and I got my fill, and whetted my appetite for more movers. I need to figure out a mover setup for one of the bays at BOTW maybe, or maybe a .22 mover setup for out there.
The Mousetrap was a wooden structure in front of a separate ~100yd range with a moving target. We shot it with the target static at first, then moving. The Mousetrap made you crawl into awkward positions and made you shoot from both sides. This was a great drill, especially when the target was moving.
Favorite Drills: Chaos, Movers at 500 and 600, Mousetrap.
You walk everywhere with your gear and rifle. A backpack for your gear and sling for the rifle are a must. We did everything muzzle down except when on the top deck of the tower where there was the other half of the class on the 1st level. Its ~ 400 yds to the tower from the classroom. Not a lot of walking overall, but be prepared to hump your gear around.
I am very pleased with the quality of instruction, atmosphere, volume I learned and believe I received more than what I paid in value. I will probably do this course again with a bolt-gun.
Bolt vs. Gas Precision rifles: The instructors feel that it is a better idea to come to these classes with a good bolt-gun preferably mag fed, but not necessary. Movers are where a detachable mag makes a big difference. The reason for bringing a bolt gun is that it is easier to learn the fundamentals due to the single recoil impulse. They talked about the needing of ~ 9000 repetitions to correctly build the neuro pathways to really learn a task. If you start with a simpler to learn rifle (bolt), then it is easier to learn and then transition later if needed. I have to agree after running a gas gun through this course. I should have run a bolt-gun and will when I take this course again. Once I get my fundamentals back in check, I can work on the gas gun again. If you can already run a bolt-gun to a high standard, then I think the ease of follow-up shots and firepower of a gas gun trumps the bolt in all but 900yd+ shooting.
My total Round Count: 557
Notes
• DPMS 308 rifle ran just as well as the OBR (Marine Sgt. running the DPMS) and held sub MOA.
• 15 year old with a PSS in an AICS chassis and NF F1 beat all of us on the last day competition. He cleaned his 100yd mover. That was the first time that has happened since they have been running that drill.
• I had issues with sympathetic squeeze / preshot relaxation during the 1st few days. My dot drills showed this and once I realized it, they pulled in some. Still need more work on this.
• Dot drills work in showing issues with your NPA and trigger manipulation.
• Chaos drill rocks
• Movers rock
• If you jerk the trigger or have other fundamental brain-farts, you owe the staff an 18 pack of warm Corona. You can find this at HEB…
Equipment list:
• OBR with AAC 762SD Suppressor, Nightforce F1 3.5x15 MLR
o 2x Larue Mags
o 3x PMags
• 40x in McMillan A4 stock, Vortex FFP 4-16x50 MRAD
o X3 AI Mags
• Eberlestock GS2 backpack
• 680 Rounds. Reloads, new LC Match 93 Brass. RL15, 175SMK, Fed 210M.
• TAB gear slings on both.
• TAB gear rear bag. Refilled with less compressible fill.
• TAB gear shooting mat.
• Nalgene bottles for water.
• Oakley glasses.
• Lowe boots
• Long sleeve t-shirts
• Combat shirts. Worked well, had some extra elbow material.
• Schmage +100! If you go, you need to bring this…
• Peltor Ear-Pro.
• TW-25B lube worked like a charm.
Equipment Issues
• 40x bolt handle broke at the end of day 5. This was a new handle that was silver-soldered on last year.
• Extractor or ejector on 40x wouldn’t work all the time. We saw this on other Rem 700s. This is why there is a mod to the 700 bolt to increase the reliability of the extraction/ejection.
• Bolt catch spring in OBR failed or was fouled. Didn’t impact the functioning of the rifle during the course.
• Suppressor cover slipped forward, even after being tied. This was my fault as I slipped it fwd when I thought it was touching the barrel. No impact to the course.
• Other student’s LWRC 308 Piston rifle wouldn’t hold better than ~ 3 MOA with the instructor shooting. He borrowed my 40x for the course (and broke off the bolt handle 
.
• Butler-creek scope caps on OBR/NF failed. Both the front and back broke at the hinge. This maybe me, or a combo of putting the rifle in the Eberlestock pack repeatedly. This is the 2nd set I’ve broke on the OBR.
Team Room notes
• Barracks style living. The beds are comfortable and water is hot.
• Bring a cooler for beer. The fridge fills up fast.
• Frozen food seemed to work well. Eggs and breads for b-fast or frozen Jimmy Dean sandwiches.
• There was a Bunn single serve coffee brewer that worked well. (http://www.bunnathome.com/products/single-serve/my-cafe-home-pod-brewer) you could get the little packs at HEB in town.
• Get gal or 2.5 gal water from HEB in Kingsville.
• Bedding is provided and a washer and dryer are outside. Could have brought less clothing and just washed at night.
• Charcoal grill available. We ended up going into town for dinner every night.
• Showers are mostly private, bring shower shoes. There was plenty of hot water.
Equipment lessons learned / Equip Next steps
• Accuracy International rifles work (as they should for the price).
• I’m going to sell some rifles and gear to get a 24” AI AE in 308. There is a reason these work…
• May stay with Nightforce F1 on the AI AE. Or may go to Premier. Out of 16 students: ~10 had NF, 2 Premier, 2 S&B and 2 Vortex. No known scope issues on any of these during the course.
• Staying with reloading. My loading technique and combination worked well.
• Shot a lot of the static without eyepro. Seemed to work better.
The class was Monday-Saturday. I drove down on Sunday and stayed in the team-room. Met up with some guys who were there already. Some more guys showed up as the evening went on and some came in on Monday morning. The class started at 0830 and finished up around 1700 every day, cept Sat.
The class itself was great! If you take an honest approach, then you can use what you learn to get a good true representation of where you are with a precision rifle and determine what you need to work on. We started in the classroom with a safety briefing. Once that was complete, we were on the 100yd range for a 5 shot eval. I shot like crap for the eval. Dunno why, but my fundamentals were all off. Once complete we were back in the classroom for the rest of the morning till Lunch. We went over the fundamentals of marksmanship, trigger school, body position, scope adjustments, pre and post-shot checklists, range estimation methods, short class on wind and some external ballistics lecture. It was quick and well presented.
That was the last time we were in the classroom till graduation. Every other lecture or training cycle was on the range. We spent the afternoon working on our fundamentals and zero’s. There was some working out issues with rifles and leveling scopes and such. The instructors would shoot the rifles if there was any question about issues.
The rest of the week we would check our zero’s in the morning, then move onto other drills. The 20 round 1” dot drill was and is humbling if any part of your fundamentals are off. This is where you shoot one round per dot. I’m going to focus in on this drill for the next 3 months of rifle shooting till I can get it down. We would single load and put the ammo behind us to we’d have to get up and re-create our position each time. This is where it was apparent that I should have been shooting a bolt gun as my gas gun skills are weak. But as they say, fundamentals are fundamentals so it was certainly the nut behind the rifle. We then shifted to our left side and shot a 2” dot. Then onto the 1” dot drill from the left side.
We moved onto positional shooting using a sling and the barricades. I liked using the rear bag on the folded bipod a lot for some of the positional and barricade shots. The 550 support cord was great and I’m going to add it to my rifle for stability on awkward support. We shot from both the right and left sides throughout the course, except for prone on the tower.
Throughout the week, we did 100yd movers (hard), 100yd movers kneeling with a 550 cord support on the barricades, positional shooting at 100yds, movers at 400, 500 and 600. We went to the tower and got our dope out to 1K.
We determined our hold overs and hold unders for the Chaos drill. We dialed our 400yd dope and engaged 5 targets. The 1st one was a 400yd steel mover, then ~230yd tiny steel using a hold under, then a ~330yd tiny steel again using hold under. The 4th target was a ~620yd Larue, then back to the mover for the 5th shot. On the last day this was one of the competition drills and was shot in 60 secs.
We did unknown distance on the tower, then moved into the field and did UKD from the berms. The wind was howling and the Schmage was a godsend during these conditions.
Movers. We did 100yd movers first on 5in dots. This was hard since the ~ 2-3mph target moves pretty fast at 100yds. We learned what our lead should be by measuring our shots with our reticles. Then we could apply that during a couple of runs. The semi-auto’s allowed for a larger volume of fire, but some my shots were out of the dot so I’m not sure that is that big of an advantage. We moved back to 500 prone on a steel mover. Then back to 600 with a smaller steel mover. We also did a 100yd barricade 550 cord supported head mover (only the head was shown, head on a stick) with a paper backing to show the hits after we were done. One of my primary reasons for coming to the class was to shoot movers and I got my fill, and whetted my appetite for more movers. I need to figure out a mover setup for one of the bays at BOTW maybe, or maybe a .22 mover setup for out there.
The Mousetrap was a wooden structure in front of a separate ~100yd range with a moving target. We shot it with the target static at first, then moving. The Mousetrap made you crawl into awkward positions and made you shoot from both sides. This was a great drill, especially when the target was moving.
Favorite Drills: Chaos, Movers at 500 and 600, Mousetrap.
You walk everywhere with your gear and rifle. A backpack for your gear and sling for the rifle are a must. We did everything muzzle down except when on the top deck of the tower where there was the other half of the class on the 1st level. Its ~ 400 yds to the tower from the classroom. Not a lot of walking overall, but be prepared to hump your gear around.
I am very pleased with the quality of instruction, atmosphere, volume I learned and believe I received more than what I paid in value. I will probably do this course again with a bolt-gun.
Bolt vs. Gas Precision rifles: The instructors feel that it is a better idea to come to these classes with a good bolt-gun preferably mag fed, but not necessary. Movers are where a detachable mag makes a big difference. The reason for bringing a bolt gun is that it is easier to learn the fundamentals due to the single recoil impulse. They talked about the needing of ~ 9000 repetitions to correctly build the neuro pathways to really learn a task. If you start with a simpler to learn rifle (bolt), then it is easier to learn and then transition later if needed. I have to agree after running a gas gun through this course. I should have run a bolt-gun and will when I take this course again. Once I get my fundamentals back in check, I can work on the gas gun again. If you can already run a bolt-gun to a high standard, then I think the ease of follow-up shots and firepower of a gas gun trumps the bolt in all but 900yd+ shooting.
My total Round Count: 557
Notes
• DPMS 308 rifle ran just as well as the OBR (Marine Sgt. running the DPMS) and held sub MOA.
• 15 year old with a PSS in an AICS chassis and NF F1 beat all of us on the last day competition. He cleaned his 100yd mover. That was the first time that has happened since they have been running that drill.
• I had issues with sympathetic squeeze / preshot relaxation during the 1st few days. My dot drills showed this and once I realized it, they pulled in some. Still need more work on this.
• Dot drills work in showing issues with your NPA and trigger manipulation.
• Chaos drill rocks
• Movers rock
• If you jerk the trigger or have other fundamental brain-farts, you owe the staff an 18 pack of warm Corona. You can find this at HEB…
Equipment list:
• OBR with AAC 762SD Suppressor, Nightforce F1 3.5x15 MLR
o 2x Larue Mags
o 3x PMags
• 40x in McMillan A4 stock, Vortex FFP 4-16x50 MRAD
o X3 AI Mags
• Eberlestock GS2 backpack
• 680 Rounds. Reloads, new LC Match 93 Brass. RL15, 175SMK, Fed 210M.
• TAB gear slings on both.
• TAB gear rear bag. Refilled with less compressible fill.
• TAB gear shooting mat.
• Nalgene bottles for water.
• Oakley glasses.
• Lowe boots
• Long sleeve t-shirts
• Combat shirts. Worked well, had some extra elbow material.
• Schmage +100! If you go, you need to bring this…
• Peltor Ear-Pro.
• TW-25B lube worked like a charm.
Equipment Issues
• 40x bolt handle broke at the end of day 5. This was a new handle that was silver-soldered on last year.
• Extractor or ejector on 40x wouldn’t work all the time. We saw this on other Rem 700s. This is why there is a mod to the 700 bolt to increase the reliability of the extraction/ejection.
• Bolt catch spring in OBR failed or was fouled. Didn’t impact the functioning of the rifle during the course.
• Suppressor cover slipped forward, even after being tied. This was my fault as I slipped it fwd when I thought it was touching the barrel. No impact to the course.
• Other student’s LWRC 308 Piston rifle wouldn’t hold better than ~ 3 MOA with the instructor shooting. He borrowed my 40x for the course (and broke off the bolt handle 
. • Butler-creek scope caps on OBR/NF failed. Both the front and back broke at the hinge. This maybe me, or a combo of putting the rifle in the Eberlestock pack repeatedly. This is the 2nd set I’ve broke on the OBR.
Team Room notes
• Barracks style living. The beds are comfortable and water is hot.
• Bring a cooler for beer. The fridge fills up fast.
• Frozen food seemed to work well. Eggs and breads for b-fast or frozen Jimmy Dean sandwiches.
• There was a Bunn single serve coffee brewer that worked well. (http://www.bunnathome.com/products/single-serve/my-cafe-home-pod-brewer) you could get the little packs at HEB in town.
• Get gal or 2.5 gal water from HEB in Kingsville.
• Bedding is provided and a washer and dryer are outside. Could have brought less clothing and just washed at night.
• Charcoal grill available. We ended up going into town for dinner every night.
• Showers are mostly private, bring shower shoes. There was plenty of hot water.
Equipment lessons learned / Equip Next steps
• Accuracy International rifles work (as they should for the price).
• I’m going to sell some rifles and gear to get a 24” AI AE in 308. There is a reason these work…
• May stay with Nightforce F1 on the AI AE. Or may go to Premier. Out of 16 students: ~10 had NF, 2 Premier, 2 S&B and 2 Vortex. No known scope issues on any of these during the course.
• Staying with reloading. My loading technique and combination worked well.
• Shot a lot of the static without eyepro. Seemed to work better.
