Thoughts on precision and long range rifle training for perspective students
From an instructor’s point of view we get civilian students for short periods of time usually 2-3 days. Taking students through a beginner/intermediate course in this limited time, one can only concentrate and cover certain topics well. Firearms safety, range safety and marksmanship fundamentals should be benchmark goals in a beginner course.
From a civilian students point of view, look for schools and instructors that have a good reputation. There are many quality schools out there. A sign of good instructor cadre is the ability to instruct any topic several different ways. If a student is not understanding let’s say… “Natural point of aim”, can your instructor see or care the student is not understanding and try teaching the topic from a different style or format? If an instructor is a one trick pony just parroting what was in his last instruction, or reads civilians FM manual material, you may be in the wrong place?
Once you start looking for higher marksmanship skills training, again class duration can limit what is covered and practiced well. Look for limited topic/specific or “workshop” courses. What is many times over looked in advanced training is constantly explaining and reminding proper applications of the fundamentals of marksmanship into it. Learning you may not get ALL the fundamentals in a specific course of fire or shot, learn how to use the ones you can get and drive on best you can. To many times fundamentals are left in the dust past a basic course. Induce shooter stress and fundamentals tend to circle the drain, from an instructor standpoint fun to watch but needs to be properly taught for students to overcome.
Anyone looking for advanced topic courses, go look for the proper venue for the specific training. Are you going to go to the school only held on a square 1000 yard range for Unknown distance training? I would look elsewhere. If you are looking for competition training, look for the venues and schools located where they run competitions. Look for training that teaches competitions are as much about your critical thinking as proper trigger press.
Look at a course duration vs curriculum, if it is packed with too many topics ask how can these be covered well. Starting out with firearms safety and ending with low light/night shoots on day one. Sounds cool but are you getting quality training or 2 days of fun range time? Ask what are the target packages in training? Are they carnival shoot type targets or well thought out training drill targets.
Here at Long Gun Training we sell a training experience and have expectations of our students to acquire course specific skill levels. Our students expect us to provide training that achieves this. We also tell our students to search out and seek training from others. We do offer names of other schools we hold in high regard. Will not list these here as to not insight a bovine fecal matter storm.
