Precision Rifle / Police Sniper Training

[Graham Smith]

Precision Rifle / Police Sniper Training

Practical Firearms Training, WV

www.pgpft.com

1 – 3 Oct 2010

Instructor: Pat Goodale

Assistant: Rob Taggert

After taking several pistol courses here in past years, I decided to take a tactical rifle courses here last spring which went extremely well. While there we did some shooting out to 250yds and I asked Pat just how far it was practical to push at AR. He said that they shoot ¼ scale steel targets at 600yds at a nearby quarry as part of a Precision Rifle course. If I wanted to see just what I could do, come back for the class in the fall.

PFT is a regional training facility for the police, military, and FBI so they are able to cater to a pretty varied set of requirements. The October class had three civilians, two military contractors, two members of the local county Sherriff's Emergency Response Team and two members of the WV State Police Special Operations team. The three days kind of blurs together in my memory but here is a review of what we did.

The first half of day one (Friday) was spent in the classroom reviewing the basics of precision shooting and both internal and external ballistics. After lunch, everyone went to the line to warm up shooting at 25, 50, and 100yds and verified and adjusted zero as needed. After that we fired across a chronograph and Rob printed out a range chart for each person based on their particular round for that elevation and weather. The rest of the day was spent shooting from a variety of positions at targets ranging from 100 to 150 yds.

I was the only person with an AR, everyone else had a bolt action and I found that putting a 4-12x scope on a 3 Gun rifle was not the best choice for this course. Finding a prone position where I could keep a consistent cheek weld with a scope that was 2.5" over the bore proved very tough indeed. But Rob spent some time with me and I found a position for my body and bipod which seemed to work.

The first hour on Saturday was back to the classroom for more on ballistics and a session on range estimation then it was out to the range for some serious shooting. The hill behind the range had various targets set up from 100 to 225yds with the largest being about 4 inches and the smallest being tangerines on the top of sticks. One particularly taxing drill we did that day involved having a buddy beside you with a piece of cardboard. You put your sights on a clay target at 150yds and on the word go, you had a count of five to take off the safety and hit the clay with one shot. After the 5 seconds, the cardboard came down in front of your sight. If you missed, then the next try was 4 seconds. Once you got the clay target, then you went for the tangerine. I found that trying to take the safety off an AR without disturbing the sight picture was particularly difficult.

The last shooting exercise for the day was a "Sniper Qualification Test" (I think that's the correct name) used by the FBI. Passing this was mandatory for the police in order to get a pass for the course.

Near the end of the day Saturday, we drove to a nearby (closed) limestone quarry that was going to be used for shooting the next day. There were 200yd targets set up and we spent some time verifying 200yd groups. While there, we spent some time trying to guess the distances to various objects in one of the pits. Having nothing to use for size made mil-dots useless and we could not use any mechanical range finders. Some people did well, some not so well, but we were often able to get close enough to the right range that we could have made the shot.

Sunday morning dawned overcast and cold. We once again started in the classroom and finished up the ballistics discussions focused on angle and wind compensation. Then it was back out to the range to shoot from behind barricades, cars, and at moving targets. I actually had better luck in positions other than prone and actually found that my lighter rifle combined with the tactical rifle training I got earlier in the year gave me an edge on some things.

After lunch, we went back to the quarry and set up positions on a cliff overlooking a pit. Targets were at 300, 400, 500, and 600yds. With each set of standard USPSA targets was a ¼ scale steel target. After shooters fired 5 shot groups, Rob came out from behind cover and radioed the hits up to us using a target grid that divided the targets into 12 squares. This allowed us to adjust our scopes. After around three rounds of shooting at a distance, we switched to the steel. We all sighted on it and Pat came around behind us and tapped each person on the foot, which was the signal to fire. I found out how hard it is to hold completely steady on a target while waiting on the command to fire.

We finished the day with Pat telling each person what steel to hit on command. By then, we were all tired but were quickly changing our scopes and hitting the steel on demand.

Many thanks to Pat and Rob for a great weekend of training.

Edited to add: Pictures are now up on Facebook

Edited October 5, 2010 by Graham Smith