AAR: Basic Tactical Rifle: Green Eye Tactical: Whitewright, TX (1 Hour North of Dallas): April 11-12

Synopsis (from website):  

The Basic Tactical Rifle Course is a 2-day event focusing on the use and application of Tactical Rifle from various shooting positions. ?This is an entry-level course that will focus on Safety and Fundamentals.?The Basic Tactical Rifle Course is designed for the beginning shooter or the Advanced shooter who wants to establish a solid base of fundamentals. Attendees should already understand basic maintenance and operation of their tactical rifle. The shooter will be trained on standard tactical positions and tactical operation of their weapon. ?Basic Rifle Marksmanship is the fundamental core that establishes the effectiveness of the shooter to be able to place shots, with surgical accuracy, in complex scenarios. This makes fundamentals training essential in special operations units, to ensure that operators have a solid base of skills to fall back on in a combat shooting situation.

Range: Mission 160

An excellent setup with 3 shooting berms. This range is meticulously kept. It looks to be designed for IDPA type scenarios, so we were behind the firing line of 25yds to the berms (up to 300 yards), but given the traffic and open communication with all parties that used the range, things ran safely and smoothly.

Review:

Student: For a sense of perspective, my experience is about 2 years in shooting. This was my first class for carbine. My previous knowledge has been acquired via YouTube videos and reading on topics in forums, I have a desk job and two young kids, it’s all I got. I’m a noob to the whole scene.

Class Size: We started with 5 shooters, all of fair experience, and ended with 4 as one person had to bow out the second day due to equipment issues.

Instructor:  Eric’s a cool dude. He’s down to earth, approachable, and genuinely interested in making sure that the skill sets necessary to progress to a better shooter are attained. Every question asked was answered thoroughly and with no ooorah. His background is SFOD-Delta so he does speak with authority on the subjects at hand. His mantra is “There Is No Easy Button,” this is reiterated often. Unfortunately, he isn’t going to sprinkle Tier 1 magic dust and all of a sudden your blasting 3” groups on the run after a somersault from 300 yards. I was disappointed by this and it is my one complaint. You gotta crawl before you can walk. Be prepared for some light ribbing if you show up with super tactical mall ninja gear, of which, admittedly, I was guilty of a couple items. Hey, what do I know, Mongo just pawn in cruel game of life. This kept things light and jovial at times, helping to give some mental breaks in between reps.

Day 1:

Day one begins with a Safety Brief, how the range will work, and a layout of the day. We then moved on to how to inspect the rifle before loading and making sure it was in its proper condition.

Next, Eric went over zeroing procedures using a bore laser site to achieve a parallel zero. Utilizing a grid at 10ft, a laser bore site, and the verified height over bore measurements, we sited in our optics.

We then went to chronograph each rifle. 10 round strings to get max/min, avgerage and standard deviation. This was a good indicator on quality of the ammo and what ammo was in mil spec tolerance, the goal was 22fps variance for acceptability, if I remember correctly.

We then went to the dry erase board, with the new found data, the kestrel, and Applied ballistics calculator to determine each individual’s zero for their appropriate range. This involved marrying the data of the chronographed ammo with height over bore to the desired effective range distance in order to determine your particular zero. Eric touched on topics as to acceptable height over POA travel (what your max upward trajectory acceptability level should be based on his real world experience) coupled with what your effective range expectations need to be. For Example, my rifle zero was based on a 300 yard effective range, a travel over point of aim (POA) of only 3” and a drop of 5” below POA  at max effective range. This made the flight path of the round as flat as possible and required that I zero my rifle at 39 yards. We then evaluated at what range those points occurred, so for instance my round achieved POA/POI at 39 Yards, continued its “upward” trajectory over POA to 150 yards, began its decent back to POA/POI at 245yds and -5.21” at 300 yard. I thought this invaluable, especially as everyone was using red dot sites, either EoTech or Aimpoint.

Sighting in. Eric went over Natural Point of Aim. In fact, Natural Point of Aim was the fundamental point of emphasis the entire two days. He explained how to set up behind the rifle, how to determine natural point of aim, how the breathing cycle is incorporated, and how to build up yourself physically and mentally to arrive at a time where breaking the shot is appropriate.

Utilizing this info, we dry fired a couple of times until we were comfortable and then did a 5 round group at targets lasered to what our desired zero needed to be - they ranged from 39yds, 45yds, 48yds, and 50yds. We ended up doing 5 groups and tweaked optics once consistency was found based on those groups.

Next, we pushed back to 100 yards. Several 10 shot groups. We checked groups each time. We analyzed results with what we were feeling behind rifle, taking note of reticle performance after the shot broke, did you land back on POA after the shot or was your reticle somewhere else? Did your reticle recoil off in some weird diagonal? Did you break your shot at the proper point in the breath cycle? Where you behind the rifle consistently? Did you adjust with your base or did you steer the rifle with your arms?

This is where the monotony might have come into play, but it was stressed “This is where you make your money.” This is where you get better, developing that natural point of aim. There’s no easy button, its reps and analysis and I thoroughly enjoyed this, it got almost to a zen-like state.

Toward the end of the day we went from standing with rifle and learned how to drop down to prone and fire off a shot to hit steel. We did some competitions between participants on this to keep it interesting. “You can’t miss fast enough” was the point of these exercises -dropping down efficiently and achieving that natural point of aim and then breaking the shot. The races where expanded then to extended kneel positions, and this is where it started to wear people out. We finished up the day recapping and talked about the next day and expanding range out to 300yards.

Day 2

Started the same at 100 yards. We did 10 10-shot groups. Evaluations and analysis every time.

We then recapped and did kneeling and sitting positions with races.

Out to 200 yards. (I’d never shot out past 100) Same thing - groups on paper, then exercises on steel. We had standard IPSC Size steel and little 3’ tall with 8” center silhouettes. Races consisted of placing 2 shots on larger, then 1 shot on smaller, adjusting for natural point of aim every time. We did several iterations with different variables added each time to number of shots on target to progressions between targets. We did this prone, kneeling, sitting, standing to prone as well. All in, there were a lot of reps. We finished with groups on paper.

We then started with barricades at 200 and dissected how to approach the barricade, how to position your rifle, how to come out of cover, take the shot, and how to go back into cover. This was also done with the off-hand as well. Races on this topic occurred.

Out to 300. Mostly prone exercises with sitting and standing to prone. Knowing your ballistic performance really started to help out in gaining a sense of how your rifle was to perform. We were drilling the 8” plates with fair regularity.

The last hour and a half was an appetizer to his Close Quarters Marksmanship Class. Standing on the 25 yard range. Shot Placement, Target Acquisition, Movement and maintaining natural point of aim where all discussed and we ran a few exercises. This was a welcome break and change of pace to mix things up.  

Comments: This is a Basic Rifle course. It was really hammered home that before doing the super dynamic dynamisms, this is where you start. Eric would share stories of what they did in the Unit: An entire week of pistol dry-fire; 6 months on a range; 1K rounds a day working on fundamentals. There was no easy button. You have to put in the time to get better and I appreciated this viewpoint.

I’d definitely take another class from Eric and recommend him to you. I left with an improved knowledgebase on how to get my rifle to perform, what gear worked well, what not so well, and how to shoot better. It’s fun clanging an 8” plate at 300yds with an unmagnified red dot. I also have a lot of homework to do to get solid in these avenues and now have the knowledgebase to develop a program for myself. I’m able to work towards identifiable goals in improved shooting instead of sending round after round with marginal effect.

Hopefully this is helpful.

Thanks for the AAR. Eric is, indeed, a "cool dude" who is well versed in all things carbine (and a lot more).

He has a youtube channel with some excellent vids.

His background speaks for itself.

I'm considering taking a class there. Do you have a link to his youtube channel, I'd like see what his posts in his video's.

 

Thanks,

Here ya go

Just took the Sept 12-13 Tactical Carbine class near Cresson, TX.

Great class and great instructor.  This was my first Carbine class and I'm glad I chose this one over the typical "run-n-gun" classes.  We focused on the fundamentals and marksmanship.  I also have a much greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various setups regarding optics and all around weapon configurations.

Even though the training was more AR15 w/unmagnified sight focused I never felt left out with my Scar 16 and ACOG setup.  I'm looking forward to taking the class again with something else like my Tavor.

Good instructors like Eric need our support. Give him a try if you have a chance.

i have not taken one of his classes, YET, but i have done business with him and can say he is the real deal and a stand up guy...buy with confidence as they say

He came up to KC and trained a group of us in his CQB course, the information Eric has is unbelievable. He is a wealth of information.