Thanks to board member and Las Vegas resident, Fingers, I was able to attend the Frontsight Practical Rifle course this past weekend. I am fortunate that I had something to compare it with since I attended a five day Basic Carbine class at Gunsite this past February.
After taking both classes, I intended to post a lengthly thread discussing them. But there is so much information, that I found I couldn't just sit down and do justice to the subject. But, since this whole thing started here, I will try.
First of all, I was impressed with Front Sight. It does have an air of marketing, sort of like SPAM e-mail, but after I experienced the product, I didn't have a problem with it. The students at Frontsight are a totally different type of people than I encountered at Gunsite. I didn't do a poll, but I think I would be safe in saying that most of the people at Frontsight were fairly well off people from California. Their were three classes going on at Frontsight when I was there; Practical rifle, and a basic handgun and shotgun class. There was over 100 people there and out of that group, only three guys were police officers. At Gunsite, I was only one of maybe three in my class that was a civilian. The plans for the Frontsight project are grandiose, and they are making good progress. There is a paved two lane road leading several miles into the facility that reportedly cost 1.8 million dollars. The ranges were very nice, although I didn't see some of the gadget targets that they had at Gunsite; like moving targets.
To the course: There were eight people in my class. Six were using ARs, two were using bolt action Remington 700 ADL rifles in .308 with scopes. These two guys were hunters, hoping to hone their rifle skills for that purpose. Out of the eight, there were two people that had never fired an AR before, and rented their guns from Frontsight. Only one other guy had a rifle that had all the bells and whistles that mine did; the rest were stock Bushmasters. I took my 16" Bushmaster flat top with a Wilson muzzle brake, KAC RAS II, Aimpoint ML2, KAC vertical foregrip, wilderness single point sling, Daniel Defense attachment plate, Les Baer hard chromed extractor, and Wolff extra power extractor spring. This is the same basic rifle that I took to Gunsite although at Gunsite I didn't have the RAS II; I had a Surefire 500 series light/handguard set-up. In a nutshell, the course at Frontsite covered the basics of handling a rifle. If you learned these basics and could perform them without conscious thought, you would be a very good rifle shooter. The round count was fairly low. They advertise 500 rounds, but I fired well over 600. On the last day, there was a number of occasions when you could fire more rounds than required and I did. We started off by zeroing. We used the standard fifty yard zero and confirmed our zero at 200 yards. I guess the final exam would provide a good snapshot of what was learned. We made center of mass hits from I believe 7 yards out to 200 yards. I don't remember exactly but I think we fired at 7, 25, 50, 75, 100, and 200 yards in the final exam. We made head shots at 7 yards and 25 yards. These shots were timed and ranged from 1.5 seconds for a head shot at 7 yards to 6.9 seconds for a center of mass shot at 200 yards. In addition on the last day we did a shot simulator where you walk through the desert and engage targets as you find them from imporvised field positions at unknown ranges. We had a man on man shoot off on pepper poppers. We also finished up firing some shots on steel at 400 yards. We then continued the exam with the three malfunction drills, and the two reloads (tactical reload and emergency reload) . Please realize that I have attempted to condense a four day course into a few sentences.
Dispite the fact that we were on a dirt range with high winds, my rifle performed flawlessly. By the end of the course, my rifle was brown with dust and dirt. On the final exam I dropped a total of 12 points. In other words I had four shots that struck slightly low outside the vital area on the target. This was by far the best score in the class (sorry, but I have to brag a little bit). The shooting part was good enough to make Distinguished Graduate, but I blew it on my reloads (of all things). When doing the emergency reload, you are supposed to move as you reload. I didn't. So, I didn't get a Distinguished Graduate certificate. I also won the man on man competition, although I did shoot one target out of order. They had the pepper poppers set so they wouldn't blow over in the wind. I had one target that I hit repeatedly and it only went down after being hit several times. On the final shootoff, I shot that target, heard it ring, and went on to the next target however the previous target didn't go down. So after knocking down the last popper, I went back and put down the other one.
One interesting note is that after getting my good zero, I switched to Wolf ammo and ran 500 rounds during the course. No problems at all, just like the 3500 or so rounds of Wolf I have run though all my ARs. In fact, I fired an approx. 5 inch group from the prone at 200 yards using Wolf ammo. I also fired the final esxam, and man on man with Wolf ammo.
In summary, I considered Frontsight to be very worthwhile. If you have never had any formal training in shooting, you owe it to yourself to get some. Since this is close, you have no excuse (well maybe, but not much of an excuse). As a final comparison between the course at Gunsite with the course at Frontsight, I would have to say the course at Gunsite was more fun. We fired more rounds and did a lot more varied stuff. However, training isn't nessessarily about having fun. You have to establish that firm foundation of basic shooting skills to be good. And you can never be good without them. This isn't always a lot of fun. It is about repetition and can become a boring but nessessary evil. Frontsight will provide you with these basic skills. You can't make them a reflex action in four days, but with the information you learn at Frontsight, and a lot of practice on your part, you will be a much better shooter.
I am still going to take classes at Gunsite. I am already scheduled for their basic handgun course in July and the Advanced Carbine class in September. I am also considering the Tactical Medic class at the end of July. But, I was impressed enough with Frontsight to become a First Family member and can now take the basic rifle, shotgun, and handgun classes as many times as I want for my lifetime. This will be a great way to keep my basic skills tuned up, by taking these classes at least once a year each.
Fingers gave you a good opportunity to get some terrific training at low cost. Take advantage.