Day one of this three day format started of with the usual administrative and safety lectures along with a debriefing of the most recent LAPD shootings.

We warmed up on steel with bird shot firing singles, doubles, and triples, and then moved on to multiple targets. Weapons manipulations was stressed throughout out the day and the drills had the shooters start with empty chambers, empty or partially filled mag tubes and just about every combination you can think of.

We zeroed with slugs at 25 yards, followed by some select a slug drills and snap shooting. One of the drills would have us load a sequence of slug and buck and then fire that sequence on paper and steel targets. The command would be paper, steel, steel, paper, firing slugs on paper and buck on steel.

The class has 11 students in attendance and the weather is HOT.

Louie has moved away from ejection port loading on the pump action shotgun. His theory is to bottom load and then rack a round into the chamber. This simplifies and communizes manipulations and makes quite a bit of sense to me. OTOH, he did stress that if you already had a system that works for you then stay with it.

Day two was an absolutely kick ass day. We started off with a modified rolling thunder and then shot slugs on a ten inch steel plate out to 100 yards.

The "180" has steel knock down plates at the shooters extreme right and left and two more plates at 45 degrees to the shooters front right and left. This is a 25 - 30 round drill. Scotty ran this one. It's one of those drills that you just have to shoot to appreciate.

We ran two man deployments with shotguns and pistols from inside of vehicles with our weapons systems in various states of readiness.

There was shooting on the move, a number of hostage taker exercises, multiple targets, transition to handgun, and a rather intense night shoot.

The shotgun targets are 8" X 10" rectangular steel plates which in my mind is a realistic representation of anatomics. Many of the drills involved Louie's 3D mirage paper targets in front of and behind the steel targets so lateral movement was essential to thread the pattern on to the steel targets without hitting the no shoot paper targets.

Other drills incorporated called select slug and handgun transitions. We did so much shooting it would be hard to put it all down here.

Day three started off shooting on the move on multiple steel plates. Reloading and manipulations were heavily stressed during the drill and through out the class.

A couple of the guys had difficulty with the Harries flashlight technique (handgun) so we shot a drill on negative targets with our handguns to clean it up. The negative target, in this case, had a 8" circle cut into it. The drill was to put all the shots through the 8" hole. Negative targets are a great training aid in teaching follow through. The tendency for some is to look for the bullet holes immediately after they break the shot. In this case there's nothing to see. This forces the shooter to get back on the sights and lock back down onto the target if subsequent rounds need to be fired.

We ran several drills deploying from the vehicles with both shotgun and handgun. The instructor would set up the guns in various configurations of readiness including empty mags et. al. and we had to fight through the problem.

We received a block of instruction on one handed shooting and manipulation of the shotgun and once we were grooved in on paper negative targets we went back to the vehicles and engaged the steel shotgun targets and pepper poppers with shotguns and handguns firing side only.

Again, this was a very busy and intense day. The weather was HOT and we did a lot of shooting. We wrapped up the day with a man on man shooting tennis balls suspended from a target frame with slugs.

The was a totally non dogmatic class. If you were having trouble hitting or running the gun the problem got fixed. Otherwise you used what ever system you wanted as long as you got the hits and keep your guns loaded and running.

This was my fourth class with Awerbuck and my third with Awerbuck and Reitz. IMO, two of the best, if not the best, tactical shooting instructors on the planet.

Here's a few of the philosophical points that were stressed during the course:

1. Always believe that you'll need to shoot again. Even with a shotgun loaded with 00 magnum buckshot failures to stop can occur. Follow through, follow through, follow through!

2. Develop a system that works for you and stick with it. The simpler, the better. This is why Louie advocates bottom loading a pump action shotgun. One system that is consistent with itself. Ejection port loading with a half rack may confuse the shooter under extreme stress.

3. There's a time to shoot and a time to load. Many of the shooters would try to load while a target was up. Fight one round at a time if you have to or transition to a back up.

4. Have redundant systems. Back up guns, back up lights et al.

5. Maneuver. Increase the distance, move to cover, gain a tactical advantage.

6. Think and breathe. The tendency is to hold ones breath during extreme stress which clouds the thought process.

7. Your mind solves the problem before your hand goes for the gun.

8. Fast is bad, quick is good. Don't attempt to perform a skill faster than you can. Good clean solid lines win fights.

9. If you're going to look you need to see. Slow methodical scans.

10. Once your adversary is down continue to cover down on him. If he reanimates while you're whipping your head around..... bad juju.

Sounded like fun. Was there a night shoot on Saturday?

Sorry couldn't chat, was a little busy.

Scott and Brett: Thanks for letting us stop by. I am sure if Mr. Derek could speak, he would thank you for the tennis ball.