I had taken this class once before and had a great time. I recently purchased a Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special (TRS) and thought this would be a great opportunity to ring it out. Since it was Scotty who sparked my interest in this exceptional 1911, I thought it would be only fitting to train with it at ITTS on it's first time out. The TRS ran without a hitch.

Twenty-four highly motivated students participated in what was truly a stellar Southern California day. The days training kicked off with a warm up on paper targets. Singles and pairs from the holster got everyone's juices flowing, followed by emergency reloads, failure drills, and firing side/support side only shooting. Corrections were made as needed by Scotty Reitz, Brett McQueen, and Bill Kelly. Once everyone was on the same page, the class was split in half. One half engaged the high speed mover while the other paced each other in man on man firing drills on steel pepper poppers and silhouettes.

Normally the afternoon of this class addresses room entry/clearing. The props used for room clearing were being rebuilt. Instead, we broke into three separate groups. One group worked problems around vehicles and another group worked the high speed mover using a vehicle as cover. The third group responded to an active shooter simulation in the donga. IMO, this was a bonus and the students gained a wealth of information from these drills. All of the afternoons drills were performed in two man teams.

The vehicle problems proved to be both great fun and presented some challenging shooting. Working in teams the shooters would approach the vehicle shooting on the move. Immediately on the other side of the vehicle were two pepper poppers with the heads partially exposed above the vehicles door sill. The trick here was to fire through the upper portion of the door furthest away from you using the top of the head as a reference point. In most cases multiple rounds were needed to down the pepper poppers. Using the vehicle for cover the teams would then engage multiple targets while covering one another during reloading. To make things more interesting Scotty would set up the magazines in our weapons with an unknown amount of ammunition. Communication became a critical element of the drill. Simple commands were used to let your partner know your status. We ran several variations of the drill including wounded shooter drills, firing through the vehicles passenger compartment, over the hood and trunk, et al.

The high speed mover had a similar theme. Two man teams with one shooter working at the front and rear of the vehicle along with engaging the mover through the passenger compartment. Shooting through the windows of the passenger compartment proved to be the most challenging due to a narrow window of target exposure.

The donga trail had the shooters engaging targets with their firing or support side hand only, respective to which side of the trail the shooter was on. The shooters also had to keep their weapons running using their firing or support side hands only.

Its drills like the above that really set ITTS apart from other training curriculums. The words unique, challenging and inventive certainly come to mind. It was great to see the large turnout for this class. While ITTS is no secret to LE and Spec Ops Military the word is now reaching the general shooting population. Scotty and ITTS are featured in the up coming April/May edition of SWAT Magazine

[This message was edited by Fred on February 09, 2003 at 08:23 AM.]