I’m very interested in this thread since both my kids are prime age to take this sort of training.
My experience - Took the 5 day Intermediate Pistol course at Chapman Academy in July, 1980 with, of all things, a BHP, the only suitable pistol I owned. Although I had been shooting various pistols, notably my Dad’s HP, since I was 10, I considered myself a complete novice to this type of shooting. Though I wasn’t the odd man out, turned out there were two brothers from Chicago among the ten of us, who used S&W 4” M19s, one blue one nickel, I guess so they could tell whose was which. The rest of the students had various forms of 1911, all in 45, including one LW Commander wielded by a black belt from Seattle. The guy proved to be interesting due to his total inability to “unlearn” his Karate stance. No matter how many times Ray and the other instructors would nudge him into the shooting stance they were teaching, he would revert to his stance the second the whistle blew. It was pretty amusing.
To say the course was eye opening would be a huge understatement. The emphasis was on stance, presentation, getting hits quickly and accurately. Almost nothing about tactics though.
The experience motivated me to take up IPSC on a regular basis in the K.C. area, where I met Greg Moats, who used to post here regularly though I haven’t seen him on the fire in over a year.
I gave up on competing in IPSC about ’83 when the various comped barrels and race guns began to take over.
Fast forward to 1994 in NJ. My employer sent me to Quantico to attend the High Risk Personnel course. The instructors were Marine E-5s or 6s with the chief instructor in the person of Ernest Langdon. To a man, the 5 instructors used privately purchased Glocks despite having access to issue M9s. Kind of funny given Langdon’s current billet.
But man could those guys shoot! Between the five of them they had attended every major, and quite a few lesser, shooting schools in the country. They distilled all that into a five day course which was a very good mix of trigger time, tactics and mind set. Their intent was to teach how to survive a gunfight and they did it well.
I used a Sig 228 and can honestly say, up to that time, it was the most fun I’d had with my
clothes on.
Sorry to be so long winded. I look forward to hear from others.
