Matter of Facts: Shotgun Shenanigans

[00:00:03] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram

[00:00:14] You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners I'm your host Phil Rabbley and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic and here's your show So Andrew is not here. He's fired for the night

[00:00:26] AKA I'm in too tired. Well No, y'all were too tired as the reason why we didn't do this show over the weekend He has he has this boring adult thing called a job where they expect from the show up on their schedule and not his

[00:00:41] It's really inappropriate. I don't recommend anybody grow up and get a job But everybody seems to want to do it regardless of what I advise Probably to fund the ammo. That might be a good point Anyway, Nick is joining us this afternoon

[00:00:55] He and Andrew went to a an MDFI class to play around with shotguns And I saw an opportunity to have him come on and talk about like his experience

[00:01:05] How he feels it went what blew up what fell apart and then in the process probably try to talk me into a 12 gauge because I've taken immeasurable heat over the years for not owning a shotgun as if I've you know spit on people's mothers and

[00:01:21] public and done all sorts of horrible and speakable things but like You know, Nick like you and I were talking about before the show started. I'm not a shotgun guy. I fired them Sorry, no how to run them. I'm not a moron

[00:01:33] I just the shotgun has never spoken to me and said Phil I you you want to put me in your closet I'm a rifle guy at the end of the day nothing wrong with being a rifle guy man

[00:01:42] I was to I was to I had a shotgun for the same reason most people had a shotguns I got invited to go bird hunting one day. That's really that's really what it was. I bought a Remington 870 about 20 years ago yeah, yeah almost 20 years ago and

[00:01:58] went pheasant hunting and From the rest of the time it mostly sat in my closet almost exclusively and then the Illinois assault weapon band got put in practice and If you do keep your AR 10 round magazine 10 rounds of 556 is not a lot

[00:02:17] It's not a lot you can run out of that real quick and 556 is a notorious habit of Penciling through people and not doing a job in the defensive situation true Fantastic platform acceptable cartridge. Yeah 12 gauge on the other hand

[00:02:33] Still limited to five rounds in the tube because Illinois decided to be a cock but Those rounds are in order of magnitude larger. Oh, yes in order of magnitude more effective especially in short ranges like for home defense now

[00:02:48] You say you're not a shotgun guy. I think that's because you haven't taken treks class I really do I mean that that there's a possibility there Because you know being on the wrong end of the country from Trek going up to Michigan to see him

[00:03:02] Is a two-day trip? Oh, yeah and two days back which basically means a week off work Just for me to go see the man unfortunately. Oh For certain it is now granted

[00:03:12] There's probably a class like trucks in your area that you could find and heck he might even know somebody you'd recommend for you I Tell you this I was Acceptably mediocre with a shotgun when when I started this class. That's high praise though. I

[00:03:29] Was acceptably mediocre. I mean I could I could hit a clay more often than I'd miss You know, maybe 60% of them I could hit I can shoot a shotgun an aesthetic target and hit it most of the time I could reload it but not under pressure

[00:03:44] And I really didn't understand how to manipulate it correctly to really employ its full benefit mean Shotgun recoil kind of sucks right yeah fair bit doesn't have to There is a way of

[00:04:03] Mitigating the recoil that track teaches a class he calls calls it ripping the gun basically it's a it's a push-pull method Pulling it into your shoulder like you do with any other rifle

[00:04:13] But at the same time you are pushing it forward with your support hand as hard as you can while you're pulling trigger That cuts the recoil down to the point where I was only a little play

[00:04:24] You noticed you had gone to the range I wasn't hurting like I usually was after around the sporting plays What's around a sporting place 40 50 This was 300 So, I mean Not even a bruise From 300 rounds 12 games. That's actually impressive because I mean I I was I was blown away

[00:04:47] With helping the difference of me I've bruised my shoulder with a 308 Winchester doing load development where you just you sit out there and you know 50 rounds down and how range from a prone on a shooting man

[00:04:59] That will be enough to leave a nice little greenish purple mark on your shoulder 300 win bag does the exact same thing In about five rounds is to have 50. I'm sure You're good for about 20

[00:05:12] Of course, then you can taste a little bit of copper too if you really send in the rounds but the I Think that that shooting technique would would really help number one help your enjoyment of shooting the shotgun and

[00:05:30] Learning how to properly use the ability a shotgun has to swap out rounds for different purposes Teachers you know, they start off pretty slow They do their their medical brief their medical and safety brief which takes an hour and it is not a boring hour You are

[00:05:52] Your attention is held the entire time. It is the most comprehensive safety brief I have ever sat through for a class I mean, I've taken pistol rifle classes. I've taken long-range marksmanship classes I've never had a medical brief or a safety brief taken that seriously and done so

[00:06:13] Just side note. Was this your first MD if I class? Yeah, okay. Absolutely. Yeah, it's my first MDFI class Many of you know I'm from Illinois drove up from Illinois. It's about six hour drive

[00:06:25] It was worth every hour of the six hour to come up to now probably going up for some more but You know, they walk you through the medical brief walk through the safety brief

[00:06:38] Then we does what he's called the show and tell where everybody lays out all their equipment All their shotguns in this case and they talked over the differences between them all

[00:06:46] I did not know there was such a thing as a smart and a dumb shotgun. You familiar with the term. Mm-hmm Okay Most pump action shotguns are what are called dumb shotguns. Okay every time you cycle the action It's gonna load a shell out of the tube, right?

[00:07:01] There are semi-automatic shotguns that are dumb just like that anytime you stroke the bolt it's gonna load one from the tube Then there are smart shotguns like the a300 and the Brunner 1301 and a bunch of other ones Those don't have to load from the tube

[00:07:17] They can tell the difference mechanically between a fired round and you grab in the bolt and clear it around so You can if you want to if you're sitting there and you've got

[00:07:31] Shot them with a bolt lock forward empty chamber say so you don't feel like storing it with a loaded chamber in the in the house right Break in alright Hit hit the action release

[00:07:46] Cycle of bolt it'll load around if you skip the step of hitting the action release You can load around of your choice off your side saddle depending on the situation So let's say you're up in your cabin On the boonies and you've got Say a large dangerous predator

[00:08:05] Coming towards your animals whatever your dog your cat your chickens You're probably at 25 yards. I mean you might be okay hitting it with buckshot But then you might also hit your chicken coop So what you do well that action back drop in a slug let it fly home

[00:08:21] BAM So you don't have to fully unload the tube or load it from the tube That's interesting it must mean that it's holding the lifter it is when you when you don't hit the action release

[00:08:34] Yeah, so the there's a little there's a little button on the underside of the a-300s That if you hit that it will act as though you have fired around If you don't and you just you're just running the action

[00:08:48] You can run that action as many times as you want to get that round cleared out of there And it's not just gonna bump another round up into the tube So say you have like a bad primer or something like that

[00:08:57] You can rack that back not have it dump another round up into the chamber on top of it and you can actually assess what's going on Instead of then now you got a shell coming out. You got another shell coming up Getting things all confused around

[00:09:11] It's actually it's actually really nice very convenient. Yeah, I'm just thinking like manual of arms wise showing clear mitigating That's seen that that sounds like something that's so common sense everybody every manufacturer should be doing it honestly

[00:09:28] It's it's in a lot of the newer shotguns even some of the newer pumps from what they were talking about Is because it allows you number one to safely clear the chamber and not have another round loaded in from the magazine that you cannot remove

[00:09:44] And it allows you to do some little different things with round selection So, you know if you Rob deer hunting and you've also got Rabbit tags and you want to pull a slug out drop bird shot in you can go ahead and do that very easily

[00:10:03] without having to Slap slap one in the tube and then cycle it and chuck around on the ground That's it's interesting so you attended the class with a With an a 300. Yep bone stock vanilla Beretta, yeah

[00:10:24] The two the 2b names always click together in my brain. I know and they both sell all the shotguns. Yeah, that's the other problem so yeah, what I

[00:10:34] Mean was it the where are we talking about like you just came into class with a bone stock a 300 had you already started fooling with it The only thing I added was a sling and well and a quick release mount for the sling

[00:10:45] Okay, but so sling sling is mandatory in my world Long guy for any long gun that you're gonna take to a class It is just from the sake of being able to just let the gun hang when you're when you're taking a break

[00:10:58] You know the so the a 300 is kind of like the I Would call it like your entry level tactical semi-automatic shotgun Once you get away from like the Turkish stuff and the pumps It is I would say

[00:11:15] It's not fancy. I'll put it that way. It's not a fancy shotgun. It's got a pretty traditional stock It's got a pretty traditional forehand. It does have rifle sights on it, which is nice, especially in the the ultimate patrol

[00:11:30] I can't actually get the ultimate patrol so I have to have the a 300 patrol the ultimate Because the ultimate comes with an extended mag tube. Oh, I know tell me about it It was a bear getting one. They don't make very many that way

[00:11:48] Really you can go to that class with a pump action shotgun Truck was saying that he had had people come with a goose gun with a 28 inch barrel There's really no shotgun that's wrong for the class. Just bring what you have

[00:12:03] So like if you have a anything and put probably like a side-by-side But if you have even an older 12 gauge 870 or Mossberg 590 or something like that You'd probably be just fine somewhere out there There's a single action society shooter who's like I bet I could

[00:12:19] Talking about the side by side like I bet you they could I know a couple of cowboy action shooters that would keep up just fine but so I

[00:12:29] Bought that shotgun because of Illinois is all about bad changes and the fact that I wanted something with a little more Punch since I couldn't have extra rounds. I didn't want to mess around with with it too much because I didn't know what I needed

[00:12:42] So I figured I would take that class and the The a-300 and I believe the 1301 comes stocked from the factory with a piece of Velcro in the box That piece of Velcro is cut to fit perfectly on the receiver. I don't know what YouTube's guidelines is

[00:13:00] But I'm not gonna go grab the shotgun right now since it's loaded That piece of Velcro on the box perfectly fits the receiver. It's cut out laser really nice It'll hold those sec tech shotgun cards or anybody else's shotgun cards. Mm-hmm those I got the elastic ones Fantastic

[00:13:19] Excellent for carrying extra rounds on the gun. I didn't have a single problem with flying out the They retained much better than I thought they would I Think that if if you were to just want to pick up a shotgun and not do anything to it a

[00:13:36] 300 perfectly acceptable if your budget allows it the 1301 Has a few nicer things apparently the gas system handles recoil a little bit better and mitigates it a little bit better with higher loads But Andrew be able to tell you better about that one

[00:13:52] The way the way I try to get into guns is I will buy What I believe to be a middle of the road Got Not cheap Not the new hotness 1301s, which there were a lot of in the class and they performed very well

[00:14:09] But my $900 1301 was keeping up perfectly fine You know I a lot of the drills that we were doing it was a lot of so okay one shot do a reload to an empty chamber

[00:14:26] Do a couple shots with some number of rounds in the gun and if you happen to empty it You got a top off and finish the string with emergency reloads However, you're gonna do it feeding off the gun

[00:14:40] One of the ones that Andrew really in me really enjoyed rolling thunder. Everyone is In a line Down the range First guy on the left fires one round then it goes one round each down the line

[00:14:54] Then once the end guys done comes back two rounds each down the line then three rounds each down the line Got up to seven well my shotgun doesn't hold seven rounds. It holds six Five in the tube one in the chamber

[00:15:05] So I'm doing an emergency reload in the middle of the shot string and I need to do it quick enough But the other people are also having to do reloads even though they have higher capacity guns than me

[00:15:16] And all the while the shooting never stops. So you're loading the entire time. You're not fired Yeah, I know that was something that you and I talked about like again me not being a shotgun guy but me being a revolver guy on occasion and

[00:15:33] Something that had been told to me a long time ago by another revolver person And this really applies like revolver shotguns and lever actions is If you're you know, you have the old adage if you're not shooting you should be moving if you're not moving

[00:15:46] You should be reloading it gets inverted when you're talking about low capacity firearms If you're not shooting you better be moving and reloading like another way the idea is that You should be topping the gun up

[00:15:57] Anytime you're not engaging a target like if you get any brief breaking the action you get a little bit of cover You better stop top the gun up because absolutely the if you have let's say that ar with the uh

[00:16:10] The non piss off the illinois and white politicians third round magazine If you have to engage a target or two and then you get behind cover You know if you have a moment to pop the magazine out and put the new magazine and retain that mag

[00:16:24] That's one thing But even if you don't you still got probably 15 or 20 rounds in the magazine You fire five or six shots with that shotgun. You're dangerously low all of a sudden if not out very very true

[00:16:36] Yeah, yeah, especially if you live in a state within assault weapons may whether limiting your capacities. I mean the um Six rounds to your to your point earlier if the only shotgun you have is that goose gun that has the plug in the magazine tube

[00:16:50] Exactly a three round limit Yeah, now you would you'd get better get Righteously quick at topping that gun up constantly The nice thing though about the shotgun is Unlike an ar You're not getting one hit with one shell

[00:17:06] If you're running nine pellet buck and you're within your effective range for your shotgun with nine pellet buck You are getting nine holes for the price of one so It's not bitter on the bush. Everybody knows that shotguns kill things shotguns kill things really well

[00:17:29] They are disturbingly devastating especially at close range And realistically close range is what you're going to be doing if you're in a defensive situation Especially in your home say three o'clock in the morning door gets kicked in by a crackhead fantastic There is

[00:17:48] In my opinion no more devastating weapon you can use for home defense other than something loaded with grape shot I mean historical anecdote, but if memory serves me the Germans in world war one tried to have shotguns declared Oh War crime. Yeah, they're really effective and cruel

[00:18:09] They attempted to argue that the use of a shotgun on a battlefield was a war crime If that tells you anything about what a what a trench broom would do to somebody at short range

[00:18:20] And and realistically that's only shotguns are only going to become more and more utilized in warfare nowadays You bring up the goose gun. What's a drone? Electric goose

[00:18:33] I was going to point that out. It's like I was watching something just the other day where they were talking about The the widespread usage of very small drones in the ukraine conflict And literally the anti drone weapons, they're they're either using net guns or they're using

[00:18:52] Um, I mean they're literally using 12 gauges loaded with bird shot. Yes, absolutely With a full choke ideally. Yeah Because you're trying to hit like you said you're trying to hit something about this big that moves really quick But doesn't have a lot of meat to it

[00:19:04] So if you whack it one if you whack it with a handful of small pellets, you're going to knock it down If you hit a prop A blade on a prop It's going to destabilize and probably come down

[00:19:17] Yeah, you know. Yeah. Well, what's the effective range of a net gun? Maybe 150 feet probably I mean, I don't know what the effective range the effective range for goose gun load is Well, but the other thing is is that even even not the net gun being the point

[00:19:34] But like they're also using things like just net strapped over Like the front doors of buildings row for one. It's just anything to disrupt the drone being able to come in through an open window

[00:19:46] And that by itself is enough a lot of times just keep things where they're not supposed to be I believe that yeah a piece of heavy canvas or something like that, you know I have seen to those drone jammer gun things that are supposed to disable the electronics

[00:20:04] great Now you have a soldier that is entirely dedicated to only drones And 12 gauge bird shot load might not be the greatest if somebody's storming The room you're in but it's still an ounce of lead Mm-hmm. It's still at least somewhat effective

[00:20:23] And do you see you do see a lot of videos Not just from ukraine, but from some of the parts of Africa where people are shooting black powder 12 gauges and occasionally intercepting government anti-poaching drones Mm-hmm

[00:20:41] It's a pretty it's a pretty cost effective solution if in a few cents to a dollar around Well, and I mean almost any decently equipped police department or swat team around the country

[00:20:51] It's going to have at least one 12 gauge in their inventory for no other reason than for breaching doors Exactly and like exactly again Me not being a shotgun guy

[00:21:01] I do kind of draw comparisons the fact that you're not you're not dumping half a third of our magazine into a door frame To try to open a door up they get the master key out and they blow

[00:21:11] The door the lock and half the door frame into the room. They want into in one shot Yeah, ideally and with the with the proper door breaching rounds you do that with very minimal risk to anybody inside Now I'm not sure that we can buy those rounds, but

[00:21:28] I mean, I don't imagine they're that terribly difficult to manufacture something I mean if you know somebody with a reloading press is into hood rat stuff Pretty sure you can make them. It can't be anything that complicated

[00:21:38] It's a lot of it is usually some kind of compressed powder That they're firing out and it's at such a close range. It doesn't have time to disperse and lose its effectiveness You know, it says it just goes to show you how versatile shotguns are I mean

[00:21:55] Do you want to hunt squirrels? Shotgun will do it want to hunt birds? Shotgun will do it deer shotgun will do it coyotes shotgun will do it crackhead shotgun will do it Black bear shotgun will do it brown bear shotgun will do it moose shotgun will do it

[00:22:09] But you're gonna have to be close With those moose. I mean you're still gonna have to be within 100 yards Hey, sure 300 win mag can do it at 800 yards I'm not that good of a shot. I wish I was

[00:22:22] So it wouldn't matter for me anyway 300 win meger shotgun. I'm still gonna have to get close But you can't hunt squirrels with a 300 win mag. You just flat flat cannot Not if you're gonna eat any of it Not if you're gonna eat it

[00:22:38] I mean if you just want to turn it into like Bloney Mists, then yeah, sure that'll work. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah, if you if you want to remove a squirrel from the face of the earth Yes, a 300 win bag does a fantastic job

[00:22:50] Uh, so now we've pissed off anti gunners and pita all in one episode outstanding nick That's fine. I got a cousin that's involved in pita. I've already got that angry at me Oh Jesus don't get me started or I'll start asking questions about You don't want to know

[00:23:08] it's She is A special individual. Oh, no, it's usually when people start talking about how how cute does an animal have to be before you won't eat it I'm like how interesting that you would assume there's a point at which I won't eat an animal. Let's start there

[00:23:23] Really more depends on how good they taste and how hungry I am that too Yeah, although I will say that if if the essay if the s ever if the shtf ever does kick off

[00:23:36] There's a couple of uh, yeah, be little purse dogs around here. They're gonna go missing on day one just on principle Right, you know, it's a nice thing And it's not gonna take a lot to put them down I suppose harsh language are aggressive towards people

[00:23:53] Yeah, I know Yeah, we've got a we've got a couple of neighbors over here that have some some of those little ankle biters that they have allowed to become very aggressive And it's just it's not acceptable. Whatever size your dog is you need to train your dog

[00:24:08] Before somebody trains it for you exactly and that's unfortunately the way it ends a lot of the time You know, we had one of the neighborhood dogs bite one of our other neighbors because he was jogging and it triggered a pray response

[00:24:20] Triggered a chase response on the dog but You know It's nothing you can do about that if it's a poorly trained dog Anyway to get the train back on the tracks You're you're worse than I am for getting off topic. Oh, yeah, absolutely

[00:24:38] My brain skips around like a squirrel. It's terrible. Yeah But so shotguns So you came to the class with Let's call it a factory box stock a 300. Yep

[00:24:50] I'll give you the slang because to me all long guns require slings like I will I'm prepared to die on that hill anybody that wants to go for it and Sounds like shotgun experience, but maybe not like semi-auto shotgun experience

[00:25:07] No semi-auto shotgun experience at all pump action shotgun experience either on a static line or on a pheasant line Sorry So once you got past the uh, the safety briefing and the uh, don't don't verify your load by looking down the barrel part of it

[00:25:23] Hopefully exactly like where where did em be if I start all I mean, I would assume they start you with like Basic shotgun handling like they have to assume that everyone coming to the class

[00:25:34] Barely knows which end to point at the target and then take you up from there Yeah, they do they do assume two things one that You understand what the buttons on your shotgun do and two

[00:25:49] That you will abide by the four rules of firearm safety which they go through in detail in the safety brief Those are the only two assumptions. Well that and you brought your equipment if you don't bring your equipment, that's on you

[00:26:00] Yeah, which so I know that's like the only advice I give a person before they take a fire under the range is Like put all the ammunition forward in another room figure out how the stupid thing works You know in a sterile environment

[00:26:14] Know how to load it how to unload it know where all the buttons are before you go to the range and you have live ammo in the gun Just because It it make it gives me a twitch when I see somebody

[00:26:25] Like muzzle sweep an entire range while fumbling around looking for buttons on the gun while they've got live ammunition in the chamber But I digress nothing will get you kicked out of an mdfi class faster than poor muzzle discipline

[00:26:39] There is no warning at an mdfi class about poor muzzle discipline That's because all or most of their cadre or prior military and we hate getting guns pointed at us Rightly so I don't like that at all I don't think anyone's a fan

[00:26:57] So the thing we get into next is carry presentations and shooting techniques So how when you've got so you got the shotgun in your hand, you got to do something with it, right?

[00:27:07] So they talk through different positions for how to carry it effectively and comfortably for long periods of time So how to carry in an upright position if you're if you're in an environment that

[00:27:18] And they they talk about the environment somewhere you're going to use these different carry positions so if you're if you're moving through say

[00:27:25] A busy environment in a crowd and like a police officer type setting you'll see a lot of police officers with gun pointed straight up in the air Perfectly safe because if it goes off worst case

[00:27:36] I mean anybody that's ever gone pheasant hunting or been at a clay range too long has been rained on with bird shot Come down bonk in the head. It's a little bit irritating, but it's not going to kill you Slug might hurt It's not gonna kill you

[00:27:49] So they do how to carry shotgun How to present a shotgun in the in the case in which you've got a transition from a Carry position to a near shooting position

[00:28:01] So a low ready a high ready stuff like that and the different times in which you're going to use either one um, and then The the transition from a higher low ready to a shooting position with a high ready and a shotgun, you know

[00:28:17] Much like a rifle. You've got that butt sock tucked underneath your arm So you got to make sure that you've got your sling in an appropriate In an appropriate place that you can pull that shotgun out and get it back seated into your shoulders quickly as possible

[00:28:31] Without getting tangled up and caught on things They do discuss a little bit shooting techniques As far as once you've taken the shot what you should be doing For instance single target environment, uh police officer on the stop

[00:28:51] You know or on crowd control with a shotgun somebody comes out does does something stupid or evil Take that shot, you know follow them to the ground with the muzzle make sure that they're actually down chances are if you hit them with a 12 gauge They are um

[00:29:07] And then they get into what was probably the second most valuable thing I learned in the class the recoil mitigation that we talked about earlier As far as how to Manage the recoil of a shotgun. They they're they call it a rip it method

[00:29:23] You're basically trying to pull the shotgun in half at the receiver What you're you're firing hand pulling it into your shoulders hard as you can your support hand pushing it out as hard as you can it makes Probably a 15 or 20 felt recoil difference

[00:29:38] I mean that makes sense though why they would teach that method and why it would work Side note the first time I ever fired a pump shotgun my silly behind was pulling back on the pump Which the split the split second I pulled the trigger

[00:29:52] The new loss all support Hoya I learned that I learned from my mistakes very quickly and realize I'm like, oh Let's let's not apply 100 of what I know about shooting rifles shooting pump action shotguns But you know you live and you learn yeah

[00:30:09] And second note on shooting shotguns if you're shooting them a lot Do not thumb over bore your shotgun barrel like with your support hand or with your firing with your support hand

[00:30:20] That has never occurred to me to try to do that. Why would why would you I shoot my a r Or used to shoot my a r with thumb over bore when i'm trying to shoot fast

[00:30:30] And i'm trying to shoot accurately because it keeps that muzzle held down and you get back on target faster The the effort of pushing your arm up For the gun pulls it back down into place and almost snaps it back into place

[00:30:45] So my first instinct as a semi-auto rifle shooter is to see clamp that barrel How fast did that barrel get hot about seven rounds into it? I stopped doing that It basically the first string of fire taught me not to do that with a shotgun

[00:31:04] Now if you have a barrel shroud that might be different, but I ain't gonna sneak in suspicion even at high volumes of fire. You're going to get Quite hot very quick. It's a lot of powder and a lot of mass you're sending down

[00:31:15] That that strikes me so much like a person It's only a reshot semi-autos and suddenly gets hit in a revolver and they try to two thumbs forward on that And you're only going to make that mistake one time off your thumb. Yeah I mean with a 38 no

[00:31:30] It's you're gonna you're gonna realize your mistake immediately But yeah, if you're right if you're playing around with like a big revol a big magnum revolver You're gonna make the mistake exactly one time and have a hell of a story to tell afterwards probably to the your staff

[00:31:45] Yeah, if you still have a thumb, I've seen some some pretty gruesome injury photos about that You know they After they teach the ratecoil mitigation process, which is after your first couple strings of fire So that you do notice the difference Man

[00:32:01] It it no one goes back to shooting the way that they were after learning that it is such a difference It even gets you back on target faster So with The so after the they teach that recoil mitigation

[00:32:18] They teach a little bit more about the threat engagement process. So they get you doing a little moving and shooting So you do set course of fire say one round Induct your shotgun into a safe location after you make sure the threat's on the ground

[00:32:33] Check around you check behind you while you're keeping the shotgun in a safe direction the entire time So you do have you know 10 guys on a line that are going to be turning 360 with a shotgun

[00:32:47] This is why and the shotguns are loaded. This is why Trek has a zero tolerance policy For any kind of shenanigans. This is probably also why the uh, the safety briefing was enthused as enthusiastic as it was Yes, and I would say it was appropriately enthusiastic

[00:33:05] You know he he has said that there have been incidents where someone has injured themselves Fortunately, it was always themselves Through poor gun handling at one of his classes Um, not necessarily one of his class made was a class. He was in attendance for could have been

[00:33:23] I would I would Yeah, I would hope so anyway I would hope so anyway. I mean fortunately no one was ever critically injured I think he said a guy had a Sent to the nine millimeter round through his hand Oh

[00:33:38] Yeah, yeah going to clear malfunction and ended up with his pistol pointed out of his hand You know, but I gotta admit I've been to other classes where guys have gotten real close to doing worse

[00:33:52] I was in a I was in a rifle pistol class and uh pistol carbine kind of like transition class Or you're learning how to move between the two and work around barriers and stuff like that and we had a range safety officer For our local police department

[00:34:08] Well, one of my local police departments Endy around two inches from his foot While trying to argue against why he was getting kicked out. He ended a second round Into the floor about six inches from his foot Can I take this moment to

[00:34:25] Just tell everybody how absolutely freaking crazy I get whenever somebody argues that only police officers are well enough trained to be trusted with firearms I just want to start that Yeah, usually about five seconds after they think they're too experienced to make a mistake Absolutely

[00:34:42] Which is why I wholeheartedly encourage people to be a little bit worried about You know every dangerous implement they're playing with whether it be chainsaws firearms table saws Chainsaws scare me more than any other tool. I'm gonna be real honest with you

[00:34:58] I and I am I will happily admit this every time I grab my chainsaw I get a chill up my spine Not because I don't know how to use them properly But just because I have seen what happens when you don't and I'm like

[00:35:12] I don't want to be the next door one award recipient because I did something dumb with the chainsaw Shotguns no different You know, they were talking about the effectiveness of rifles pistols and shotguns in class as part of the safety briefing

[00:35:28] There's an interesting statistic. They had from an er doctor that took their class This er doctor worked in a trauma ward They didn't give his name. I assume for privacy reasons um

[00:35:40] He said that 80 of people who get shot with a handgun that make it to his trauma ward alive Walk out Um, or are carted out, you know, they live they survive. Yeah On the other hand

[00:35:53] 80 of people that come into his trauma ward alive with a rifle or shotgun wound do not survive it That kind of matches they made it alive to the hospital You know, so it's it's no joke. It's it's no joke at all

[00:36:06] you know after you know after they talk about Stuff like that You know safety briefing, you know, okay guys, we're all going to go out on the line Everyone is paying attention Which is fantastic so They talked about threat engagement process a little bit of shotgun manipulation. So

[00:36:30] Come back to the difference between smart and dumb shotguns How you have to reload them differently between smart and dumb shotguns How you have to handle them differently if you just pick it up and it's dry Um, so you got an empty chamber between smart and dumb shotguns

[00:36:46] We kind of broke down a little bit into okay This group of people that has these shotguns the biggest group was 1301 owners. There was a lot of them I think there was 14 1301's on the range FD junk change um

[00:37:03] And fortunately the Beretta a 300 in that same group are all smart shotguns So they had to be managed in a slightly different way for things like reloading from an empty chamber Or starting off your gun with a full tube in an empty chamber you got to remember

[00:37:22] There's below the lift behind the lifter. There is an action release button that says okay when you cycle that bolt I want you to feed around out of the tube Otherwise, you've got to manually drop one in the chamber and touch around

[00:37:36] So it gets a little bit different Um ammunition management is a huge portion of the class. I would say of all of the drills ammunition management was probably the majority of them simply because there are so few rounds in the shotgun

[00:37:54] They did it a few different ways they started out with okay, we're gonna do Um You got one round in the shotgun You're gonna fire it and then you're gonna do an emergency reload And fire that second round as quick as you can

[00:38:08] At first it's speed of control. So Take your time figure out whether going over the top of the shotgun or under the shotgun with your cartridge works better for you My wrist don't turn that way so well

[00:38:19] So I have to go over the top of the shotgun for reload which works out well for I have my sctx set up my shotgun cards um They talked about different ways of carrying extra ammunition on your shotgun

[00:38:31] Uh one thing I did not realize is the uh, you're familiar with the hard Racks like the aluminum or plastic racks that bolt through your trigger pins Okay, apparently that's one of the more common things that they've seen fail on a 12 gauge

[00:38:48] So you've got your your two pins Coming in through that are normally just a solid pin held in with the detent right? Well those two pins are held on by two little tiny screws When you've got those carriers on the side

[00:39:03] Apparently those little tiny screws like to shear off under recoil or back out and fall out And now you've got a bunch of weight on the left hand side of your shotgun

[00:39:11] Trying to take the trigger pins and pull them out of the left hand side of your shotgun Under high amounts of vibration and pressure That makes a certain amount of sense of why that'd be such a likely failure point

[00:39:22] I mean think of it like this like you wouldn't You wouldn't take an ar-15 and hang a magazine carrier off the trigger pins Right like that just screams bad idea and anybody that knows how that operating system works because it's like if these things go that direction

[00:39:37] Then all the guts of guns just start rattling around and they stop working wherever they feel like And in the case of most shotguns your whole trigger group is just dropping out the bottom

[00:39:48] The next time you fire it if those pins are gone if you can get it to fire with those pins gone Yeah, now they did mention that the least common thing they have ever seen failed Is that patch of Elcro on the side of a shotgun?

[00:40:02] I mean worse like you said worst case scenario if it does let go Then you just lose a card of shotgun shells Honestly, I purposefully put my shotgun card on halfway to see what would happen On one of the drills

[00:40:18] I was able to go through my entire magazine and reload that card without the card falling off The recoil of the shotgun Caused that card to slap back into the velcro and adhere stronger than when I initially put it on

[00:40:35] Which is just I mean it makes sense when you think about velcro two pieces of velcro touch each other They're gonna stay there Well, and like you said by by agitating those two pieces backwards and forwards They're just gonna continue to grab harder harder exactly and you know

[00:40:51] The elite the thing that's the thing they've said they've never seen fail They've seen front sights fly off a shotguns rear sights fly off a shotguns Forens come loose mag tubes unthread themselves and fly off

[00:41:04] I've talked to more than one buddy that's had a red dot like puke puke its glass out the front of it from shotgun recoil Absolutely, that is probably possible. I didn't see I saw surprisingly few failures. Let's put it that way

[00:41:18] I think in that entire class, let's see. It was about 20 people if I recall correctly We had one person with a 1897 trench gun clone That uh, he did have a failure trick strapped at one point That was the only problem that I noticed that he had mechanically

[00:41:41] We had a couple of people that were getting some light primer strikes In some of the 1301s probably due to how sandy it was Anybody's been up to treks of new range The shotgun range that we were on is a sand bit

[00:42:00] So kicking up moondust anytime anybody walks around kicking up moondust every time you're firing off the shotguns So it was an amply dusty and You know the I didn't see any shotgun there that had Reliability issues in that environment even after

[00:42:17] We were most of the way through the day. So it was in the mid to upper 80s It was bright sun. So all the shotguns were hot and stayed hot the entire time

[00:42:29] It was a dusty conditions and they did not get cleaned at any point in the 300 round course fire so I don't really know how long a shotgun will go especially a semi-auto gun But with the amount of carbon I pulled out of mine after class

[00:42:47] I mean, I sent the picture to our patreon group. It looked like I was grinding crushed pepper Over the over the table. I was cleaning up I mean it it was a noticeable amount of carbon and I didn't have a single malfunction Now I malfunctioned

[00:43:02] I dropped shells on a reload. I fumbled a reload The shotgun didn't it's fantastic You know Ed Once we got through the ammunition management and we were Back into running more aggressive drills where it was longer strings of fire longer longer strings of fire

[00:43:21] Um up to that rolling thunder drill that I mentioned Some of those drills you start empty Your first shot is throwing a shell in the tube closing it up

[00:43:35] Uh, they did one version of rolling thunder where you were only allowed to re to load the tube of your shotgun halfway through So you were doing one shot from an empty chamber two shots

[00:43:48] After a lot you were allowed to put a re uh a round in the chamber. So shoot emergency reload shoot then emergency reload Three rounds Then emergency reload four rounds And then eventually he was like, okay, you have 10 seconds to load your shotgun

[00:44:06] Most of the guys that were able to get them fully topped off in that 10 seconds I mean even even the guys that were running bump guns had They were doing pretty well at that point uh

[00:44:18] Then we got into patterning which was pretty interesting. I don't know how familiar you are with shotgun patterning Okay, basically for the audience Essentially what it works out to is you put yourself target out at a known distance

[00:44:31] You fire your defensive load at it. You see what spread you get And more importantly, you have to know what what that spread is at varying ranges Right, so you start at like say five yards. I think we started at on the cardboard targets

[00:44:45] Then we backed up to 10 and 15 and 20 Now the loads I had always used Uh were a federal Nine pellet kind of El Chippo Double up just very basic Remington 870 doesn't seem to care what you put in it. It will send it out the barrel um They did okay

[00:45:12] They were grouping, you know respectable Me at 10 yards 15 yards or like this 20 yards You're just about off the torso in a couple of spots So that makes me have to reassess. It's 20 yards is not actually that far. It is 60 feet

[00:45:28] 60 feet now granted. I don't have a hallway 60 feet long in my house But what happens if I miss? I have to account for where every one of those nine pellets goes Not like a rifle round where if you fire one round, you've okay, you've missed with one

[00:45:45] Do you know where that one went? Those rounds are going to go kind of wherever they feel like going Uh a lot of the guys there were shooting a federal eight pellet flight control. I want to say Those were having the opposite problem So at five yards

[00:46:05] You're functionally shooting a slug At 10 yards you are functionally shooting this luck At 15 yards you are getting enough separation between pellets that you can count the pellets At 20 yards you're still shooting a pattern like this. Okay That's all well and good if you are not looking for spread

[00:46:31] If you're shooting at something that's 20 yards away perfectly fine but You're kind of losing some of the benefit of the shotgun By having it not spread at all For 10 or 15 yards. I don't know about you My longest hallway is 16 feet Why yours

[00:46:56] Probably down your stairs from your second story. I don't have a second story I'm doing I'm doing the math using my body as a measurement So like the way my house is laid out is like all the bedrooms are down one hallway

[00:47:10] And this is like one of the things that I assessed about this house Yeah, well, this is one of the things I assessed about my house immediately when we were looking at it was I'm like I only need to hold this hallway to fully control the entire house

[00:47:24] Because like you cannot come through the front door And that hallway well you can get about six feet on the on the inside of the doorway And now now you're I've got an eyeball on you and more importantly

[00:47:36] If you want to come to where my wife and daughter sleep you have no choice but to come down that hallway Towards a very angry heavily harmed, you know husbands Exactly, but yeah, I mean you're right. It's probably 20 feet. Maybe not even that. It's a small house 20 feet

[00:47:57] 20 yards Well, but 20 yards I mean, I'd be I'd have to shoot through all the way from one side of my house to the other through the wall and into the Neighbor's house to get 20 yards. Exactly So what for your situation?

[00:48:11] You would probably want something that has slightly more spread than like a federal flight control eight pallet like they were shooting granted it's phenomenal how tight of a pattern that shoots say if you're out in the boonies and your

[00:48:25] You've got a large sprawling ranch home. That's maybe got a 30 or 40 foot long hallway Yeah, maybe that's beneficial there because now you're into like the 10 yards and a little bit beyond range Say you're dealing with coyotes Predators coming at your your animals

[00:48:41] Yeah, you're probably gonna want something that shoots super tight and you can shoot a long way So you can shoot 60 feet from say the house to somewhere out in your field Beyond that you're probably going to use a slug anyway more than likely

[00:48:54] But you know, they they kind of went into pretty deep detail about how to choose The rounds you want how to determine if the rounds are flying consistently out of your shotgun which involve patterning over a few occasions with a few different boxes ideally of different lot numbers

[00:49:12] This also makes a hell of a good argument for I mean You can make this argument with any firearm But it sounds like it's critical with a shotgun that you standardize on one defensive load Well that you standardize on I would say defensive loads for a job

[00:49:30] So bear bear in mind that the average person Has one job Yeah, yeah exactly exactly You know, I guess what's a is like pick pick a load know how that load performs know it inside out know it at different ranges

[00:49:46] Yeah, they're at different ranges and I would say throw two slugs on your carrier Know how they are going to perform at whatever ranges to know what point of games they're going to shoot to Exactly probably the same as buckshot Um, there are actually pretty close

[00:50:02] Um from what people were saying it it seems to me I've been I didn't put a red dot on my shotgun for this class

[00:50:09] I didn't want to spend the money if I didn't know if I was going to be happy with using a shotgun for my primary defensive weapon I know now I have no hesitation with picking up a shotgun

[00:50:22] If I have to go out and really like really far outreach somebody I got plenty of rifles that'll handle that I got rifles that are accurate well beyond my ability to shoot But that's not a defensive use of a firearm

[00:50:34] It's not that's an aggressive use of a firearm. Let's be honest here um but So for instance, I live out in the country And I've mentioned that to you guys before I live kind of in the boonies. We have coyotes around here we have a

[00:50:51] Groundhog that is digging up my neighbor's shed And causing her all sorts of help. I can't send a federal flight control eight pellet load Across my property line in my neighbor's yard to take out that that groundhog for her

[00:51:08] But what I could probably do is pick up say a flight control goose load Because that's going to hold a tight pattern out to quite considerably farther um Coyotes coming on my property. We've had them a couple of times

[00:51:24] We've had we've had sick deer coming onto my property a few times now up by Where angers at trek was saying that he's had bears coming onto his property. He's got a little plot up there and if he's say outside taking a night vision walk as people

[00:51:42] tend to do when they own night vision and he comes up on the bear is his 20 gauge with bird shot for taking out varmints. He may encounter gonna work. No

[00:51:54] He's gonna need a slug or some buck shot his buck shot probably gonna do that great with the bear maybe But everybody I've ever heard is always recommended slugs for bear as big of an expanding slug as you can get

[00:52:07] So it all it all depends on your environment like your environment your your what semi semi urban I mean, I live in the suburbs. Okay, so suburban short ranges Find a shotgun load that spreads reasonably For your distance engagement distances in the house

[00:52:25] Because if it's not spread out enough by the time it hits the various walls of your house, it's going to over penetrate Because that let's see that let's talk about that federal flight control If you were to shoot it into a piece of drywall

[00:52:40] I would say before 15 yards It is probably gonna rat hole through multiple sheets of drywall multiple And I'm sure there are videos online that have Done pretty exasperated testing of that. I know there was Guy on youtube, I wish I could remember his name real big shotgun guy

[00:53:01] Was really pushing number four buck for home defense loads in In urban environments because it goes through about half as much drywall and it's still reasonably effective on a human target in Home defense style ranges

[00:53:18] But because of the lighter weight of the pellets and the slightly wider spread It doesn't tend to punch through quite so much barrier, you know, it's It's going to be one of those things where it's

[00:53:31] Unfortunately, no one is going to be able to give you a good answer on what ammo to use in your shotgun because two shotguns of the same Manufacturer are going to shoot your load differently

[00:53:41] And we did see that in class there was two guys right next to each other with 1301 shooting federal flight control eight pellet And their groups one guy's groups were a half inch bigger than the other On the five-yard line Can't explain it

[00:53:58] That's probably some of the most quality controlled ammunition you can get It's their premiere load You know how this works with long range precision shooting though

[00:54:08] Is that two two rifle barrels coming off the line one right behind the other one could be a dog and one could be You know the best shooting barrel in the whole bunch

[00:54:18] And honestly, you could probably make that dog into a really nice shooting barrel with the right velocity So it's all witchcraft at the end of the day Well, it's it's all it's all steel harmonics

[00:54:30] And a little bit of internalized stresses in the manufacturing process like I said witchcraft Yeah, yeah, but you can you can predict the witchcraft a little come on. You're not you're not giving these steel guys with too much credit here

[00:54:45] I'm not a steel guy. I'm a reloader. I just keep playing with until I find what works I don't understand why it works. I do understand why it works I'm a steel guy. I I cut steel all day every day and

[00:54:57] Taya sometimes we send steel out to heat treat and for whatever reason it comes back Slightly different shape than it was supposed to it just happens And it's it's it's mostly down to stress in the metal and how much of that stress you've removed from where? Now

[00:55:16] hammerforge barrels Hammerforging is going to cause a lot of stress That stress is useful Because it shapes the barrel the way we want But if it's not done consistently or at exactly the right temperature You're going to get slight differences and shotgun barrels being very very thin

[00:55:35] considerably thinner than rifle barrels Produce a more pronounced difference Due to those stresses that action makes a ton of sense when you think about it And it's because of those thin barrels moving as much as they do during firing

[00:55:51] That that you often see anything mounted like you know those barrel clamps you see where It's it's pinching the barrel in the mag two and then you've got a picatinny rail on the side of your flashlight

[00:56:01] Yeah, so that barrel if you ever watch a shotgun barrel when it fires It actually swells and then decreases swells and decreases with the pressure change as well as during the barrel whip that you see on long range guns That apparently will just shock flashlights

[00:56:18] And anything clamped to the barrel. I'm not shocked by that honestly Right, I mean it's it's a violent recoil. I mean you're in order to get to a similar muzzle energy What was I looking at? Uh, let's see

[00:56:32] Yeah, in order to get to a similar muzzle energy, you have to be talking something like a 30 out 6 or 300 wind mag Not quite dangerous game rifles, but right big boys Sure, you can get into dangerous game rifles that have twice as much muzzle energy as a shotgun

[00:56:46] But you're also getting three rounds in a magazine And it's a bolt action rifle because semi-autos will explode Unless they're quite heavy. I mean look at look at how heavy a 50 bmg is

[00:57:00] I mean there are there are some dangerous game rifles that do approach that level of muzzle energy I mean think of the old. Have you ever heard of a stopping rifle? It's essentially it's it's essentially a rifle shotgun yeah

[00:57:15] Stopping rifle is the thing you pull out when something desperately wants to murder you and your entire family and you want it to stop right now The rounds are regularly measured in ounces. Yes, not not ounce ounces I had the displeasure of firing a four-board

[00:57:34] stopping rifle recently that a retired coworker of mine has acquired and It is the most uncomfortable firearm I have ever held Let alone shot

[00:57:45] It it weighed it weighs more than I think double anything I own and still kicks like a mule. Oh my gosh. Yes. Oh my gosh miserable, it's so for instance four-board what that means is four lead balls of that diameter Would add up to one pound

[00:58:04] So it is a quarter pound of lead that you are sending At like 1500 feet per second or so And unfortunately anybody with a with a cursory understanding of physics understands that the amount of force you send that direction pushes back that direction

[00:58:21] Absolutely absolutely and the weight of the rifle helped. I'm sure didn't feel like it but uh, this is like the conversation you and I were having right before we keyed up because uh My family stopped by the USS alabama years ago and Yeah, the

[00:58:38] Second largest deck guns ever employed on a us battleship. I think the isla class was the same diameter But I think a greater powder charge, but I believe that's correct. Yeah But uh, I because i'm a nerd everybody knows me knows i'm a massive nerd

[00:58:54] I did muzzle energy calculations on it because I just got curious and the first problem I had was I had to convert An absolutely ludicrous number of pounds into grain so that the muzzle energy calculator would work And I worked backwards to something like that deck gun has

[00:59:10] 18 500 times the muzzle energy of a 30 odd six the numbers When when you need a scientific calculator to do those calculations, that's when I it would get got silly in a hurry You you require scientific notation

[00:59:25] To keep the decimals on to keep the numbers on the calculator screen. Yeah Yeah, that's also why that's also why a battleship that weighs as much as 10 city blocks moves 10 feet when it fires Exactly exactly everything has a consequence

[00:59:41] You know it's uh, fortunately shotguns are not that violent and if you if you have A little bit of training in how to med mitigate the recoil I would say it was no more uncomfortable to shoot than a semi-auto 308

[00:59:56] So if if you can handle a semi-auto 308 or even a 308 on a ventrest, you're probably gonna be just fine so Coming out of that class. I guess my question is like I know you said the shotgun did great

[01:00:10] You you had some difficulty with some of the reloading under pressure and things like that Oh, absolutely good, but coming out of this class like What's your path forward just more practice or more classes or definitely drills?

[01:00:25] Definitely reloading drills because the thing I seem to fumble with most was ironically loading the tube from the side saddle Just you say ironically that that makes complete sense to me because I mean

[01:00:37] Like I told you what was told to me by an old an old hand revolver guy a long long time ago Was if you're gonna shoot if you're going to shoot a revolver if you're going to carry one You spend half as much time

[01:00:50] Reloading the silly thing is you spend shooting at the range So you better like like for my little j frame. I literally run drills every now and then where I put five empties in the gun and I put in like

[01:01:02] Fired cases that haven't been resized so they're expanded. They drag on the way out, you know, like Fantastic training because and and I I tell people all the time I'm like I do that specifically because with that little short ejector you get into j frame

[01:01:17] If you don't whack that ejector star nice and hard You're gonna end with all five of those shells hung up in the in the uh in the cylinder So you gotta hit it you gotta hit it hard And then I'm reloading from a speed strip

[01:01:32] And that is not an intuitive method of reloading for, you know, four or five rounds So you're fumbling with the silly thing every which way But I'm like but that's that's what you have to do to reload that gun

[01:01:43] And when you only have five rounds in the cylinder, you're gonna be reloading it Not very often hopefully but you're gonna be reloading it if you have to Right, you know, I the reason I say ironically was because I thought what I would have trouble with was

[01:01:56] Under pressure emergency reloads to the chamber Because that's something I had never practiced Not once because there's never an emergency reload during a pheasant hunt No, okay Pheasant got away. There's four other guys in the line. One of them's gonna get it

[01:02:15] But under pressure trying to ensure that number one, you got the shell lined up the correct direction number two You're applying enough pressure in the correct location on the lifter to get it to fold in

[01:02:26] And number three making sure you're pushing it far enough that those little those little Claws inside of there grab the rim of the shotgun and it just doesn't shoot right back out So how many times did that happen?

[01:02:36] On me, uh, I ended up inadvertently ghost loading my shotgun by not by having it eject Fantastically back on top of the lifter But then there was a round

[01:02:48] Where the lifter needed to be so I couldn't load a second round into the shotgun probably three or four times So it's it's one of those things where you definitely have to train in that muscle memory

[01:03:00] On those reloads and that's probably what's going to be one of my biggest focuses coming away from that um Definitely training on reloads You know, I think I am going to go ahead and put a red dot on my shotgun because

[01:03:14] Everybody I've ever seen shoots better with a red dot than without one. It's just a faster sightings system than right now I can't see any argument other than reliability for not doing it um

[01:03:28] And even then if you do happen to shoot the glass out of your red dot It is still a shotgun you you aim down the barrel just like a traditional ribbon ribbon bead sight And you still have a usable shotgun. It's not like

[01:03:45] Say an ar where you don't have if you don't have backup irons and you shoot the glass out of that now you've got Kind of a close range use weapon Well, the shotgun it's it's kind of about the same as it was before

[01:03:58] Even with the rifle plates. They're fairly crude. Basically you have a big ghost ring Exactly It would turn if you knock the glass out of right you have a big ghost ring and you

[01:04:08] And if you've done any shotgun shooting from a bead in a rail, you'll probably be just You know, they do have a qualifier. They shoot at the end, which is pretty fun I think it is let's see uh, it's four rounds

[01:04:28] Over two targets, I think it was the first one then it was three rounds But you've got to do an ammunition selection So your first round is going to get ejected out of the shotgun and you've got to feed another round in

[01:04:43] And then engage your target and then engage your target two more times and then it was Some kind of emergency reload drill one for the qualifier It ends up being like 15 rounds for the qualifier that you 15 rounds that you start with you only actually fire 10 of those rounds

[01:04:58] because some of them are pulled out in the ammo selection parts or the emergency reload parts But it's not bad. You know, it's a six second drill for each one of them and I think that If I remember correctly the instructors demonstrated the drill in

[01:05:14] On a four second timer instead of the students six second timer or five second timer They were on a five second timer And they were done well within four seconds. It's it's I think that pump shotgun semi auto you guys it's achievable. It's very achievable

[01:05:29] I went in there with nearly no experience with my shotgun and I was able to Very easily beat the six second part time No, you're not shooting huge distances. I think most of the time you're working at 12 or 15 yards So it is a relatively small target, but

[01:05:49] That's very doable. I would say for the average person And I think what's noteworthy is that like you you came into the class What was the phrase you used perfectly mediocre adequately mediocre Exactly mediocre or adequately mediocre, you know, I can I could take the shotgun

[01:06:05] I could hit a couple clays hit a couple targets I couldn't manipulate it with proficiency and I feel like after the class I have a foundation built that I can turn into proficiency So you came out of the class definitely with a greater level of comfort

[01:06:21] I mean like you like you said you came out of this you went into this class with limited shotgun experience came out saying I am more the content grab this to you know for defense use

[01:06:30] I would have no hesitation picking up that shotgun if I had to use it under pressure Would I prefer? 30 round ar Yeah, I would I very much would But I unfortunately don't get to make that choice so

[01:06:48] We work with the tools we have if you ever decide to move down to the Gulf Coast. I hope you house hunt Yeah, I know I would say you get used to it after a while, but I would be completely and totally blown sunshine up your behind

[01:07:03] I know plenty of people that have made the move up here because of the heat I've I've lived in this climate for 41 years and it still sucks yeah you know, I

[01:07:15] A lot of people I've gone to a lot of different training classes. I've trained with oh, there's my dog I've trained with five or six different training academies in the last few years and

[01:07:26] Hands down mdfi is as far as their basic class. I haven't taken any advanced ones yet Are hands down the best quality class I've ever taken No, not even close

[01:07:37] Now I've done two gun pistol rifle classes. I've done pistol classes. I've done rifle classes. I've done long range classes Um, this was the safest and most well run class I've ever taken

[01:07:50] I mean honestly, it's kind of just what I expect having talked to trek a good handful of times Yeah, he is he is a no bullshit guy and he is going to give you the truth as as he sees it now

[01:08:03] He will also correct himself if something if he finds he something is incorrect I mean, he's he's one of those guys that he wants to try to give you the best knowledge And training he can in the safest method. He can't which I really appreciate

[01:08:17] Because it is it's deadly equipment. We're playing without there Well, man, I appreciate you coming on this afternoon. I think it's been a good debrief on the class and your experience and If anybody's thinking about it, let's pull the trigger go to one of his classes pun intended

[01:08:35] All right, well, let's go ahead and punt this one out the door matter of facts podcast Nick you don't do social media and I don't blame you because I really That's a shithole most days The best thing it's there for is arguing with people

[01:08:50] We do plenty then the patrons group which is you know, where you can find me nick andrew and most of the other rabble rousers most times so if anybody's curious wants to get to know him, um

[01:09:00] I would say start there. Yeah, that's place to find me the patron. All right Matter of fact going out the door. Good night everybody. Take care and go get a class. Bye everybody