Gunsite Academy 2008

This was my second trip to Gunsite Training Academy. Last year I took the 270 General Rifle Course which starts out with the basics and gets you shooting well enough to hit a 9 inch kill zone at 400 yards. This year we asked Gunsite Master Instructor Il Ling New to come up with a custom class designed especially to suit our clients. The idea was to combine a basic rifle class with what Gunsite calls a Hunter Prep Class. So the 170 Rifle class was born! This is the general rifle (270) class reduced from 5 days to 3 days which gets you hitting 9 inch kill zones out to 200 yards consistently. Then we added a 3 day Hunter Prep Class right after the 170 class. Hunter Prep is set up to use "real world" hunting targets everything from flat targets to 3D animals. This includes turning targets, and a robot that is used to simulate an animal coming toward you, away from you and crossing in front of you. It is quite an experience!

A number of the target courses are set up to walk through so you experience targets in realistic hunting environments and at realistice ranges. This also includes targets with horns which require judging which trophy is the bigger animal. There is a little friendly competition involved as well as some timed shooting this helps to simulate the pressure you feel when you are hunting in the field. It's all designed to help you develop the skills you need to be a confident marksman while hunting. When you combine Gunsite's world class instructors with a very well thought out training program it's easy to see why those who take a class at Gunsite gain confidence in their shooting ability. We are planning to put together another TJSC class next Spring so keep your eye on this newsletter for an announcement, if you don't want to wait that long please call the Gunsite Academy at 928-636-4565 and sign up for the next class.