I have had a few people ask about my thoughts on the long range shooting class I took April 12 and 13th 2013. This is a brief review of it.
I have been plinking for years at 100yrds even out to 500yrds from time to time. Two years ago I was fortunate enough to have a great shooting buddy introduce me to the 1000yrd obsession. I call it an obsession because it can easily become just that. It seems nothing is the same after ringing steel at that distance. Because of the travel distance and our work schedules I was able to “play at 1000” maybe twice a year. I noticed right away a major key to hitting those elusive steel zombies was reading your wind correctly. Now having said that, there is a host of other things that go into shooting at that distance….but the wind seems to be one of my biggest downfalls.
I started watching videos about long range shooting, reading books, I watched more videos. I figured I could only learn so much that way. I started looking for schools that would allow me to sharpen my wind reading skills and give me some trigger time. I should mention that I also kept price as factor. After some research, I decided I would see if I could get a spot at Dan Newberry’s Practical Long Range Rifle School in Wytheville, Va. After speaking with Dan I felt pretty good about my choice. Dan tries to limit the size of his class to no more than 6 people so that means plenty of trigger time. He isn’t looking to get rich quick and didn’t seem to be a hardnosed drill instructor type over the phone. So it was done, be ready with rifle and ammo April 12 and 13th.
I spoke with Dan a couple of times to confirm my spot and get details to make certain I came ready. One thing about Dan I noticed in the first phone call was his willingness to talk with me and he seemed happy to speak with me each time I called. So now let’s talk about the class experience. We would meet at Dan’s house for our morning class. We sat around a table on his sun porch with sweet tea, water, donuts, coffee…whatever we needed to be comfortable. He covered several topics about ballistics, range estimation, scope adjustments and listened as folks from the class offered up things they had heard or read. Dan mentioned to me that he would run the classroom sessions according to the knowledge of the students. As he progressed though his teaching he always made certain everyone was on the same page and understood before moving on. I was impressed with the level of knowledge several of my classmates exhibited….never having been to a class like this I was uncertain what to expect. After checking to make certain everyone was comfortable with the knowledge that he had imparted upon us, we headed for the range.
The range was about 15 minutes away in a large cow pasture area snuggled neatly at the base of a mountain(might have been a hill to them…but a mountain to a flat lander). Looking out into the pasture one could see many of the short range targets but it took one of the police officers that had attended before to point out the loonggggg range targets. The first order of business was the range rules. Dan didn’t mention how much the cow targets were worth but one of the officers mumbled to me that they might be about $2500.00 worth….Next up the 100yrd zero and Dan asking questions about our set ups to familiarize himself with our equipment and help give us corrections. Upon completion of that task Dan took us into wind indicators and started us shooting at targets. We had wind from 2mph to gusts of about 17mph and switching winds so we had plenty of wind to try and figure out. After a long day of shooting and plenty of trigger time we packed up and agreed to meet at Dan’s in the morning. Dan explained the reason for meeting in class was to debrief a bit. It was a good time to drive home some principles and make certain everybody was happy with the direction. Then off again for the range. The 2nd day at the range was great for proving out what you had learned and building skills. With small class sizes you can pretty much shoot as much as you want….in an orderly fashion of course. We all engaged various distance targets one at a time and helped each other look for mirage and wind indicators to judge our wind. Dan instructed us to make a verbal wind call before the shot…this provided great feedback. I found that by listening to others make their calls and watching the results it helped me get a better feel for the wind.
Certainly, I can’t cover everything in this review but I can in short sum up MY take on MY investment. I felt like I certainly got my money’s worth, I was able to meet some great people with similar interests and we were all there to further our skills. In my opinion Dan truly cares about making certain YOU are happy and learning what YOU want to learn about. For many of us that have read books on the subject and watched video after video Dan probably isn’t going to blow your mind with earth shattering new ideas, but you might hear something you didn’t know. You will get plenty of trigger time and trigger time is always a good thing. If your lucky, you might get to have class with some really great guys that have really nice equipment and you might really enjoy what you really enjoy doing. Banging Steel
Prices are subject to change but here is what it cost me.
2 day Class $300.00
Range fee $40.00
Fuel $100.00
3 nights at a storage building in the KOA $112.00
Thanks for reading my review
Worksalot
I have been plinking for years at 100yrds even out to 500yrds from time to time. Two years ago I was fortunate enough to have a great shooting buddy introduce me to the 1000yrd obsession. I call it an obsession because it can easily become just that. It seems nothing is the same after ringing steel at that distance. Because of the travel distance and our work schedules I was able to “play at 1000” maybe twice a year. I noticed right away a major key to hitting those elusive steel zombies was reading your wind correctly. Now having said that, there is a host of other things that go into shooting at that distance….but the wind seems to be one of my biggest downfalls.
I started watching videos about long range shooting, reading books, I watched more videos. I figured I could only learn so much that way. I started looking for schools that would allow me to sharpen my wind reading skills and give me some trigger time. I should mention that I also kept price as factor. After some research, I decided I would see if I could get a spot at Dan Newberry’s Practical Long Range Rifle School in Wytheville, Va. After speaking with Dan I felt pretty good about my choice. Dan tries to limit the size of his class to no more than 6 people so that means plenty of trigger time. He isn’t looking to get rich quick and didn’t seem to be a hardnosed drill instructor type over the phone. So it was done, be ready with rifle and ammo April 12 and 13th.
I spoke with Dan a couple of times to confirm my spot and get details to make certain I came ready. One thing about Dan I noticed in the first phone call was his willingness to talk with me and he seemed happy to speak with me each time I called. So now let’s talk about the class experience. We would meet at Dan’s house for our morning class. We sat around a table on his sun porch with sweet tea, water, donuts, coffee…whatever we needed to be comfortable. He covered several topics about ballistics, range estimation, scope adjustments and listened as folks from the class offered up things they had heard or read. Dan mentioned to me that he would run the classroom sessions according to the knowledge of the students. As he progressed though his teaching he always made certain everyone was on the same page and understood before moving on. I was impressed with the level of knowledge several of my classmates exhibited….never having been to a class like this I was uncertain what to expect. After checking to make certain everyone was comfortable with the knowledge that he had imparted upon us, we headed for the range.
The range was about 15 minutes away in a large cow pasture area snuggled neatly at the base of a mountain(might have been a hill to them…but a mountain to a flat lander). Looking out into the pasture one could see many of the short range targets but it took one of the police officers that had attended before to point out the loonggggg range targets. The first order of business was the range rules. Dan didn’t mention how much the cow targets were worth but one of the officers mumbled to me that they might be about $2500.00 worth….Next up the 100yrd zero and Dan asking questions about our set ups to familiarize himself with our equipment and help give us corrections. Upon completion of that task Dan took us into wind indicators and started us shooting at targets. We had wind from 2mph to gusts of about 17mph and switching winds so we had plenty of wind to try and figure out. After a long day of shooting and plenty of trigger time we packed up and agreed to meet at Dan’s in the morning. Dan explained the reason for meeting in class was to debrief a bit. It was a good time to drive home some principles and make certain everybody was happy with the direction. Then off again for the range. The 2nd day at the range was great for proving out what you had learned and building skills. With small class sizes you can pretty much shoot as much as you want….in an orderly fashion of course. We all engaged various distance targets one at a time and helped each other look for mirage and wind indicators to judge our wind. Dan instructed us to make a verbal wind call before the shot…this provided great feedback. I found that by listening to others make their calls and watching the results it helped me get a better feel for the wind.
Certainly, I can’t cover everything in this review but I can in short sum up MY take on MY investment. I felt like I certainly got my money’s worth, I was able to meet some great people with similar interests and we were all there to further our skills. In my opinion Dan truly cares about making certain YOU are happy and learning what YOU want to learn about. For many of us that have read books on the subject and watched video after video Dan probably isn’t going to blow your mind with earth shattering new ideas, but you might hear something you didn’t know. You will get plenty of trigger time and trigger time is always a good thing. If your lucky, you might get to have class with some really great guys that have really nice equipment and you might really enjoy what you really enjoy doing. Banging Steel
Prices are subject to change but here is what it cost me.
2 day Class $300.00
Range fee $40.00
Fuel $100.00
3 nights at a storage building in the KOA $112.00
Thanks for reading my review
Worksalot
