Sunday night: arrive at NRA's Whittington
Center, a 33,000 acre facility near Raton
NM, containing multiple huge shooting ranges and supporting facilities.
Every day started with a classroom session with Col. Cooper.
Sight in those rifles! Get that point of impact correct from the bench
before your own posture gets involved.
The scenery was stunning at any given moment.
Every day had time to yak and have hardware worked on by the very competent
instructors.
Learn various postures: prone, military squat, sitting, standing, offhand...
...and get lots of practice with them.
A field full of Steyr
Scouts was nice to see! About 4/5ths of the students had this fine
rifle, designed by Cooper himself.
Out there in the treeline are deer, bear, and other medium-sized game
targets. (No, not the blue black or white targets you easily see in this
picture...I mean way out there.) The farthest is 600 yards: hit
it while using the side of a post for stability.
Practice body shots from 50 yards, and head shots from 25 yards...as
fast as you can (before he gets you first!).
Yours truly looping up for a rapid shot. I've got 1.5 seconds to go
from rest to hitting center of mass.
My entry in a shoot-off (5 attempts, 50 yards, very few seconds for
each) got in a four-way tie for first...
...which let me (and the other top six shooters in that bout) shoot
Cooper's "heavy" rifle, a massive .460 caliber big-game gun.
The "Rifle Bounce": as fast as you can, with 6 shots or less, hit targets
at 100, 200 & 300 yards (yes, they're out there), from standing, sitting,
and prone respectively.
Often there was brilliant sunlight in one section of the sky and a raging
thunderstorm in another. This country is big.
The Cooper Rifle Walk: simulated hunting. There's target animal figures
within a few hundred yards of that trail, and you must identify, locate
and hit twice in a hunterly fashion. Thus is the goal of the course: to
rapidly identify, acquire and solidly hit a target under various circumstances
at unknown distances.
The extreme in fast acquisition and accurate shooting: blasting flying
4" clay disks out of the sky. (It helps to have a mountain as a backstop.)
(Thank to Peter Lessler)
After-hours socializing with like-minded folk is valuable.
Competition: rapid acquire-and-hit tests.
Someone managed to do as well as he possibly could; most excellent shooting!
A target signed by Cooper is quite a prize.
Final competition: hit the 100 yard target standing, then the 200 yard
target as you like, before your opponent does.
Double-elimination process determines the top three shooters.
Jeff Cooper, grandmaster shooter, and me, post-clueless newbie. What
an experience to learn from him!
Finally, the happy exhausted graduates.
(Thanks to Peter Lessler)