Steve Fisher-Practical Shotgun

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  • Never A Victim

    Marksman
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    Sep 25, 2012
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    Hamilton County
    Practical Shotgun-Steve Fisher-5/26/2017

    This is my review of Practical Shotgun taught by Steve Fisher of Sentinel Concepts. This course was taught at the Alliance, OH police range on 5/26/2017. Gear used for this course was a Remington 870 shotgun with an XS Big Dot front sight, SOE single point sling and SOE side saddle. I used Hornady Critical Defense 8 pellet 00 buckshot for the patterning portion of the class. During this course I had no gear failures.

    I have previously taken a one-day shotgun class with Tom Givens in 2016, and I really enjoyed that introduction to an area of shooting that I knew very little about. I say that as a ten-year police officer who carried a Remington 870 for the first 2-3 years of my career. Simply put, I’m still learning how to effectively fight with a shotgun. Fighting with a shotgun is broken down into two parts. The first is physically learning how to feed and shoot the shotgun. The second part is learning what ammo to use in your specific shotgun. This one-day shotgun class by Sentinel Concepts focused exclusively on those two aspects.

    The morning started with a safety lecture and introductions. The morning lecture was very gear centered, which I was not accustomed to. However, most of the talk was about ammo selection and I found it very interesting. Steve even explained that he has a low opinion of the role of slugs, as with a good buckshot selection it is possible to get accurate reliable hits out to 50 yards. Initially I disagreed, and later I was proven wrong. Shotgun training has taught me that most of the myths I have heard about shotgun fighting are incorrect.

    After the morning lecture, we went to the range to shoot buckshot. We shot five separate distances, starting at 5 yards and going back to 25 yards. The Hornady ammunition I used for the class performed well, but not as well as I would have liked. I will continue to search for another load that will give me the performance I am looking for. Several students used the same buckshot ammunition I was issued at the beginning of my police career—with absolutely horrible results. I am thankful that I never had to shoot at anyone with that specific ammunition, as I saw every other student dealing with the impossible task of putting the entire payload on their target past 15 yards. I thought back to the training I had received at the beginning of my career that taught me to reach for a slug at anything beyond 15 yards. After the morning session I realize why I was taught this—because we were issued buckshot ammunition that was incapable of making this shot. Steve even took it one step further by using Federal #1 Buck and making a hit on a target at over 50 yards. Not only was he able to hit the target, all of the pellets were on the human portion of the target, which really had me questioning the need for a slug on my side saddle.

    After we came back from lunch we began a series of “rolling thunder” drills. For those unfamiliar, these drills involve a line of shooters shooting in various sequences that ultimately require quick reloading and mental focus of how many rounds to shoot. After the first few sequences of these drills, Steve told us we would be doing these same drills for the entire second half of the day. Steve went on to explain that his “Practical” shotgun class was set up to focus on the two most important parts of how to fight with a shotgun—learning how your shotgun patterns and how to feed it and keep it running. Over the next 3 hours we shot almost 300 rounds of birdshot using different loading and shooting techniques. I was very excited to get as much hands on experience loading, shooting, and loading my shotgun again.

    This course taught me a lot of things. I learned that I am still searching for the perfect load of buckshot. I learned how to practice on my own more efficiently. I learned that most remaining myths that I still believed about the shotgun are most likely false. I highly recommend this course.
     

    Jackson

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    Mar 31, 2008
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    Never A Victim is training everywhere and writing great AARs. Great post. I would rep him but I must have repped his last one because the forum won't let me.
     

    Yamadog35

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    Nov 23, 2008
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    Steve even took it one step further by using Federal #1 Buck and making a hit on a target at over 50 yards.

    Thanks for the review. I would love to take a class like this at some point. Can I assume this Federal load was the Flight-Control? I have that in #1 and 00. I've not gone out nearly that far, but at distance out 40 to 50 feet the impact when patterning looks almost like a slug hit.
     

    Coach

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    Apr 15, 2008
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    Good AAR

    What was the Hornaday ammo that you used?
    What are the weak point or points on slugs given in class?
     

    cedartop

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    Apr 25, 2010
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    Thanks for the review. I would love to take a class like this at some point. Can I assume this Federal load was the Flight-Control? I have that in #1 and 00. I've not gone out nearly that far, but at distance out 40 to 50 feet the impact when patterning looks almost like a slug hit.

    If you can't make it to one of Steve's classes, there is always this one.
     

    rhino

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    Mar 18, 2008
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    Good AAR

    What was the Hornaday ammo that you used?
    What are the weak point or points on slugs given in class?

    I'd like to about that as well. FWIW, Louis Awerbuck always had two slugs in a kydex carrier on his belt.
     

    Jackson

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    I'd like to about that as well. FWIW, Louis Awerbuck always had two slugs in a kydex carrier on his belt.

    Louis also commented on some patterns in one class indicating that he preferred some spread over the super tight patterns of the flight control and similar loads.

    I believe he also said that he only uses slugs in his shotgun. So there is that.
     
    Last edited:

    rhino

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    Mar 18, 2008
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    Louis also commented on some patterns in one class indicating that he preferred some spread over the super tight patterns of the flight control and similar loads.

    I believe he also said that he only uses slugs in his shotgun. So there is that.

    I can confirm the quote about Louis and slugs.

    Yep.

    When you have to really, really shoot something, a 12ga slug shoots it pretty well.
     

    Never A Victim

    Marksman
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    12   0   0
    Sep 25, 2012
    294
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    Hamilton County
    Good AAR

    What was the Hornaday ammo that you used?
    What are the weak point or points on slugs given in class?

    It was the versa tight wad Hornady 8 pellet buck. Steve said it was the higher velocity buck that was designed for semi auto shotguns. Apparently they make a lower recoil of the same load and I think that might have patterned better. I bought some Federal 9 pellet 00 buck flite control today so im gonna see if that works any better.

    Since I posted this review on this site and a few other places, Ive had a few discussions (some civil and some not so much) about what I said about slugs. I guess I should say that I was thinking about the role of a shotgun as far as my home defense. In this case, I dont see a need to run slugs on my shotgun. However, after I have had time to re think about this, Im not ready to say that I would never use a slug if I had a shotgun in my hands outside of my house. Needless to say, its something im still considering and hopefully with more training I can decide how I really feel about the subject of slugs.

    Thanks for the nice words everyone about the AARs. I have at least 3 more courses coming up this year that I will write reviews about as well. Shout out to my wife for proofreading them for me so I dont sound too much like a cop and a Marine.
     

    Flagg

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    Sep 26, 2010
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    Thanks for this. How'd the single point sling treat you? I use to run one on my shotgun, but it would bang my knees when slung.
     

    Never A Victim

    Marksman
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    12   0   0
    Sep 25, 2012
    294
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    Hamilton County
    Thanks for this. How'd the single point sling treat you? I use to run one on my shotgun, but it would bang my knees when slung.

    I didn't have a problem with the sling, but there wasn't a bunch of movement in the class. However, all I run is single point slings on all of my long guns, so it doesnt bother me as long as its an SOE sling. I've tried other single point slings and the actual sling makes a difference.
     
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