Simple SHTF Shooting Routines
Dr. John Woods 11.01.15
If you’re going to keep your skills up, then shooting your prep or survival guns off the range bench is not enough. Certainly any shooting practice is better than no practice at all, but sitting in a chair with your gun propped up on a sand bag popping paper targets a hundred yards away is far from realistic when it comes to real world defense scenarios. When a serious SHTF scenario really unfolds, you are going to want a lot more practical shooting skills than range work.
Aside from taking some formalized defensive shooting courses, which is an excellent suggestion, what else can you and your prepper team do to hone those practical shooting skills? One suggestion is to set up your own walk about course of fire.
A walk-a-what? First, ideally if you have a pre-selected bug out location where you can shoot such as some rural land or out in a forest, you can plan out a walking course of active shooter firing practice. Begin by creating a walking path of at least fifty or 100 yards down through a forested area. The route can be marked with orange tape, but the trail itself does not have to be an improved walkway.
At various junctures along the pathway, set up a variety of targets. These can be simple crosshair paper targets, shoot-to-see targets, zombie characters, or FBI type targets. Place them along the route, both out in the open clearly visible, partially hidden behind bushes or trees, or totally hidden until the shooter working the course walks up on it.
Be creative. You could hang some metal disc “gongs” along the way. Make them 10-inch plates to simulate a kill zone target to hit. If there is a hit, then there will be no doubt as to the shooter’s accuracy as they walk the course. After everyone was walked the course, tally up the hits for each shooter, then move the targets around and start over.
Make sure the course you design is done so with complete safety in mind. The idea is to place targets so they will be a surprise and not become learned. Build in a number of double taps, single shots, magazine changes, and other challenges. These walking shooter courses can be designed for rifle, pistol, and shotgun practice. Change up the course of fire accordingly. Such practice will help develop real shooting skills.
