Marksmanship Matters with Larry & Stacey Mudgett 1-4 Basic Pistol

I’ve just completed day 1 of a 4 day class with Lawrence (Larry) Mudgett, a man well known to many here. (You can google his accomplishments if you’re unfamiliar.) His teaching operation is called Marksmanship Matters, which might give you insight as to some of the focus of the course content.

I first met Larry in Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago, and he was one of my rangemasters at Gunsite a decade later. I’ve done 250-350-499 at Gunsite, spent considerable time with Cooper, and have had reasonably extensive other training as well as having an NRA pistol and personal protection instructor card. If anyone is wondering why I would take a basic course with that background, besides the obvious opportunities to learn new things implicit in any current training, it’s because first and foremost, I’m nothing but a student.

The first day consists of a detailed classroom session covering everything one can imagine is needed for raw beginners, but as expected, I found numerous valuable nuggets and different point of view on things that I have long “known”. I found some very insightful and frank analyses of the various technical matters around shooting pistols in extremis and also found Larry to be a very commanding and passionate speaker on many different matters from the second amendment to citizen concealed carry. There was absolutely no fluff or boring content for anyone in our circles.

This isn’t a high round count blast-o-matic class. A lot of time is spent on the fundamentals. Day two will consist of nothing but manipulations and dry drills, with live fire scheduled for days three and four.

I will follow up as the class progresses.

25 years ago I complained to Larry Mudgett that my academy issued 92F sights were off. He proceeded to shoot a tight, centered group at 25Y and hand it back to me.

Dennis.



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I've been trying to get this into my schedule also. Mudgett is one of the most "BTDT" guys out there.

The first class I attended at Gunsite, API 270 rifle, was 1991 and Larry was in that class.

Day 2-4 AAR this weekend. I’m a little drained after another excellent day off innovative and effective instruction in 100 degree heat.

Time for another dose of Vitamin I, which is more due to my broken back than anything in the class.

In '91, I took a class down at LAPD's firearms & tactics unit that started me on this path. Hees, Mudgett, and others were teaching there then. Sadly, I never got to work with him at Gunsite.

@Archer1440 about ten years ago I wrote a rough outline of a biography of Larry's life and shared it with Larry hoping that he would write a book. I thought the combination of Vietnam service, Gunsite/Cooper, LAPD Metro/SWAT, Academy, CASS, etc would be interesting to many.

In my outline I used the Bomar hostage situation as the "hook" at the beginning of the book to gain the interest of the reader, in which he and John Helms advanced on the hostage taker in the Harries position and ended the ordeal. Larry shared that he had a different "hook" in mind, the time he raced under fire and dragged a wounded LAPD Officer to safety. Larry has truly BTDT, and has something like 360 students involved in shootings. Hopefully one day he writes a book.

I'd also like to get out to Utah for a multi day class with him.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dave Williams

@Archer1440 about ten years ago I wrote a rough outline of a biography of Larry's life and shared it with Larry hoping that he would write a book. I thought the combination of Vietnam service, Gunsite/Cooper, LAPD Metro/SWAT, Academy, CASS, etc would be interesting to many.

In my outline I used the Bomar hostage situation as the "hook" at the beginning of the book to gain the interest of the reader, in which he and John Helms advanced on the hostage taker in the Harries position and ended the ordeal. Larry shared that he had a different "hook" in mind, the time he raced under fire and dragged a wounded LAPD Officer to safety. Larry has truly BTDT, and has something like 360 students involved in shootings. Hopefully one day he writes a book.

I'd also like to get out to Utah for a multi day class with him.

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A movie about Larry’s real-life, documented experiences would scarcely be believed. I hope that book gets written.

Larry has gone far beyond my expectations in terms of insight, innovation and of course, experience. As mentioned previously, I’ve had great experiences at Gunsite with Larry and many other fine rangemasters and instructors.

But this “basic” class has, in much less than two boxes of ammunition, had a momentous impact on my shooting focus and shot process. I will state up front that this was by no means means a “fun” experience, if you count “fun” as converting lots of ammunition into noise and smoke. Instead, what we got was laser-focused analysis of shooting, the process of shooting, and how that process relates to our mindset, skill at arms in combat situations (whether we define that as civil or otherwise) and tasking Cooper’s fundamentals to truly hone the shot process.

With unique and incisive exercises, hands-on training (literally running the gun while the shooter holds it) and many other unique drills and skill building elements, he gets right to the heart of why we sometimes miss- and clearly teaches us to solve the underlying issues. This can be a bit ego crushing for some of us with experience (years of doing it wrong in some cases) but incredibly fulfilling for all by the end of the four long days.

Larry took a group of completely new shooters, one very experienced shooter, and three intermediate shooters and turned each, both men and women, into a safe, competent, precision pistolero after four days, about 85 live rounds, and a whole lot of presses on snap caps.

Peppered throughout with real world examples and fascinating stories, process based teaching, and too much more to recount in a reasonably readable post here. The best experience in shooting I’ve had since my last Gunsite class in 2004, it has truly renewed my fire to improve and become the best shooter I can be.

Yes, it’s a basic class, and at times, it is hard work. But there is so much insight and decades of experience to tap into there. It’s the best foundation I can imagine for those starting the journey to higher levels of training and becoming the best one can be. I’m confident that my future Gunsite events and classes will profit from this experience, and I will certainly take every opportunity to continue the training path with Larry in the future as well.

I hear you Archer, my two classes with Larry were among the best classes I've taken. He really has a way of teaching and getting across combat mindset while he teaches you pistolcraft.

I should add a brief explanation for the round count I mentioned in the class. First, I was amazed that I saw a substantial improvement from the whole class with the modest round count. What I didn’t mention is that many of the students arrived with both equipment and pre class preparation issues that put them behind the curve at the start, in spite of the fact that in the weeks leading up to the class, Larry had sent, multiple times, very clear and detailed guidance on what to bring and how to prepare- and more importantly, what NOT to do- before the course. Unfortunately some people clearly did not heed this valuable advice.

Perhaps as a result, there were several participants who had some difficulty with things at the start, including a few who were, frankly, a little slow to learn, so the normal progression of ball to dummy proportion that most classes get was adjusted to help solve these issues. This means that this specific class had about a 30-40% lower live round count than most. However, that did absolutely nothing to detract from the experience.

And there were equipment issues, again, in spite of Larry very precisely spelling out what works and what doesn’t work so well for a class like this. Two students had to switch pistols, for example. One arrived with a 1911 and some serious self-inflicted training scars. Now, there may be no one as well qualified as Larry when it comes to teaching the 1911, but in this case it was very clear that the student simply could not manipulate the weapon despite great effort by all the instructors. This was frankly a shooter competency issue. By the end, using one of Larry’s personal Glocks, and a lot of coaching by the instructors, he ended up as one of the best shooters and certainly most improved.

In addition, the temperatures were 100 degrees each day with humidity in the low teens. Frequent breaks were needed to prevent heat related issues.

I think it’s a testament to the structure of the curriculum that I got such a breakthrough personally, and all the rest of the class saw dramatic improvement, with less than two boxes of ammo, but it’s perhaps noteworthy that classes exhibiting fewer issues typically see much higher round counts, for those concerned about such things.

Another thing I failed to mention was this was a full capacity class, with a total spectrum of shooter experience biased a bit toward the “never shot before” category. Thanks to Larry and his instructors we had about a 2-1 student instructor ratio, and they spotted EVERYTHING. There were no gaps in the training and no wasted time. And no one felt they needed more live fire than what they got, including myself.