I was fortunate enough to be able to attend this past weekend the First Responder Pistol class put on by Wayne Dobbs, and Darryl Bolke from Hardwired Tactical Shooting or HITS. I'm not ex-military or LE, but just a regular guy who likes to learn and enjoys shooting. I'd say compared to that vast majority on the forum I am really a newbie when it comes to firearms. Most of the other guys who were in the class were pretty experienced so it was a little intimidating and I pretty much just wanted to keep up. One guy who I will call Joe and is a pretty well know knife maker was one of the most accurate shooters I have ever seen, thankfully I was't next to him because that would have been depressing no matter how well I shot. So I just tried to keep my mouth shout as to not say anything to stupid, and give myself away, lol.
I won’t go through in detail every drill as many other class reviews have done this, there are other post like this one I linked that is pretty good in terms of specifics. https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....21-August-2016. Suffice it to say, we covered A LOT of information in 2 full days of training and because of the relatively small class size, we got tons of personalized work with both Wayne and Darryl which really was awesome.
Wayne and Darryl both bring incredible “real world” experience but what was refreshing is both were very down to earth and genuinely really good guys. You can tell they really enjoy the teaching aspect of what they do. They were very approachable and were patient with every question that was brought up. The other thing that is very obvious is that they are excellent teachers. Everything they discussed was very well thought out, explained in thorough detail and explained as to why, how, and application of things in the real world of violence and how to solve problems in the heat of the moment. Anytime their “problem solving” techniques were questioned in applying it in a different way, they were excellent in walking through the “process” of a given technique and illustrating pro’s and con’s and why or why not it would be the best solution. Everything they did there was a reason behind why they taught something and it was so much more impactful for me as opposed to being told just to do something a certain way without the explanation of the why. Good sign of a great teacher.
What was really interesting is that just about every problem solving drill we’d run, they would have a very personal story of how it applied during a real world scenario and a testament to them is that during their careers, they explained how many of the early ways of training as evolved to much better and efficient approaches to problems solving in today’s world. They've clearly have adapted to the evolution tactics in shooting scenarios.
As far as the training is concerned, Wayne and Darryl base a great deal of the two days around assessing the threat or multiple threats, and how to eliminate that threat in the most precise, efficient way. Both have been involved in multiple shootings, and Darryl has actually spent a good part of his career in training and evaluating real life shootings. This experience is unique in that all the training is based on the ramifications of doing things in a very efficient manor vs doing things in which an attorney would have a field day in court because you just dumped a bunch of rounds in a bad guy. One of the favorite drills they teach is the failure drill. Big emphasis on precise, fast but controlled shooting.
We did a ton of shooting, probably a little more than normal due to the size of the class. Fortunately everyone in the class was pretty experienced in shooting so Wayne and Darryl ratcheted up the drills and we touched on some more advanced skills they teach which was a bonus.
We did all the malfunctions drills, and drills utilizing a weapon light. This was pretty good stuff as Darryl has probably some of the best experience in that in the industry of working in night time setting in using a light. Darryl introduced us to the “dentist” which was his old police light that was more weapon than light, pretty funny stories behind that one. We spent a good bit of time on movement and shooting as well, close quarter shooting and ran a bunch of different qualification drills from all types of distances. They varied from very close quarters to 25 yards in different drills.
Both Wayne and Darryl bring different aspects to their training. Wayne is a fantastic shooter, (Darryl is pretty darn good as well). Wayne worked us through a bunch of different qualifying drills, proper technique in shooting,grip, trigger control, etc., where Darryl worked a lot of some of the close quarter, weapon light tactics. Both were very involved the whole time and were able to give everyone individual attention when needed. My training going forward will be very purpose driven and will incorporate a lot of the drills we ran.
Overall this was excellent training and would highly recommend to anyone who is looking for that second level of pistol training. I hope to take their advanced pistol course in the fall. I thought one of the best aspects was the way they weaved in the training with real world examples of their experience. With the two of them you really get a two for one in the sense that it was part pure shooting coupled with lots of tactics. I know this review doesn’t really do it justice but the bottom line is if you want to train and learn with guys with extensive real world experience, that actually apply everything they teach in real world situations, and have the ability to articulate very clearly the concepts they are teaching, and who truly enjoy what they do, than this is a class for you.
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Originally Posted by Dismas316
. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.