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Thread: Let's Talk Shotgun Training

  1. #211
    Murder Machine, Harmless Fuzzball TCinVA's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DanJ View Post
    How would you do this as a lefty?
    If you are a lefty you use the middle finger on your right hand to drive the shell down or up into the rest of your hand, get it into TC's patented "Flesh Cage" and then insert it into the chamber. Tough to explain on the internet, but I cover lefty loading in class.
    3/15/2016

  2. #212
    Murder Machine, Harmless Fuzzball TCinVA's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rex G View Post
    Perhaps it is because I am mostly-lefty, with long guns, I have not really liked side-saddle ammo carriers, since experimenting with them, a thousand years ago, er, well, in the Eighties.
    That's because most of them are made of a hard material where the corner of them ends up jamming you in the trigger finger using the gun lefty. The Vang Comp shell cards attached with Velcro are soft enough where they don't do that. I find people usually lose their love for a hard-sided shell carrier once I make them use the gun from their left shoulder.

    Really, however, the best “reload” for an empty shotgun, is a serious fightin’ pistol, or, even better, if it is staged nearby, a second shotgun.
    One of the things we do in class is time how long it takes to get a reload into the shotgun vs. getting another weapon involved. For most people with good technique it's quicker for them to get the shotgun back up and running than to get a pistol out and make an anatomically useful hit with a pistol. Especially when we consider that one well-placed round of buckshot is a sufficient dose of cease and desist to solve most problems where it's likely going to take 3-5 shots from a pistol in the goodie box to force that dude to knock it off.

    I am not kidding; I have two M2 Benellis. (I used to really like 870 pump guns, but my pumping hand and shoulder have not aged well, so I am an autoloading shotgun guy, from now on.)
    The only drawback to an autoloader is that each of them has their own manual of arms. Once you learn one and you really have it down, though, they're incredibly easy to run.
    3/15/2016

  3. #213
    Bumping and older thread, because this contains a ton of knowledge. I just read it all.

    Since a few years have passed I have a few questions, the answer to them may have changed.

    What dummy shells are currently the go to? I'm pretty comfortable with shotguns, but I'm looking for dummies to get intimately familiar with the new to me Beretta action.

    Who are the current go-to shotgun instructors? I assume DB, Tom Givens, and the Haughts remain the big names.

    A lot has been discussed in loading. With chamber loading, side saddle brass down vs brass up, and over the top vs underneath... all discussed with awesome in depth knowledge. There was no mention of "match-savers" or similar positioned elastic bands. The 2 shell elastic positioned in that manner seem incredibly valuable to me. I'd love to hear from @TCinVA @Dagga Boy or others with experience.

  4. #214
    @TCinVA and his outfit are highly regarded for training as well now.
    My posts only represent my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of any employer, past or present. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.

  5. #215
    Quote Originally Posted by DanM View Post
    @TCinVA and his outfit are highly regarded for training as well now.
    I meant to include him in the obvious list as well.

  6. #216
    Murder Machine, Harmless Fuzzball TCinVA's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cory View Post
    Bumping and older thread, because this contains a ton of knowledge. I just read it all.

    Since a few years have passed I have a few questions, the answer to them may have changed.

    What dummy shells are currently the go to? I'm pretty comfortable with shotguns, but I'm looking for dummies to get intimately familiar with the new to me Beretta action.
    I've not seen anything that has made me change from Fiocchi's dummies. They are holding up very well for me.

    Who are the current go-to shotgun instructors? I assume DB, Tom Givens, and the Haughts remain the big names.

    A lot has been discussed in loading. With chamber loading, side saddle brass down vs brass up, and over the top vs underneath... all discussed with awesome in depth knowledge. There was no mention of "match-savers" or similar positioned elastic bands. The 2 shell elastic positioned in that manner seem incredibly valuable to me. I'd love to hear from @TCinVA @Dagga Boy or others with experience.
    I frequently get questions about the Match Saver product. As I understand the history of the device, it was conceived in the world of three gun where being competitive required carefully planning your shotgun loading lest you lose precious seconds. If you missed or a target didn't go down when it was supposed to, you had ready access to another shell for a quick load that could literally "save" your match.

    Since a speedy reload was the raison d'etre for the Match Saver, folks naturally assume it's a good option for a quick reload on a defensive scattergun.

    Personally, I'm not a fan. The typical location of the Match Saver actually interferes with non-Match Saver manipulations on semi-automatic shotguns. The typical mounting location is just forward of the ejection port. This places, in effect, a ramp right in front of the bolt handle on most semi-automatic shotguns. If you attempt to charge the weapon at speed the way one would operate the bolt on other weapons with a protruding bolt handle (think M1 Garand, AK, etc) you can actually end up hitting the "ramp" of the Match Saver and overshooting the bolt handle entirely. I've seen this happen repeatedly in class with even very skilled shooters. Further, the gap between the bolt handle on your typical semi-auto and the Match Saver is small, leaving little room for error or reduced dexterity due to cold, gloves, etc.

    It can also interfere with the process of getting another shell into the ejection port when loading from something besides the Match Saver itself. Granted if someone has finely honed reloads it is not going to be much of a danger...but I encounter very few people who have taken the time to finely hone that manipulation. This seems to be especially true for lefties who are already working at a slight handicap to the rest of us.

    It is also a dedicated manipulation that, at best, works one time. For a dedicated three gunner that isn't a problem because they are spending considerable amounts of time working on their manipulations. Anyone who is investing the time and effort necessary to reliably quad-load their shotgun is not going to find the match saver difficult. It has been my experience, however, that most people using the shotgun for defense...even those who are pretty serious about it...are not practicing loading manipulations with anything approaching the frequency it requires to reliably master them. Adding a dedicated manipulation with no commonality to those used for the side saddle that's on their gun doesn't strike me as conducive to ensuring they can get through what's on the gun should it become necessary in an extraordinary situation where what's in the gun hasn't solved the problem.

    They can be fast. And it is probably the fastest single load of a shell into the chamber of an empty gun that is possible...but, that being said, going from a side saddle is not really much slower and the side saddle is a more useful and realistic way to carry extra shells on the gun, IMO. I don't think that the slightly faster reload really justifies the drawbacks I've seen from Match Savers in use.

    I don't recommend them. I certainly don't forbid them, either...but when they do show up in class and I see people struggling with them I make it a point to highlight the difficulty it is causing. I try to avoid being dogmatic about gear because generally speaking when folks are in class running their equipment they get the opportunity to see how well equipment decisions work out. Maybe my material is strange, but generally speaking when a Match Saver shows up the owner doesn't find themselves fond of it by the end of class.

    As for the velcro style holders in the same location, I tried those as well and found that getting the shell out of them reliably to be tough. The options I tried weren't built like the Vang Comp shell cards and as a result they tended to die prematurely when working with dryfire and never gave me a real advantage in speed or a reliable result over using the Vang Comp side saddle.

    And there again, we're talking about a dedicated manipulation for one or two shells versus one manipulation that will work for all the shells in a side saddle. If you like to dryfire and you don't care how many manipulations you learn not a big deal. Most aren't doing that obsessive level of training, though, and for them there's not much upside. All the options I tried allowed the shells to move a lot under recoil, too...so that fast load you are hoping for never really panned out because they wouldn't stick in a consistent orientation.

    Last edited by TCinVA; 03-14-2021 at 02:09 PM.
    3/15/2016

  7. #217

  8. #218
    Quote Originally Posted by TCinVA View Post
    I've not seen anything that has made me change from Fiocchi's dummies. They are holding up very well for me.



    I frequently get questions about the Match Saver product. As I understand the history of the device, it was conceived in the world of three gun where being competitive required carefully planning your shotgun loading lest you lose precious seconds. If you missed or a target didn't go down when it was supposed to, you had ready access to another shell for a quick load that could literally "save" your match.

    Since a speedy reload was the raison d'etre for the Match Saver, folks naturally assume it's a good option for a quick reload on a defensive scattergun.

    Personally, I'm not a fan. The typical location of the Match Saver actually interferes with non-Match Saver manipulations on semi-automatic shotguns. The typical mounting location is just forward of the ejection port. This places, in effect, a ramp right in front of the bolt handle on most semi-automatic shotguns. If you attempt to charge the weapon at speed the way one would operate the bolt on other weapons with a protruding bolt handle (think M1 Garand, AK, etc) you can actually end up hitting the "ramp" of the Match Saver and overshooting the bolt handle entirely. I've seen this happen repeatedly in class with even very skilled shooters. Further, the gap between the bolt handle on your typical semi-auto and the Match Saver is small, leaving little room for error or reduced dexterity due to cold, gloves, etc.

    It can also interfere with the process of getting another shell into the ejection port when loading from something besides the Match Saver itself. Granted if someone has finely honed reloads it is not going to be much of a danger...but I encounter very few people who have taken the time to finely hone that manipulation. This seems to be especially true for lefties who are already working at a slight handicap to the rest of us.

    It is also a dedicated manipulation that, at best, works one time. For a dedicated three gunner that isn't a problem because they are spending considerable amounts of time working on their manipulations. Anyone who is investing the time and effort necessary to reliably quad-load their shotgun is not going to find the match saver difficult. It has been my experience, however, that most people using the shotgun for defense...even those who are pretty serious about it...are not practicing loading manipulations with anything approaching the frequency it requires to reliably master them. Adding a dedicated manipulation with no commonality to those used for the side saddle that's on their gun doesn't strike me as conducive to ensuring they can get through what's on the gun should it become necessary in an extraordinary situation where what's in the gun hasn't solved the problem.

    They can be fast. And it is probably the fastest single load of a shell into the chamber of an empty gun that is possible...but, that being said, going from a side saddle is not really much slower and the side saddle is a more useful and realistic way to carry extra shells on the gun, IMO. I don't think that the slightly faster reload really justifies the drawbacks I've seen from Match Savers in use.

    I don't recommend them. I certainly don't forbid them, either...but when they do show up in class and I see people struggling with them I make it a point to highlight the difficulty it is causing. I try to avoid being dogmatic about gear because generally speaking when folks are in class running their equipment they get the opportunity to see how well equipment decisions work out. Maybe my material is strange, but generally speaking when a Match Saver shows up the owner doesn't find themselves fond of it by the end of class.

    As for the velcro style holders in the same location, I tried those as well and found that getting the shell out of them reliably to be tough. The options I tried weren't built like the Vang Comp shell cards and as a result they tended to die prematurely when working with dryfire and never gave me a real advantage in speed or a reliable result over using the Vang Comp side saddle.

    And there again, we're talking about a dedicated manipulation for one or two shells versus one manipulation that will work for all the shells in a side saddle. If you like to dryfire and you don't care how many manipulations you learn not a big deal. Most aren't doing that obsessive level of training, though, and for them there's not much upside. All the options I tried allowed the shells to move a lot under recoil, too...so that fast load you are hoping for never really panned out because they wouldn't stick in a consistent orientation.

    Exactly the type of stuff I wondered about, and why I asked. Thanks man.

  9. #219
    Quote Originally Posted by bigslim View Post
    The Fiocchi's are quite a bit more inexpensive:

    https://miculek.com/product/fiocchi-12inert/

    The primary difference is the snap caps have the primer pocket cut and a plastic plug to cushion the firing pin, the Fiocchi Action Proving Dummies are like the old Winchester Action Proving Dummies in that they Don't have the primer pocket cut out, the firing pin rapidly dimples in the case head and doesn't cause any problems.

  10. #220
    re: Matchsaver

    I will echo what Tim said.

    I have been running a Matchsaver on my 1301 for about two years now (since I got back from the Rangemaster Shotgun Instructor course) because I thought that if I need a reload, I will REALLY need a reload, and I wanted one as fast as possible, and this seemed to fit the bill. After spending a good deal of time coming up with the right place to mount it and making the mount as strong as possible, as I am wont to do, I went down the rabbit hole of training to get good at it. I spent 4-5 sessions a week in dry firing learning to get that round in as fast as I could ever manage. At this point, I am super confident in my ability to do so.

    And now that I have done that, the MatchSaver no longer is on my gun. I have not found my hand ever running into it (though I can easily see someone doing that especially if they just slap it on and don't really practice much with it), but I concur with everything else Tim said above. I spent a boatload of time honing my ability to load that ONE SINGLE round, and there is no real carry over to other loading methods. While having a single round being able to get dumped in and fired is nice, it is more likely that at the point I need to reload after firing 7-8 rounds, I will need more than just one more, and I am going to have to go back to other ammo carriers to do so. On top of that, I have found under time that spending the same amount of time drilling in the ability of loading from a side saddle gives me a reload of less than a second slower than the magsaver, but I can keep doing that for 4-6 more rounds. So it seems a lot of buck for not much bang.

    But the killer is that the attachment method sucks donkey balls. It is flimsy as hell. Every time I packed it for the range and I pulled it out to shoot, I was half-expecting the magsaver to be ripped off. It is just not strong enough for a life saving piece of equipment. My original mental argument for that was that it's main use for me was as my home defense gun when I can bunker up, so it probably would not have that outside stressor. Unfortunately, "probably", is a sucky thing to count on when my life or more importantly my family's lives may be at stake. It seems monumentally stupid to put time into practicing a single skill with a specific piece of equipment that with just a little bad luck may not be on the gun when I need it the most.

    So, to sum up, for me, after two years of use, it is no on the no-go list for me.
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