Fieldcraft Survival Gunfighter Carbine Class, Level 1. Eagle Lake, Texas @ The Ranch.
Instructors: Sean Little (SL), AI: Will and Paul Gardner (I am not sure if Paul was officially there as an AI but he's so knowledgeable that he essentially served as one).
Cost: $375
Duration: One day, 9 AM- 2 PM (class actually ended 4:30 pm)
Course Description (from their website): The Gun Fighter Carbine 1 Course is designed to teach you the fundamentals of Gun Fighting in defense of your life. It is designed to teach the intermediate shooter how to move, shoot while moving, fight off the "X", and replicate stress to evaluate your technical gun fighting skills. We will refine the fundamentals and work on further building each shooters ability. This course is for intermediate shooters that understand basic marksmanship and possess safe gun-handling skills, alone and around others. This is not a beginner’s course, if the instructors consider you unsafe or unfit for the course you may be asked to leave at your expense. This is for your safety and the safety of the class. Attending our Fundamentals class or one similar prior is highly suggested.
Bottom Line: The class is a good class for beginners but did not meet several of its stated objectives. Because of that, I would not recommend this class to intermediate shooters as it was advertised. The instructors were clearly knowledgeable and very nice. Facilities were excellent as always at The Ranch. Objectives that were not met included:
This was advertised as an intermediate level course. It is not. It is more a beginner’s class. Of course, my opinion is very subjective, since one person’s “basic” may be another person’s “intermediate.”
Fighting off the “X” was not covered unless I had a brain lapse and totally missed it.
We did not perform any stress drills/evaluation.
My background: As a civilian with no military or LE experience, I have attended 34 classes ranging from combatives, force on force, legal, to firearms. Most of my classes have been pistol focused. I could not find very much on FCS class reviews, especially on this forum so I wanted to share my experience.
Students: There were 18 students- 17 male, one female. Some were veterans of either USMC, Navy, or Air Force. Most were civilians and had no LE or military experience. At least a third had very little carbine experience based on the way they were handling their weapons or had them tricked out.
Primary instructor was Sean Little, who served 12 years as a Marine and scout sniper, Capitol police officer, worked for HK, and is now a firearm instructor. Sean has his own company Vapor tactical (About | Vapor Trail Tactical, LLC (vttactical.com)) but also instructs for Fieldcraft Survival (FCS). FCS apparently has 18 different instructors they contract to teach their curriculum, although you would not know that from their website. I just wish companies were more transparent about who taught their classes. I am fine if it is not your main people, just let me know ahead of time and be upfront about it. Nevertheless, Sean was quite skilled in teaching and obviously knew his stuff. He demonstrated everything. The AI was Will, an active LEO in Austin who was also very skilled. Together, they traversed the line to make sure everyone was safe and gave advice when needed. Paul Gardner also served as an assistant instructor, taking care of the noobies on the right side of the line.
General Course Schedule
9 AM- everyone registered on these fancy tablets attesting that we did not have COVID positive test or symptoms. Introductions and discussions followed regarding safety, ready positions, slings, and why.
10 AM- went down range and had more discussion on slings (single, two-point, three-point), a little on optics (Sean uses a Trijicon LPVO 1-4X), stance, and more on ready positions.
10:55- started shooting. We did CQB zeros. From five yards, we were to aim at the X (center of B8 equivalent) and you should be 2 inches or so below. If you were roughly in the black circle, then you were good to go. There was no lying prone and shooting 50-yard zeros. We also did high and low ready drills, box drills. I shot 70 rds for this portion.
The fact that we did not start shooting until almost 2 hrs later was frustrating, as I think we could have covered all those topics in less time and shot sooner. What bothered me more was the CQB zero as there were some students next to me that clearly were not zeroed and I did not see any corrections made (or if corrections were made I did not see it happen). I understand that zeroing your rifle takes time but isn’t that the most important fundamental other than safety?
At around 11:15 we had a student with a double feed and so shooting paused to discuss double feed causes and management. Different reload techniques (administrative, tactical, emergency) were also demonstrated. We took a break to replenish.
Paul Gardner then shared his story about how he became paralyzed after being shot in combat. His lessons to us were:
-Get a sight picture, even if it is imperfect before shooting.
-Never assume that just because your threat falls that he or she is down and out. Confirm and ask yourself; Did I hit him? Does he need more? Is he down? Am I hit? Is everyone I care about safe?
-Never reload looking down
-Learn how to move off the X. Sometimes running offline is better than standing there and reloading.
Paul’s story makes these lessons more impactful.
12:00 Noon- drilled tactical and emergency reloads. All shooting so far was from the five-yard line, using VTAC targets. I liked how Sean would use either “Target” or “Threat” as a range command. Target meant to shoot the specified number of rounds. Threat meant that you should be ready to shoot, but safety should still be on and finger straight. This made the students pay more attention the specific command rather than automatically fire every time.
1330- discussed cover and concealment and drilled it on steel 25 yards away behind two vertically stacked barrels. There were multiple lines with 3-4 students per line. We all dry fired first to work the mechanics of pieing off angles and shoulder transitions, then live-fired. Will showed us an alternative and effective method of shoulder transition.
1400- class was technically over and one student had to leave. We took a group photo and most of us stayed longer because Sean and Will continued to teach (Thank you!). They demonstrated moving while shooting straight, lateral right to left and then lateral left to right. On the moving straight, one student was always behind the shooter as his/her handler, to make sure they were at the same pace as everyone else. We started from 25 yards out and shot at the VTAC paper targets rather than steel. On the lateral drills, we had to move right to left or vice versa behind multiple columns of barrels, again paper targets. Again, we all dryfired before live fire.
1630- Class adjourned. Will phone recorded everyone to debrief (what you liked, what you did not like). It was hard to think of everything on the spot.
Altogether, I shot 250 rounds.
What I liked
1. Sean, Will, and Paul were skilled, nice, and down to earth. They were strict when they needed to be but amiable when not shooting.
2. Safety was maintained and I never felt endangered.
3. I picked up a new way to shoulder transition.
4. Had a good day practicing fundamentals.
5. I liked the “Target” vs “Threat” range commands that forced us to discriminate
6. Paul’s sharing of his combat life lessons
7. My equipment worked well
8. The slick registration on tablets. Although with everyone touching the same screen it was not exactly hygienic.
What I did not like
1. The lack of transparency on who was teaching the class. If you are going to outsource your teaching, then let me know. Now it is not like they said Instructor A was teaching and instructor B shows up.
However, all their website and video footage shows a small cadre of instructors so as a consumer, that is what you expect.
2. The CQB rough zero and how some students were clearly off.
3. The lack of accuracy accountability. We did not mark off errant misses and we all shot at our neighbor’s targets on the box drills. After a few sessions, it was impossible to tell how accurate you were, especially with the shooting and moving drills. We basically used the same paper targets the entire class and they were all chewed up. We did not change targets even once. For a class that advertises “designed to teach you the fundamentals of Gun Fighting in defense of your life,” accuracy seemed to take a backseat.
4. Discussion of topics that were important but spending too much time on talking. We did not shoot until TWO HOURS after start time. Am I being unreasonable? Perhaps. The upside is I saved more ammo.
5. I wished there were more drills on malfunctions. But I can practice that at home
6. Fighting off the X and stress drills to test your skills were in the course description but not covered. This was actually the part that I was looking forward to the most.
Personally, I had a lot of expectations for this class going in. I have been following Fieldcraft Survival on social media for some time and was quite excited at attending one of their training classes. They seem to sell out very quickly, which would suggest either good marketing, good quality, or both. They have great social media content, slick advertising, and an enticing class description. With 34 classes over the span of eight years, I have attended classes that were great, good, okay, and poor. This class was okay.