DARC Industries (Tuffbroadhead) Combat Effective Handgun 1 Course Review
Let me start this off with some background about myself. I have been around firearms all my life, for fun dad and I would run out to our own range on average 2 times a week and shoot all day. I’ve carried on this passion into my adult life and am currently sharing it with my 3 year old son. I’m definitely not a “newb” to the scene and have a pretty good grasp on all things firearms related, at least I thought before the training. When my ISD went concealed carry I was put at the helm to design and implement a program in order to train, qualify, and make sure we were all ready to carry on our campuses. I started us with the basics months ago and have progressed a long way. (Seriously I could tell you some stories, confidentiality agreements says I cannot, but man I’ve seen some stuff now). All that being said I was nowhere ready for all the things thrown at us in this class.
I am going to start the review off with Dale; professional, abundant communication, and a wealth of knowledge in his field. He made this thing a breeze. He came out to us and preformed the class without a single hitch. He brought everything we needed and everything was ready to roll. He was definitely on top of his game. If any of y’all have ever talked to Dale you will know right away he can handle it. I texted him an hour before he was supposed to arrive and make sure he knew how to get there, his reply: “I’m already here brother.”
Now to the class, 600 rounds, 3 magazines, holster, hearing and eye pro, I could see right away this was going to take most of far beyond our experience levels, but I had no idea of what was in store for us. He eased us into class starting off with some basic standing trigger control stuff then moved right along into increasingly harder stuff. Shooting with the strong hand only, then the weak hand only (this stinks if you’ve never done it, do it, you will know what I am talking about), kneeling, supine (on your back), and prone. We began to get better at manipulations and working through those and again it gets harder. Dale introduces us to dummy rounds, brightly colored rounds that make your life hell. We do more of the same drills but while negotiating failures in our weapons.
We progress into engaging multiple targets, up until this point it had been pretty straight forward, find this on the target and shoot it, fix failures and shoot it again, Easy enough. Then it became find this on 3 different targets and shoot each “x” number of times. THEN, (I am going to try to refrain in writing “then” a lot but dale just kept pushing us further out of our comfort zones) so THEN we had to engage those targets faster.
At this point we are all in WAY over our heads but we aren’t drowning, dale is working with each of us and we are excelling rather rapidly. So of course it is time to step it up a notch, which means VTAC barricade. At first it is quite intimidating, it has these weird cut outs and stair steps I am not really sure how to even face the thing. But Dale walks us through it and its time to go. Down range of the VTAC barricade is a steel target and that’s what we need to ding to move to the next step of the barricade. If any of you have never used one, this thing is AWESOME and now we are in the process of building 2 to practice with at home. Anyways, you start out standing, to kneeling, then in some weird moves that nobody has a name for, and end up lying down shooting under it VERY fun, but VERY hard.
Alright so we have this done and we are feeling pretty confident in ourselves, which means two things Dale is an awesome teacher and he is about to make it HARDER. (Ok I MIGHT have instigated this one a bit) I’m standing at the barricade for the second time and ask in kind of a smart *** way (No way right? Me? A smart ***?) If we are going to do it the same way we just did it. Of course Dale makes it harder and has us shoot left handed on the left handed ones and right handed on the right handed ones (my team was happy I had opened my mouth)
Onto moving, Dale has now decided it would be good for us to move around, up until this point we had been pretty stationary. He sets up the steel target behind some other targets and walks us around in random lines while yelling commands at us, and pulling us around by the necks of our shirts. I didn’t look but I know he was grinning ear to ear as he was running me around. Oh and to make it just a bit tougher, he added another step, when moving side to side we had to shoot with the hand closest to the target. So that means more left handed shooting for me.
At this point our minds are completely blown, but we are far from done. It is time to get up close and personal. Touching the target and holding down the back of the slide with my right thumb it is time to discharge my weapon. I know right? That’s nuts, I ask many questions and finally just end up doing it. To my surprise my hand is still intact, I didn’t blow my thumb off, but my hand is fist deep in my paper bad guy. Rip it out rack another round walk backwards and finish the guy off.
Now to some chairs, draw, get on target, and out of a chair in one motion. Bad guy walks in, your setting at your desk, you need to engage target. The first group (myself included) just shot the bad guy and stayed seated, but it’s probably important to get up as Dale noted so then the race was on. That was rather straight forward and we progressed to running through a crowd (we lined up in a running backs gauntlet pushing the guy running through us), clearing the crowd, drawing your weapon, firing, giving directions and backing everyone out.
In the end I had blisters on my trigger finger, dirt all over me, black hands, sweat drenched, but owned a wealth of knowledge and had a direction to lead my team in the future. If you guys haven’t taken this class, DO IT!! If you carry concealed daily and just go out and shoot at the range there is no way you are as prepared as someone that has gone through this class. I apologize for getting a little long in my response but this class had it ALL and really shed light on things we should focus on. Due to confidentiality I can only include pics of me and Dale so sorry for our ugly mugs.
Let me start this off with some background about myself. I have been around firearms all my life, for fun dad and I would run out to our own range on average 2 times a week and shoot all day. I’ve carried on this passion into my adult life and am currently sharing it with my 3 year old son. I’m definitely not a “newb” to the scene and have a pretty good grasp on all things firearms related, at least I thought before the training. When my ISD went concealed carry I was put at the helm to design and implement a program in order to train, qualify, and make sure we were all ready to carry on our campuses. I started us with the basics months ago and have progressed a long way. (Seriously I could tell you some stories, confidentiality agreements says I cannot, but man I’ve seen some stuff now). All that being said I was nowhere ready for all the things thrown at us in this class.
I am going to start the review off with Dale; professional, abundant communication, and a wealth of knowledge in his field. He made this thing a breeze. He came out to us and preformed the class without a single hitch. He brought everything we needed and everything was ready to roll. He was definitely on top of his game. If any of y’all have ever talked to Dale you will know right away he can handle it. I texted him an hour before he was supposed to arrive and make sure he knew how to get there, his reply: “I’m already here brother.”
Now to the class, 600 rounds, 3 magazines, holster, hearing and eye pro, I could see right away this was going to take most of far beyond our experience levels, but I had no idea of what was in store for us. He eased us into class starting off with some basic standing trigger control stuff then moved right along into increasingly harder stuff. Shooting with the strong hand only, then the weak hand only (this stinks if you’ve never done it, do it, you will know what I am talking about), kneeling, supine (on your back), and prone. We began to get better at manipulations and working through those and again it gets harder. Dale introduces us to dummy rounds, brightly colored rounds that make your life hell. We do more of the same drills but while negotiating failures in our weapons.
We progress into engaging multiple targets, up until this point it had been pretty straight forward, find this on the target and shoot it, fix failures and shoot it again, Easy enough. Then it became find this on 3 different targets and shoot each “x” number of times. THEN, (I am going to try to refrain in writing “then” a lot but dale just kept pushing us further out of our comfort zones) so THEN we had to engage those targets faster.
At this point we are all in WAY over our heads but we aren’t drowning, dale is working with each of us and we are excelling rather rapidly. So of course it is time to step it up a notch, which means VTAC barricade. At first it is quite intimidating, it has these weird cut outs and stair steps I am not really sure how to even face the thing. But Dale walks us through it and its time to go. Down range of the VTAC barricade is a steel target and that’s what we need to ding to move to the next step of the barricade. If any of you have never used one, this thing is AWESOME and now we are in the process of building 2 to practice with at home. Anyways, you start out standing, to kneeling, then in some weird moves that nobody has a name for, and end up lying down shooting under it VERY fun, but VERY hard.
Alright so we have this done and we are feeling pretty confident in ourselves, which means two things Dale is an awesome teacher and he is about to make it HARDER. (Ok I MIGHT have instigated this one a bit) I’m standing at the barricade for the second time and ask in kind of a smart *** way (No way right? Me? A smart ***?) If we are going to do it the same way we just did it. Of course Dale makes it harder and has us shoot left handed on the left handed ones and right handed on the right handed ones (my team was happy I had opened my mouth)
Onto moving, Dale has now decided it would be good for us to move around, up until this point we had been pretty stationary. He sets up the steel target behind some other targets and walks us around in random lines while yelling commands at us, and pulling us around by the necks of our shirts. I didn’t look but I know he was grinning ear to ear as he was running me around. Oh and to make it just a bit tougher, he added another step, when moving side to side we had to shoot with the hand closest to the target. So that means more left handed shooting for me.
At this point our minds are completely blown, but we are far from done. It is time to get up close and personal. Touching the target and holding down the back of the slide with my right thumb it is time to discharge my weapon. I know right? That’s nuts, I ask many questions and finally just end up doing it. To my surprise my hand is still intact, I didn’t blow my thumb off, but my hand is fist deep in my paper bad guy. Rip it out rack another round walk backwards and finish the guy off.
Now to some chairs, draw, get on target, and out of a chair in one motion. Bad guy walks in, your setting at your desk, you need to engage target. The first group (myself included) just shot the bad guy and stayed seated, but it’s probably important to get up as Dale noted so then the race was on. That was rather straight forward and we progressed to running through a crowd (we lined up in a running backs gauntlet pushing the guy running through us), clearing the crowd, drawing your weapon, firing, giving directions and backing everyone out.
In the end I had blisters on my trigger finger, dirt all over me, black hands, sweat drenched, but owned a wealth of knowledge and had a direction to lead my team in the future. If you guys haven’t taken this class, DO IT!! If you carry concealed daily and just go out and shoot at the range there is no way you are as prepared as someone that has gone through this class. I apologize for getting a little long in my response but this class had it ALL and really shed light on things we should focus on. Due to confidentiality I can only include pics of me and Dale so sorry for our ugly mugs.
Attached Files
That looks like lots of fun.
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