The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Shotgun Shenanigans

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

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Welcome back to the Matter Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwfpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rabelais, and my co-host, Andrew Bobo, is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. So Andrew's not here. He's fired for the night. A.K.A. I made him too tired.

Well, no. Y'all were too tired is the reason why we didn't do this show over the weekend. He has this boring adult thing called a job where they expect him to show up on their schedule and not his. It's really inappropriate. I don't recommend anybody grow up and get a job, but everybody seems to want to do it regardless of what I advise. Probably to fund the ammo. That might be a good point. Anyway, Nick is joining us this afternoon.

He and Andrew went to an MDFI class to play around with shotguns, and I saw an opportunity to have him come on and talk about like his experience how he feels it went what blew up what fell apart and then in the process probably try to talk me into a 12 gauge because i've taken immeasurable heat over the years for not owning a shotgun as if i've you know spit on people's mothers and public and done all sorts of horrible unspeakable things but like you know, Nick, like you and I were talking about before the show started, I'm not a shotgun guy. I fired them. I know how to run them.

I'm not a moron. I just, the shotgun has never spoken to me and said, Phil, I, you, you want to put me in your closet. I'm a rifle guy at the end of the day. Nothing wrong with being a rifle guy, man. I was too. I was too. I had a shotgun for the same reason. Most people had a shotguns. I got invited to go bird of the day. Nothing wrong with being a rifle guy, man. I was too. I was too. I had a shotgun for the same reason most people had shotguns. I got invited to go bird hunting one day. That's really what it was. I bought a Remington 870 about 20 years ago.

Yeah, yeah, almost 20 years ago. And went pheasant hunting. And from the rest of the time, it mostly sat in my closet, almost exclusively. And then the Illinois Assault time, it mostly sat in my closet, almost exclusively. And then the Illinois Assault Weapon Band got put in practice. And if you do keep your AR, 10-round magazine, 10 rounds of 5.56 is not a lot. It's not a lot. You can run out of that real quick. And 5.56 is a notorious habit of penciling through people and not doing a job in the defensive situation. True.

Fantastic platform. Acceptable cartridge. Yeah. 12-gauge, on the other hand. Still limited to five rounds in the tube because Illinois has decided to be a cuck. But those rounds are an order of magnitude larger. Oh, yes. An order of magnitude more effective, especially in short ranges like for home defense.

Now, you say you're not a shotgun guy. I think that's because you haven't taken Trek's class. I really do. I mean, there's a possibility there because, you know, being on the wrong end of the country from Trek, going up to Michigan to see him is a two-day trip and two days back, which basically means a week off of work just for me to go see the man, unfortunately. Oh, for certain it is. Now, granted, there's probably a class like Trex in your area that you could find,

and heck, he might even know somebody he'd recommend for you. If I tell you this, I was acceptably mediocre with a shotgun when I started this class. That's high praise, though. I was acceptably mediocre. I mean, I could hit a clay more often than I'd miss. You know, maybe 60% of them I could hit. I can shoot a shotgun at a static target and hit it most of the time. I could reload it, but not under pressure.

And I really didn't understand how to manipulate it correctly to really employ its full benefit i mean shotgun recoil kind of sucks right yeah fair bit doesn't have to there is a way of mitigating the recoil that truck teaches a class he calls uh calls it ripping the gun basically it's a it's a push pull method pulling it into your shoulder like you do with any other rifle but at the same time you are pushing it forward with your support hand as hard as you can while you're pulling the trigger that cuts the recoil down to the point where i was only a little like you you noticed you had gone to the range I wasn't hurting like I usually was after around the sporting place what's around the

sporting place 40 50 this was 300 so I mean not even a bruise from 300 rounds 12 games that's actually impressive because I mean I I was I was blown away with how big of a difference it made. I mean, I've bruised my shoulder with a.308 Winchester doing load development where you just sit out there and, you know, 50 rounds downhound range from a prone on a shooting mat. That will be enough to leave a nice little greenish-purple mark on your shoulder. My.300 Win Mag does the exact same thing.

In about five rounds instead of 50, I'm sure. Well, you're good for about 20, and then it starts to hurt. Of course, then you can taste a little bit of copper, too, if you're really sending the rounds. But I think that that shooting technique would really help, number one, help your enjoyment of shooting the shotgun and learning how to properly use the ability a shotgun has to swap out rounds for different purposes. teaches you, you know, they start off pretty slow. They do their, their medical brief, their medical and safety brief, which takes an hour. And it is not a boring hour. You are, your attention is held the entire time. It is the most comprehensive safety brief I have ever sat through for a class. I mean, I've, I've taken pistol, rifle classes. I've taken long-range marksmanship classes.

I've never had a medical brief or a safety brief taken that seriously and done that. So just side note, was this your first MDFI class? Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah, it was my first MDFI class. Many of you know I'm from Illinois. Drove up from Illinois. It's about a six hour drive it was worth every hour of the six hour drive to come up to and i'll probably be going up for some more here but um you know they walk you through the medical brief walk you through the safety brief

then he does what he's called the show and tell where everybody lays out all their equipment all their shotguns in this case and they talked over the differences between them all i did not know there was such a thing as a smart and a dumb shotgun you familiar with the term okay most pump action shotguns are what are called dumb shotguns okay every time you cycle the action it's going to load a shell out of the tube right there are semi-automatic shotguns that are dumb, just like that. Anytime you stroke the bolt, it's going to load one from the tube. Then there are smart shotguns like the A300 and the Brenna 1301 and a bunch of other ones. Those don't have to load from the tube. They can tell the difference mechanically between

a fired round and you grabbing the bolt and clearing a round. So you can, if you want to, if you're sitting there and you've got a shotgun with your bolt locked forward, empty chamber, say you don't feel like storing it with a loaded chamber in the house, right? Break in, all right. Hit the action release, cycle the bolt, it'll load a round. If you skip the step of hitting the action release, you can load a round of your choice off your side saddle depending on the situation. So let's say you're up in your cabin out in the boonies

and you've got, say, a large dangerous predator coming towards your animals whatever your dog your cat your chickens you're probably at 25 yards i mean you might be okay hitting it with buckshot but then you might also hit your chicken coop so what you do we'll let action back drop in a slug let it fly home bam done So you don't have to fully unload the tube or load it from the tube. That's interesting. It must mean that it's holding the lifter. It is. When you don't hit the action release.

Yeah. So there's a little button on the underside of the A300s that if you hit that, it will act as though you have fire to run. If you don't and you just you're just running the action you can run that action as many times as you want to get that round cleared out of there and it's not just going to bump another round up into the tube so say you have like a bad primer or something like that you can rack that back not have it dump another round up into the chamber on top of it and you can actually assess what's going on instead of then now you got a shell coming out you got another shell coming up

getting things all confused around it's actually it's actually really nice very convenient yeah i'm just thinking like manual of arms wise showing clear mitigating that scene that sounds like something that's so common sense. Everybody, every manufacturer should be doing it. Honestly, it's, it's in a lot of the newer shotguns,

even some of the newer pumps from what they were talking about is because it allows you number one, to safely clear the chamber and not have another round loaded in from the magazine that you cannot remove. And it allows you to do some little different things with round selection so you know if you if you you're out deer hunting and you've also got rabbit tags and you want to pull a slug out drop birdshot in you can go ahead and do that very easily without having to slap one in the

tube and then cycle it and chuck a round out on the ground. It's interesting. So you attended the class with an A300. Yep. Bone stock. Benelli. Beretta. Beretta. Yeah.

Benelli. No, I don't have Benelli money. The two B names always click together in my brain. They both sell all the shotguns. Beretta. Yeah. Vanilla. No, I don't have vanilla money. The two B names always click together in my brain. I know, and they both sell all the shotguns. Yeah. That's the other problem. So, I mean, what, I mean, are we talking about, like, you just came into class with a Bonestock A300? Had you already started fooling with it? The only thing I added was a sling.

Well, and a quick-release mount for the sling. Okay. a sling well and a quick release mount for the sling okay but so sling sling is mandatory in my world it really is a long gun for any long gun that you're going to take to a class it is just from the sake of being able to just let the gun hang when you're when you're taking a break you know the so the a300 is kind of like the i would call it like your entry-level tactical semi-automatic shotgun. Once you get away from like the Turkish stuff and the pumps. It is, I would say, it's not fancy. I'll put it that way.

It's not a fancy shotgun. It's got a pretty traditional stock. It's got a pretty traditional forend. It does have rifle sights on it, which is nice, especially in the Ultima Patrol. I can't actually get the Ultima Patrol, so I have to have the A300 Patrol on the Ultima because the Ultima comes with an extended mag tube. I know. Tell me about it.

It was a bear-giving one. They don't make very many that way. But really, you can go to that class with a pump-action shotgun. Trek was saying that he had had people come with a goose gun with a 28-inch barrel. There's really no shotgun that's wrong for the class. Just bring what you have. So, like, if you have a anything anything but probably like a side by side but if you have even an older 12 gauge 870 or mossberg 590 or something

like that you'd probably be just fine somewhere out there there's a single action society shooter who's like i bet i could talking about the side by side i bet you they could. I know a couple of cowboy action shooters that would keep up just fine. So I bought that shotgun because of Illinois' assault weapon ban changes and the fact that I wanted something with a little more punch since I couldn't have extra rounds. I didn't want to mess around with it too much because I didn't know what I needed. So I figured I would take that class. i didn't know what i needed so i figured i would take that class and uh the the a300 and i believe the 1301 comes stocked from the factory with a a piece of velcro in the box that piece of velcro

is cut to fit perfectly on the receiver i don't know what youtube's guidelines is but i'm not going to go grab the shotgun right now because it's loaded um that piece of velcro on the box perfectly fits the receiver it's cut out laser really nice it'll hold those uh se tech shotgun cards or anybody else's shotgun cards those uh i got the elastic ones fantastic excellent for carrying extra rounds on the gun i I didn't have a single problem with them flying out. They retained much better than I thought they would. I think that if you were to just want to pick up a shotgun and not do anything to it, A300, perfectly acceptable. If your budget allows it, the 1301 has a few nicer things. Apparently, the gas system handles recoil a little bit better

and mitigates it a little bit better with higher loads, but Andrew would be able to tell you better about that one. The way I try to get into guns is I will buy what I believe to be a middle-of-the-road gun. Not cheap, not the new hotness 1301ss which there were a lot of in the class and they performed very well but my 900 1301 was keeping up perfectly fine you know what a lot of the drills that we were doing it was a lot of so one shot, do a reload to an empty chamber. Do a couple shots with some number of rounds in the gun,

and if you happen to empty it, you've got to top off and finish the string with emergency reloads. However, you're going to do it feeding off the gun. One of the ones that Andrew and me really enjoyed, Rolling Thunder, everyone is in a line down the range. First guy on the left fires one round. Then it goes one round each down the line. Then once the end guy is done, it comes back two rounds each down the line,

then three rounds each down the line. Got up to seven. Well, my shotgun doesn't hold seven rounds. It holds six. Five in the tube, one in the chamber. So I'm doing an emergency reload in the middle of the shot string, and I need to do it quick enough that the other people are also having to do reloads, even though they have higher capacity guns than me. And all the while, the shooting never stops. So you're loading the entire time

you're not fired. Yeah, I know that was something that you and I talked about. Like, again, me not being a shotgun guy, but me being a revolver guy on occasion. And something that had been told to me a long time ago by another revolver person. And this really applies to, like, revolver shotguns and lever actions. Is if you're, you know, you have the old adage, if you're not shooting, you the old adage if you're not shooting you should be moving if you're not moving you should be reloading it gets inverted when you're talking about low capacity firearms if you're not shooting you better be moving and reloading like in other words the idea is that you should be topping the gun up anytime you're not engaging

a target like if you get any brief breaking the action, you get a little bit of cover, you better stop the gun up. Because if you have, let's say that AR with the non-piss-off, the Illinois Politicians 30-round magazine, if you have to engage a target or two and then you get behind cover, if you have a moment to pop the magazine out and put a new magazine in and retain that mag, that's one thing. But even if you don't, you've still got probably 15 or 20 rounds in the magazine. You fire five or six shots with that shotgun, you're dangerously

low all of a sudden, if not out. Very true. Yeah, especially if you live in a state with an assault weapons main, where they're limiting your capacities. The six rounds. To your point earlier, if the only shotgun you have is that goose gun that has the plug in the magazine tube

to limit it for 100 rounds. Exactly, a three-round limit. Yeah, now you'd better get righteously quick at topping that gun up constantly. The nice thing, though, about the shotgun is, unlike an AR, you're not getting one hit with one shell. If you're running nine pellet buck and you're within your effective range for your shotgun with nine pellet buck, you are getting

nine holes for the price of one. So, I mean, it's not beat around the bush everybody knows that shotguns kill things shotguns kill things really well they are disturbingly devastating especially at close range and realistically close range is what you're going to be doing if you're in a defensive situation especially in your home say three o'clock in the morning door gets kicked in by a crackhead fantastic there is in my opinion no more devastating weapon you can use for home defense other than something loaded with grape shot i mean historical anecdote but if memory serves me the germans in world war one tried to have shotguns declared, what was it? A war crime.

Yeah. Criminally effective and cruel. They attempted to argue that the use of a shotgun on a battlefield was a war crime. If that tells you anything about what a trench broom would do to somebody at short range. And realistically, that's only, shotguns are only going to become more and more utilized in warfare nowadays. You bring up the goose gun. What's a drone? Electric goose.

I was going to point that out. I was watching something just the other day where they were talking about the widespread usage of very small drones in the Ukraine conflict. very small drones in the Ukraine conflict. And literally the anti-drone weapons, they're either using net guns or they're using, I mean, they're literally using 12 gauges load with birdshot. Yes, absolutely. With a full choke, ideally.

Yeah, because you're trying to hit, like you said, you're trying to hit something about this big that moves really quick, but doesn't have a lot of meat to it. So if you whack it with a handful of small pellets, you're going to hit something about this big that moves really quick but doesn't have a lot of meat to it so if you whack it one if you whack it with a handful of small pellets you're going to knock it down if you hit a prop a blade on a prop it's going to destabilize and probably come down yeah you know yeah well what's the effective range of a net gun maybe 150 feet probably i mean i don't know what the effective range the effective range for a goose gun load is well but the other thing is is that even even not the net gun being the point but like they're also using things like just nets draped over like the front doors of buildings or over just anything to disrupt the drone being able to come in through an open window.

And that, by itself, is enough a lot of times. Just keep things where they're not supposed to be. Oh, I believe that. Yeah, a piece of heavy canvas or something like that. You know, I have seen, too, those drone jammer gun things that are supposed to

disable the electronics. Great. Now you have a soldier that is entirely dedicated to only drones. A 12-gauge birdshot load might not be the greatest if somebody's storming the room you're in, but it's still an ounce of lead. It's still at least somewhat effective. You do see a lot of videos, not just from Ukraine, but from some of the parts of Africa

where people are shooting black powder 12 gauges and occasionally intercepting government anti-poaching drones. It's a pretty cost-effective solution at a few cents to a dollar a round. Well, and I mean, almost any decently equipped police department or SWAT team around the country is going to have at least one 12-gauge in their inventory for no other reason than for breaching doors. Exactly. shotgun guy i do kind of draw comparisons the fact that you're not you're not dumping half a 30-round magazine into a door frame to try to open a door up they get the master key out and they blow the door the lock and half the door frame into the room they want into in one shot yeah ideally

and with the with the proper door breaching rounds you do that with very minimal risk to anybody inside now i'm not sure that we can buy those rounds but i mean i don't imagine they're that terribly difficult to manufacture something i mean if you know somebody with a reloading press is into hood rat stuff pretty sure you can make them it can't be anything that complicated it's a lot of it is usually some kind of compressed powder that they're firing out and it's at such a close range it doesn't have time to disperse and lose its effectiveness you know it's just it just goes to show you how versatile shotguns are i mean do you want to hunt squirrels shotgun will do it want to hunt birds shotgun will do it deer shotgun will do it coyotes shotgun will do it crackhead

shotgun will do it black bear shotgun will do it brown bear shotgun will do it. Deer, shotgun will do it. Coyotes, shotgun will do it. Crackhead, shotgun will do it. Blackbear, shotgun will do it. Brown bear, shotgun will do it. Moose, shotgun will do it. But you're going to have to be close with those moose. I mean, you're still going to have to be within 100 yards. Sure, 300 wind mag can do it at 800 yards. I'm not that good of a shot. I wish I was. So it wouldn't matter for me anyway, 300 wind mag to windmine your shotgun. I'm still going to have to get close. But you can't hunt squirrels with a 300 windmine. You just flat cannot.

Not if you're going to eat any of it. Not if you're going to eat it. I mean, if you just want to turn it into like baloney mist, then yeah, sure. That'll work fine. Oh sure, yeah. If you want to remove a squirrel from the face of the earth, yes.

A 300 win back does a fantastic job. Oh, so now we pissed off anti-gunners and PETA all in one episode. Outstanding, Nick. That's fine. I got a cousin that's involved in PETA. I've already got them angry at me.

Oh, Jesus. Don't get me started or I'll start asking questions about... You don't want to know. She is a special individual. Oh, no. It's usually when people start talking about how cute does an animal have to be before you won't eat it. I'm like, how interesting that you would assume there's a point at which I won't eat an animal.

Let's start there. Truth. Really more depends on how good they taste. And how hungry I am. That too. Yeah. Although I will say that if the SHTF ever does kick off, there's a couple of yappy little purse dogs around here

that are going to go missing on day one, just on principle. Right. You know, the nice thing, it's not going to take a lot to put them down, I suppose. Especially if they're aggressive towards people. Yeah, I know. We've got a couple

of neighbors over here that have some of those little ankle biters that they have allowed to become very aggressive. It's just not acceptable. Whatever size your dog is, you need to train very aggressive. It's just not acceptable. Whatever size your dog is, you need to train your dog. Before somebody trains it for you? Exactly.

And that's unfortunately the way it ends a lot of the time. We had one of the neighborhood dogs bite one of our other neighbors because he was jogging and it triggered a prey response. Triggered a chase response in the dog. But you know, there's nothing you can do about that

if it's a poorly trained dog. Anyway, to get the train back on the tracks, you're worse than I am for getting off topic. Oh yeah, absolutely. My brain skips around like a squirrel. It's terrible. So, shotguns. So you came to the class with, let's call it a factory box stock a300

yep i'll give you the sling because to me all long guns require slings like i will i'm prepared to die on that hill anybody that wants to go for it and sounds like shotgun experience but maybe not like semi-auto shotgun experience. No semi-auto shotgun experience at all. Pump action shotgun experience either on a static line or on a pheasant line. Sorry. So once you got past the safety briefing and the don't verify you're loaded by looking down the barrel part of it, hopefully. Exactly.

Like where did MDFI start you all? Don't verify you're loaded by looking down the barrel part of it, hopefully. Exactly. Like, where did MDFI start y'all? I mean, I would assume they start you with, like, basic shotgun handling. Like, they have to assume that everyone coming to the class barely knows which end to point at the target and then take you up from there. Yeah, they do assume two things. One, that you understand what the buttons on your shotgun do. And two, that you will abide by the four rules of firearm safety, which they go through in detail in the safety brief.

Those are the only two assumptions. Well, that and you brought your equipment. If you don't bring your equipment, that's on you. Which, side note, that's like the only advice I give a person before they take a firearm to the range is, like, put all the ammunition for it in another room, figure out how the stupid thing works, you know, in a sterile environment, know how to load it, how to unload it, know where all the buttons are before you go to the range and you have live ammo in the gun just because it it make it gives me a twitch when i see somebody like muzzle sweep an entire range while fumbling around looking for buttons on the gun while they've got live ammunition in the chamber but i digress nothing will get you kicked out of an mdfi class faster than poor muzzle discipline there is no warning at an mdfi class about poor muzzle discipline that's because all or most of their cadre are prior military and we hate getting guns

pointed at us. So do I. And rightly so. I don't like that at all. I don't think anyone's a fan. So the thing we get into next is carry presentations and shooting techniques. So you've got the shotgun in your hand. You've got to do something with it right so they talk through different positions for how to carry it effectively and comfortably for long periods of time so how to carry it in an upright position

if you're if you're in an environment that uh and they talk about the environments and where you're going to use these different carry positions so if you're if you're moving through say a busy environment and a crowd and like a police officer type setting you'll see a lot of police officers with a gun pointed straight up in the air perfectly safe because if it goes off worst case i mean anybody that's ever gone pheasant hunting or been in a clay range too long has been rained on with birdshot come down bonk in the head it's a little bit irritating but it's not going to kill you slug might hurt it's not going to kill you so they do how to carry shotgun how to present a shotgun in in the case in which you've got to transition from a carry position to a near shooting position so a low ready a high a high ready, stuff like that. And the different times

in which you're going to use either one. And then the transition from higher low ready to a shooting position. With a high ready and a shotgun, you know, much like a rifle, you've got that butt sock tucked underneath your arm. So you got to make sure that you've got your sling in an appropriate place that you can pull your sling in an appropriate place that you can pull that shotgun out and get it back seated into your shoulder as quickly as possible without getting tangled up and caught on things. They do discuss a little bit shooting techniques as far as once you've taken the shot, what you should be doing.

far as once you've taken the shot, what you should be doing. For instance, single target environment, police officer on the stop, you know, or on crowd control with a shotgun, somebody comes out, does something stupid or evil, take that shot, you know, follow them to the ground with the muzzle, make sure that they're actually down. Chances are with a 12 gauge they are um and then they get into what was probably the second most valuable thing i learned in the class the recoil mitigation that we talked about earlier as far as how to manage the recoil of a shotgun they they're they call it a rip it method you're basically trying to pull the shotgun in half at the receiver what your your firing hand pulling it into your shoulder as hard as you can your support hand pushing it out as hard as you can it makes probably a 15 or 20 percent felt recoil difference i mean that makes sense though why they would teach that

method and why it would work side note the first time I ever fired a pump shotgun, my silly behind was pulling back on the pump, which the split second I pulled the trigger. You lost all support. Oh, yeah. I learned from my mistakes very quickly and realized I'm like, oh, let's not apply 100 100 of what i know about shooting rifles shooting pump action shotguns but you know you live and you learn yeah and second note on shooting shotguns if you're shooting them a lot do not thumb overboard your shotgun barrel like with

your support hand or with your firing with your support hand that has never occurred to me to try to do that why why would you i shoot my ar or used to shoot my ar with thumb overboard when i'm trying to shoot fast and i'm trying to shoot accurately because it keeps that muzzle held down and you get back on target faster the the effort of pushing your arm up for the gun pulls it back down into place and almost snaps it back into place so my first instinct as a semi-auto rifle shooter is to c-clamp that barrel how fast did that barrel get hot about seven rounds into it i stopped doing that it basically the first string of fire taught me not to do that with a shotgun

now if you have a barrel shroud, that might be different, but I got a sneaking suspicion even at high volumes of fire, you're going to get quite hot very quick. It's a lot of powder and a lot of mass you're sending down. That strikes me so much. Like a person that's only ever shot semi-autos and suddenly gets handed a revolver and they try to two-thumbs forward on that revolver, you're only going to make that mistake one time.

I mean, with a.38, no. You're going to realize your mistake immediately. But with a.357, yes. If you're playing around with a big Magnum revolver, you're going to make that mistake exactly one time and have a

hell of a story to tell afterwards. Probably to the ER staff. If you still have a thumb. I've some some pretty gruesome injury photos about that you know they after they teach the recoil mitigation process which is after your first couple strings of fire so that you do notice the difference man it it is no one goes back to shooting the way that they were after learning that. It is such a difference. It even gets you back on target faster. So after they teach that recoil mitigation, they teach a little bit more about the threat engagement process.

So they get you doing a little moving and shooting. the threat engagement process. So they get you doing a little moving and shooting. So you do a set course of fire, say one round, index your shotgun into a safe location. After you make sure that threats on the ground, check around you, check behind you while you're keeping the shotgun in a safe direction the

entire time. So you do have, you know, 10 guys on a line that are going to be turning 360 with a shotgun. This is why, and the shotguns are loaded, this is why Trek has a zero tolerance policy for any kind of shenanigans. This is probably also why the safety briefing

was as enthusiastic as it was. Yes. And I would say it was appropriately enthusiastic. He has said that there have been incidents where someone has injured themselves.

Fortunately, it was always themselves through poor gun handling at one of his classes. Or not necessarily one of his classes, maybe it was a class he was in attendance for.

Could have been. I would, yeah, I would hope so anyway. I mean, fortunately, no one was ever critically injured. I think he said a guy had sent a 9mm round through his hand. Oh. Yeah, yeah, going to clear a malfunction and ended up with his pistol pointed at his hand. Going to clear a malfunction and ended up with his pistol pointed at his hand. But I got to admit, I've been to other classes where guys have gotten real close to doing worse.

I was in a rifle pistol class, a pistol carbine kind of like transition class, where you're learning how to move between the two and work around barriers and stuff like that. And we had a range safety officer for our local police department, well, one of our local police departments, ND a round two inches from his foot. While trying to argue against why he was getting kicked out, he ND'd a second round into the floor about six inches from his foot. Can I take this moment to just tell everybody how absolutely freaking crazy I get whenever somebody argues that only police officers are well enough trained to be trusted with firearms?

Anyone can become a legit. Yeah, usually about five seconds after they think they're too experienced to make a mistake. Absolutely. Which is why I wholeheartedly encourage people to be a little bit worried about, you know, every dangerous implement they're playing with, whether it be chainsaws, firearms, table saws. Chainsaws scare me more than any other tool.

I'm going to be real honest with you. I will happily admit this. Every time I grab my chainsaw, I get a chill up my spine not because i don't know how to use one properly but just because i have seen what happens when you don't and i'm like i don't want to be the next darwin award recipient because i did something dumb with the chainsaw shotgun's no different you know they were talking about the uh effectiveness of rifles pistols and shotguns in class

as part of the safety briefing. And there was an interesting statistic they had from an ER doctor that took their class. This ER doctor worked in a trauma ward. They didn't give his name, I assume for privacy reasons. He said that 80% of people that get shot with a handgun that make it to his trauma ward alive walk out or are carted out. You know, they live. he said that 80% of people that get shot with a handgun that make it to his trauma ward alive, walk out or are carted out. You know,

they live, they survive. Yeah. On the other hand, 80% of people that come into his trauma ward alive with a rifle or shotgun wound do not survive. That kind of matches. They made it alive to the hospital.

Yeah. So it's, it's no joke. It's, it's no joke at all. After they talk about stuff like that in a safety briefing, they're like, okay, guys, we're all going to go out on the line. Everyone is paying attention, which is fantastic. So they talked about threat engagement process a little bit of shotgun manipulation so come back to the difference between smart and dumb shotguns

how you have to reload them differently between smart and dumb shotguns how you have to handle them differently if you just pick it up and it's dry um so you got an empty chamber between smart and dumb shotguns we kind of broke down a little bit into okay this group of people that has these shotguns the biggest group was 1301 owners there was a lot of them i think there was 14 1301s on the range hefty chunk of change um and fortunately the beretta a300 in that same group are all smart shotguns so they had to be managed in a slightly different way for things like uh reloading from an empty chamber um or starting off your gun with a full tube in an empty chamber you got to remember there's below the lift behind the lifter there is an action release button that says, okay, when you cycle that bolt, I want you to feed a round out of the tube. Otherwise you got to manually drop one in the chamber and touch a round off.

So it gets a little bit different. Ammunition management is a huge portion of the class. I would say of all of the drills, ammunition management was probably the majority of them simply because there are so few rounds in the shotgun. They did it a few different ways. They started out with, okay, we're going to do, um, you got one round in the shotgun, you're going to fire it. And then you're going to do an emergency reload and fire that second round as quick as you can. At first, it's speed of control. So take your time. Figure out whether going over the top of the shotgun or under the shotgun

with your cartridge works better for you. My wrists don't turn that way so well, so I have to go over the top of the shotgun for a reload, which works out well for how I have my SC my SCTAC setup, my shotgun cards. They talk about different ways of carrying extra ammunition on your shotgun. One thing I did not realize is you're familiar with the hard racks, like the aluminum or plastic racks that bolt through your trigger pins. Apparently, that's one of the more common things that they've seen fail on a 12-gauge. So you've got your two pins coming in through that are normally just a solid pin held in with a detent, right?

Mm-hmm. Well, those two pins are held on by two little tiny screws when you've got those carriers on the side. Apparently, those little tiny screws like to shear off under recoil or back out and fall out. And now you've got a bunch of weight on the left-hand side of your shotgun trying to take the trigger pins and pull them out of the left-hand side of your shotgun. Under high amounts of vibration and pressure. That makes a certain amount of sense of why that'd be such a likely failure point. a certain amount of sense of why that'd be such a likely failure point i mean think of it like this like you wouldn't you wouldn't take an ar-15 and hang a magazine carrier off the trigger pins right like that just screams bad idea and anybody that knows how that operating system works because

it's like if these things go that direction then all the guts of guns start rattling around and they stop working wherever they feel like and in the case of most shotguns, your whole trigger group is just dropping out the bottom the next time you fire it, if those pins are gone. If you can get it to fire with those pins gone. Now, they did mention that the least common thing they have ever seen fail is that patch of Velcro on the side of a shotgun. I mean, like you said, worst case scenario, if it does let go, then you just lose a card of shotgun shells. Honestly, I purposefully put my shotgun card on halfway to see what would happen on one of the drills.

I was able to go through my entire magazine and reload that card without the card falling off. my entire magazine and reload that card without the card falling off. The recoil of the shotgun caused that card to slack back into the Velcro and adhere stronger than when I initially put it on. Which is just, I mean, it makes sense when you think about Velcro. If two pieces of Velcro touch each other, they're going to stay there. Well, and like you said, by agitating those two pieces backwards and forwards, they're just going to continue to grab harder and harder.

Exactly. And you know, that's the thing they've said they've never seen fail. They've seen front sights fly off of shotguns, rear sights fly off of shotguns, forends come loose, mag tubes unthread themselves and fly off.

I've talked to more than one buddy that's had a red dot like puke its glass out the front of it from shotgun recoil. Absolutely. That is probably possible. I didn't see. I saw surprisingly few failures. Let's put it that way. I think in that entire class, let's see, it was about 20 people, if I recall correctly. Let's see. It was about 20 people, if I recall correctly.

We had one person with a 1897 trench gun clone that he did have a failure to extract at one point. That was the only problem that I noticed that he had mechanically, we had a couple of people that were getting some light primer strikes in some of the 1301s, probably due to how sandy it was. Anybody that's been up to Trek's new range, the shotgun range that we were on is a sand pit. So kicking up moon dust any time anybody walks around, kicking up moon dust every time you're firing off the shotguns. So, it was an amply dusty environment. You know, I didn't see any shotgun there that had reliability issues in that environment, even after we were most of the way through the day. So, it was in the mid to upper 80s.

It was bright sun. So, all the shotguns were hot and stayed hot the entire time. It was in dusty conditions, and they did not get cleaned at any point in the 300-round course of fire. So I don't really know how long a shotgun will go, especially a semi-auto gun. But with the amount of carbon I pulled out of mine after class, I mean, I sent a picture to our Patreon group. It looked like I was grinding crushed pepper over the table I was cleaning on. It was a noticeable amount of carbon, and I didn't have a single malfunction. Now, I malfunctioned. I dropped shells on a reload.

I fumbled a reload. The shotgun didn't. It was fantastic. You know, once we got through the ammunition management and we were back into running more aggressive drills where it was longer strings of fire, longer and longer strings of fire, up to that rolling thunder drill that I mentioned. Some of those drills, you start empty. Your first shot is throwing a shell in the tube, closing it up. They did one version of rolling thunder where you were only allowed to load the tube of your shotgun halfway through. the tube of your shotgun halfway through.

So you were doing one shot from an empty chamber, two shots after you were allowed to put a round in the chamber. So shoot, emergency reload, shoot. Then emergency reload, three rounds. Then emergency reload, four rounds. And then eventually he was like, okay okay you have 10 seconds to load your shotgun most of the guys that were able to get them fully topped off in that 10 seconds i mean even even the guys that were running bump guns had they were doing pretty well at that point uh then we got

into patterning which was pretty interesting i don't know how familiar you are with shotgun patterning. Basically, for the audience, essentially what it works out to is you put yourself a target out at a known distance, you fire your defensive load at it, you see what spread you get. And more importantly, you have to know what that spread is at varying ranges. Right. So you start at, like, say, five yards, I think we started at, on the cardboard targets. Then we backed up like, say, five yards. I think we started at on the cardboard targets. Then we backed up to 10 and 15 and 20.

Now, the loads I had always used were a Federal 9 pellet kind of El Cheapo double op. Just very basic. Remington 870 doesn't seem to care what you put in it. It will send it out the barrel. They did okay. They were grouping, you know, respectable at 10 yards. 15 yards are like this. 20 yards, you're just about off the torso in a couple of spots. So that makes me have to reassess. 20 yards is not actually that far. It's 60 feet. 60 feet. Now, granted, I don't have a hallway 60 feet long in my house, but what happens if I miss? I have to account for where every one of those nine pellets goes. Not like a rifle round where if you fire one round, you've, okay, you've missed with one. Do you know missed with one do you know

where that one went those rounds are going to go kind of wherever they feel like going a lot of the guys there were shooting a federal eight pellet flight control i want to say those were having the opposite problem so at five, you're functionally shooting a slug. At 10 yards, you are functionally shooting a slug. At 15 yards, you are getting enough separation between pellets that you can count the pellets. At 20 yards, you're still shooting a pattern like this. Okay. a pattern like this. Okay. That's all well and good if you are not looking for spread. If you're shooting at something that's 20 yards away, perfectly fine. But you're kind of losing some of the benefit of the shotgun by having it not spread at all for 10 or 15 yards i don't know about you

my longest hallway is 16 feet why yours probably down your stairs from your second story i don't have a second story i'm doing i'm doing the math using my body as a measurement so like the way my house is laid out is like all the bedrooms are down one hallway and this is like one of the things that i assessed yeah well this is one of the things i assessed about my house immediately when we were looking at it was i'm like i only need to hold this hallway to fully control the entire house. Because, like, you cannot come through the front door. Without being in that hallway. Well, you can get about six feet on the inside of the doorway, and now I've got an eyeball on you.

And more importantly, if you want to come to where my wife and daughter sleep, you have no choice but to come down that hallway. Exactly. Towards a very angry heavily harmed you know husband exactly exactly but yeah i mean you're right it's probably 20 feet maybe uh not even that it's a small house 20 feet call it call it 15 feet 20 yards well but 20 yards i mean i'd be i'd have to shoot through all the way from one side of my house to the other, through the wall and into the neighbor's house to get 20 yards. Exactly. So for your situation, you would probably want something that has slightly more spread than like a Federal Flight Control 8 pallet like they were shooting.

Granted, it's phenomenal how tight of a pattern that shoots. Say if you're out in the boonies and you've got a large sprawling ranch home that's maybe got a 30 or 40 foot long hallway. Yeah, maybe that's beneficial there because now you're into like the 10 yards and a little bit beyond range. Say you're dealing with coyotes, predators coming at your animals. Yeah, you're probably going to want something that shoots super tight, and you can shoot a long way. So you can shoot 60 feet from, say, the house to somewhere out in your field. Beyond that, you're probably going to use a slug anyway, more than likely. But, you know, they kind of went into pretty deep detail about how to choose the rounds you want, how to determine if the rounds are flying consistently out of your shotgun,

want, how to determine if the rounds are flying consistently out of your shotgun, which involve patterning over a few occasions with a few different boxes, ideally of different lot numbers. This also makes a hell of a good argument for, I mean, you can make this argument with any firearm, but it sounds like it's critical with a shotgun that you standardize on one defensive load. gun that you standardize on one defensive load well that you standardize on i would say defensive loads for a job so bear in mind that the average person has one job yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly you know i guess what i'm saying is like pick pick a load know how that load performs know it inside out know it at different ranges. Yeah, know it at different ranges. And I would say throw two slugs on your carrier.

Know how they are going to perform at whatever range it's at. Know what point of aim they're going to shoot to. Exactly. Because it probably ain't the same as buckshot. They're actually pretty close from what people were saying. It seems to me I didn't put a red dot on my shotgun for this class. I didn't want to spend the money if I didn't know if I was going to be happy with using a shotgun for my primary defensive weapon. I know now I have no hesitation with picking up a shotgun.

If I have to go out and really, like really far out reach somebody i got plenty of rifles that'll handle that i got rifles that are accurate well beyond my ability to shoot but that's not a defensive use of a firearm it's not that's an aggressive use of a firearm let's be honest here um but so for instance i live out the country. I know I've mentioned that to you guys before. I live kind of in the boonies. We have coyotes around here. We have a groundhog that is digging up my neighbor's shed and causing her all sorts of hell. I can't send a federal flight control eight pellet load across my property line in my neighbor's yard to take out that groundhog for her. But what I could probably do is pick up, say, a flight control

goose load because that's going to hold a tight pattern out to quite considerably farther. Coyotes coming on my property, we've had them a couple of times. We've had sick deer coming onto my property a few times. Now, up by where Andrew's at, Trek was saying that he's had bears coming onto his property. He's got a little plot up there. And if he's, say, outside taking a night vision walk, as people tend to do when they own night vision and he comes up on a bear is his 20 gauge with birdshot for taking out varmints he may encounter gonna work no he's gonna need a slug or some buckshot is buckshot probably gonna do that great with a bear maybe but everybody i've ever heard has always recommended slugs for bear as big of an

expanding slug as you can get. So it all, it all depends on your environment, like your environment, your, your what? Semi, semi-urban. I mean, I live in the suburbs. Okay. So suburban short ranges, find a shotgun load that spreads reasonably for your distance engagement distances in the house. Because if it's not spread out enough by the time it hits the various walls of your house it's going to over penetrate because that let's see that's let's talk about

that federal flight control if you were to shoot it into a piece of drywall I would say before 15 yards it is is probably going to rat hole through multiple sheets of drywall, multiple walls. And I'm sure there are videos online that have done pretty exasperated testing of that. I know there was a guy on YouTube, I wish I could remember his name, real big shotgun guy, was really pushing number four buck for home defense loads in, in urban environments because it goes through about half as much drywall and it's still reasonably effective on a human target in, in home defense style ranges.

But because of the lighter weight of the pellets and the slightly wider spread, it doesn't tend to punch through quite so much barrier. You know, it doesn't tend to punch through quite so much barrier. You know, it's going to be one of those things where it's, unfortunately, no one is going to be able to give you a good answer on what ammo to use in your shotgun because two shotguns of the same manufacturer are going to shoot your load different. And we did see that in class. There was two guys right next to each other with 1301 shooting Federal Flight Control 8 pellet. And their groups, one guy's groups were a half

inch bigger than the other on the five yard line. Can't explain it. That's probably some of the most quality controlled ammunition you can get. It's their premier load. You know how this works with long range precision shooting though, is that two, two rifle barrels coming off the line, one right behind the other. One could be a dog and one could be, you know, the best shooting barrel in the whole bunch.

And honestly, you could probably make that dog into a really nice shooting barrel with the right velocity. Mm-hmm. So it's all witchcraft at the end of the day. Well the right velocity. It's all witchcraft at the end of the day. It's all steel harmonics and a little bit

of internalized stresses in the manufacturing process. Like I said, witchcraft. Yeah, but you can predict the witchcraft a little bit. Come on now. You're not giving these steel guys too much credit here. I'm not a steel guy. I'm a reloader. I just keep playing with it until I find what works. I don't understand why it works. I do understand why it works.

I'm a steel guy. I cut steel all day, every day. I tell you, sometimes we send steel out to heat treat, and for whatever reason, it comes back slightly different shape than it was supposed to it just happens and it's it's it's mostly down to stress in the metal and how much of that stress you've removed from where now hammer forged barrels hammer forging is going to cause a lot of stress that stress is useful because it shapes the barrel the way we want, but if it's not done consistently or at exactly the right temperature, you're going to get slight differences. And shotgun barrels being very, very thin, considerably thinner than rifle barrels, produce a more pronounced difference due to those stresses. That actually makes a ton of sense when you think about it.

And it's because of those thin barrels moving as much as they do during firing that you often see anything mounted. You know those barrel clamps you see where it's pinching the barrel in the mag tube and then you've got a picatinny rail on the side with your flashlight? Yeah. So that barrel, if you ever watch a shotgun barrel when it fires it actually swells and then decreases swells and decreases with the pressure change as well as doing the barrel whip that you see on long-range guns that apparently will just

chuck flashlights and anything clamped to the barrel i'm not shocked by that honestly right i mean it's it's a violent recoil. I mean, in order to get to a similar muzzle energy, what was I looking at? Let's see. Yeah, in order to get to a similar muzzle energy, you have to be talking something like a.30-06 or a.300 Win Mag. Not quite dangerous game rifles, but big boy stuff. Sure, you can get into dangerous game rifles that have twice as much muzzle energy as a shotgun, but you're also getting three rounds in a magazine, and it's a bolt-action rifle because semi-autos will explode unless they're quite heavy.

I mean, look at how heavy a.50 BMG is. I mean, there are some dangerous game rifles that do approach that level of muzzle energy. I mean, think of the old... Have you ever heard of a stopping rifle? Mm-hmm. It's essentially a rifled shotgun. Yeah. Stopping rifle is the thing you pull out when something desperately wants to murder you and your entire family,

and you want it to stop right now. Their rounds are regularly measured in ounces. Yes. Not ounce. Ounces. I had the displeasure of firing a four bore stopping rifle recently that a retired coworker of mine has acquired. And it is the most uncomfortable firearm I have ever held,

let alone shot. It, it weighed, The most uncomfortable firearm I have ever held, let alone shot. It weighs more than I think double anything I own. And still kick like a mule. Oh my gosh, yes. Oh my gosh. Miserable. So for instance, four bore, what that means is four lead balls of that diameter would add up to one pound. balls of that diameter would add up to one pound.

So it is a quarter pound of lead that you are sending at, you know, like 1,500 feet per second or so. And unfortunately, anybody with a cursory understanding of physics understands that the amount of force you send that direction pushes back that direction. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the weight of the rifle helped, I'm sure. Didn't feel like it. This is like the conversation you and I were having right before we keyed up because

my family stopped by the USS Alabama years ago and yeah, the second largest deck guns ever employed on a US battleship. I think the Iowa class was the same diameter but I think a greater powder charge. battleship. I think the Iowa class was the same diameter, but I think a greater powder charge.

I believe that's correct, yeah. Yeah. But because I'm a nerd, everybody who knows me knows I'm a massive nerd, I did muzzle energy calculations on it because I just got curious, and the first problem I had was I had to convert an absolutely ludicrous number of pounds into grain

so that the muzzle energy calculator would work. And I worked backwards to something like that deck gun has 18,500 times the muzzle energy of a.30-06. The numbers, when you need a scientific calculator to do those calculations, that's when it got silly in a hurry. You require scientific notation to keep the numbers on the calculator screen. But that's also why a battleship that weighs as much as 10 city blocks moves 10 feet when it fires. Exactly. Exactly.

Everything has a consequence. Fortunately, shotguns are not that violent. And if you if you have a little bit of training and how to mitigate the recoil, I would say it was no more uncomfortable to shoot than a semi auto 308. So if you can handle a semi auto 308, or even a 308 on a vent rest, you're probably going to be just fine. So coming out of that class, I guess my question is like, I know you said the shotgun did great. You, you had some difficulty with some of the reloading under pressure and things like that. Oh, I absolutely did. But coming out of this class, like what's your path forward? Just more practice or more classes or?

Definitely drills, definitely reloading drills. Because the thing I seem to fumble with most was ironically loading the tube from the side saddle. You say ironically, that makes complete sense to me. Because I mean, like I told you, what was told to me by an old hand revolver guy a long time ago was if you're going to shoot a revolver, if you're going to carry one, you spend half as much time reloading the silly thing as you spend shooting at the range.

So you better, like for my little J-frame, I literally run drills every now and then where I put five empties in the gun and I put in fired cases that have been resized so they're expanded they drag on the way out you know like fantastic training because and and i i tell people all the time i'm like i do that specifically because with that little short ejector you get in a j

frame if you don't whack that ejector star nice and hard you're gonna end with all five of those shells hung up in the in in the, in the cylinder. So you got to hit it, you got to hit it hard. And then I'm reloading from a speed strip. And that is not an intuitive method of reloading for, you know, four or five rounds.

So you're fumbling with the silly thing every which way, but I'm like, but that's, that's what you have to do to reload that gun. And when you only have five rounds in the cylinder, you're going to be reloading it not very often, hopefully, but you're going to be reloading it if you have to. Right. The reason I say ironically is because I thought what I would have trouble with was under pressure emergency reloads to the chamber. Because that's something I had never practiced. Not once.

Because there's never an emergency reload during a pheasant hunt. No. Okay. Pheasant got away. There's four other guys in the line. One of them is going to get it. But under pressure, trying to ensure that, number one, you got the shell lined up the correct direction.

Number two, you're applying enough pressure in the correct location on the lifter to get it to fold in. And number three, making sure you're applying enough pressure in the correct location on the lifter to get it to fold in. And number three, making sure you're pushing it far enough that those little claws inside of there grab the rim of the shotgun and it just doesn't shoot right back out. So how many times did that happen? On me? I ended up inadvertently ghost loading my shotgun by having it eject fantastically back on top of the lifter but then there was a round where the lifter needed to be so I couldn't load a second round into the shotgun probably three or four times so it's it's one of those things where you definitely have to train in that muscle memory on those

reloads and that's probably what's going to be one of my biggest focuses coming away from that um definitely training on reloads you know i think i am going to go ahead and put a red dot on my shotgun because everybody i've ever seen shoots better with a red dot than without one it's just a faster sighting system than rifle sights I can't see any argument other than reliability for not doing it and even then if you do happen to shoot the glass out of your red dot it is still a shotgun you aim down the barrel just like a traditional ribbon bead sight and you still have a usable shotgun. It's not like say an ar where you don't have if you don't have backup irons and you shoot the glass out of that now you've got

kind of a close range use weapon well the shotgun it's kind of about the same as it was before even with the rifle sights they're fairly crude basically you have a big ghost ring exactly it would turn if you knock the glass out of it, you have a big ghost ring. Exactly. If you knock the glass out of it. Correct. You have a big ghost ring, and if you've done any shotgun shooting from a bead in a rail, you'll probably be just fine. They do have a qualifier. They shoot at the end, which is pretty fun.

I think it is, let's see. It's four rounds over two targets. I think it was the first one. Then it was three rounds, but you've got to do an ammunition selection. So your first round is going to get ejected out of the shotgun, and you've got to feed another round in and then engage your target and then engage your target two more times. And then it was some kind of emergency reload drill one for the qualifier.

It ends up being like 15 rounds for the qualifier that you, 15 rounds that you start with, you only actually fire 10 of those rounds because some of them are pulled out in the ammo selection parts or the emergency reload parts. But it's not bad you know it's a six second drill for each one of them and i think that if i remember correctly the instructors demonstrated the drill in on a four second timer instead of the student's six second timer or five second timer they were on a five second timer and they were done well within four seconds. I think that pump shotgun, semi-auto, you guys, it's achievable.

It's very achievable. I went in there with nearly no experience with my shotgun, and I was able to very easily beat the six-second part-time. You know, you're not shooting huge distances. I think most of the time you're working at 12 or 15 yards. You know, you're not shooting huge distances. I think most of the time you're working at 12 or 15 yards. So it is a relatively small target, but it's very doable, I would say, for the average person.

I think what's noteworthy is that, like, you came into the class, what was the phrase you used? Perfectly mediocre? Adequately mediocre? Adequately mediocre or adequately mediocre. You know, I could take the shotgun. I could hit a couple of clays, hit a couple of targets. I couldn't manipulate it with proficiency. And I feel like after the class, I have a foundation built that I can turn into proficiency. So you came out of the class definitely with a greater level of comfort.

Oh, yes. Like you said, you came out of this, you went into this class with limited shotgun experience, came out saying, I am more than content to grab this for defensive use. I would have no hesitation picking up that shotgun if I had to use it under pressure. Would I prefer a 30 round AR?

Yeah, I would. I very much would. But I unfortunately don't get to make that choice. So we work with the tools we have. If you ever decide to move down to the Gulf Coast, I'll help you house hunt. Yeah, I know, but it's so hot down there. It's so hot. I would say you get used to it after a while, but I would be completely and totally blowing sunshine up your behind.

I know plenty of people that have made the move up here because of the heat. I've lived in this climate for 41 years, and it still sucks. Yeah. You know, a lot of people, I've gone to a lot of different training classes. I've trained with, oh, there's my dog. I've trained with five or six different training academies in the last few years. Hands down, MDFIs, as far as their basic class, I haven't taken any of the advanced ones yet, are hands down the best quality class I've ever taken. No, not even close.

Now, I've done two-gun pistol rifle classes. I've done pistol classes. I've done rifle classes. I've done long-range classes. This was the safest and most well-run class i've ever taken i mean honestly it's kind of just what i expect having talked to trek a good handful of times yeah he is he is a no bullshit guy and he is going to give you the truth as as he sees it now he will also correct also correct himself if he finds something is incorrect. He's one of those guys that he wants to try to give you the best knowledge and training he can in the safest method he can, which I really appreciate.

Because it is deadly equipment we're playing with out there. Well, man, I appreciate you coming on this afternoon. I think it's been a good debrief on the class and your experience. If anybody's thinking about it, just pull the trigger. Go to one of his classes. Pun intended. Mm-hmm. All right.

Well, let's go ahead and punt this one out the door. Matter of fact, it's a podcast. Nick, you don't do social media and I don't blame you because it's a shithole most days. The best thing it's there for is arguing with people. We do plenty of that in the patrons group, which is where you can find me, Nick, Andrew, and most of the other rabble-rousers most times.

So if anybody is curious and wants to get to know him, I would say start there. Yep. Best place to find me, Patreon. All right. Matter of fact, he's going out the door. Good night, everybody. Best place to find me, Patreon. All right. Matter of fact, it's going out the door. Good night, everybody. Take care and go get a class. Bye, everybody. Mm-hmm. Bye.

Bye. Thank you. Thanks for watching!