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This past Saturday I had the opportunity to participate in the Gunset Defensive Shotgun Foundations class.
Full disclosure, I host Gunset at my PD range on a regular basis and I am friends with the Gunset crew. I’m picky about who I host at our range, but I’ve taken Rangemaster classes with the Gunset crew and respect these guys A LOT. Since I hosted the class, I was comped a spot and looked forward to finally getting to take a class from these guys. The lead instructor was Jonathan Willis. JW is Gunset’s shotgun and medical training guru. His Real World Trauma class is becoming a very popular class.
Just so you can understand my perspective – this is my 3rd shotgun specific class. The first was a state shotgun instructor class which allows me to teach in the police academies and do in service training for my agency. Typical low hanging fruit .gov instructor class. The second was Rangemaster’s Shotgun class. If you want to learn about the history of the shotgun in addition to shooting a shotgun, the Rangemaster class is awesome. Beyond that, I competed in 3 gun and multi-gun for years, which are both shotgun intensive. I learned how to shoot and work on shotguns working in a gun shop when I was a kid. When I worked narcotics, a 14” 870 loaded with Brenneke slugs (for working around cars) was a constant companion. So shotguns are anything but new to me.
Let’s start with what this class is not – it is not really a “Foundations” class. It’s more of an intermediate level class and new shotgunners are going to be behind the curve. This became an issue, which I’ll talk more about later. I talked with JW and Scotty Cronin (Gunset owner/founder) after the class and gave them my thoughts on the class. We had actually talked about this during the day, but we rehashed it some more over adult beverages and stogies after class. I think they’re gonna rebrand it and come up with a beginner level class for newbies to the gospel of the gauge. Prior to the class, students were emailed links to YouTube videos JW made that covered some basic shotgun, safety and medical information. This helped keep the classroom time down to a bare minimum.
Let’s talk about the students. Of the 16 students, four were women. Two of the women were very nice young ladies who were new to firearms and new to shotguns. One had never fired a gun of any type before and the other had very limited experience. This was their first class of any type.
Everyone else had varying degrees of experience with shotguns and were able to at least operate their own shotgun beyond the basics of load and fire. This was important because JW crams an incredible amount of information and shooting into a single eight hour day and you won’t get as much out of the class if you don’t show up knowing the basics.
The guns in the class were almost universally Beretta. Of the 16 people in the class, 14 were shooting 1301s or A300 Ultima Patrols. The other two showed up with 870s. There were a variety of sidesaddle mounts ranging from TacStar (I think) to VangComp, to Aridus (there were A LOT of Aridus products on display) to Brown Tactical, to Esstac and Mesa Tactical. There were a lot of weapon mounted lights and some slings. One of the first things JW did once we got all the guns out was walk the line and talk about the pros and cons of some of the different shotgun layouts on the line. I brought my 1301 to use, but threw my VangComp 870 Super Express in the case as a spare. I’m glad I did. And just to aggravate JW, I brought my MKA1919 to play with if the opportunity arose.
This was a fun day for me and reminded me of the Rangemaster Shotgun class I took last year where I ended up being a student and a part time assistant instructor. Since there were two students who were brand spanking new to shotguns, JW asked Scotty and I to work with them individually. We were happy to do so and ended up doing a class within a class just for them. I did more teaching than shooting so I’ll start with talking about my experience working with Casey and Hannah and then talk about some observations from the rest of the class.
Casey showed up with a bone stock Marine Magnum 870. Of course it had the factory stock that was way too long for her. The obvious solution was to have her shoot my VC 870. Since her 870 barrel had a different sighting system than mine (mine is a vent rib) and we wanted her to get used to using the bead on a platform sight her gun had, I just switched barrels. Her barrel on my receiver worked like a charm all day. Hannah needed to rent a shotgun since she didn’t own one. The A300 stock on the rental was too long, so I just gave her my 1301 to use. It soon became apparent to Scotty and I that Casey and Hannah needed a different pace than the rest of the class. After consulting with JW, we just took our time with them and skipped some of the more intermediate skills the rest of the class was working on and focused on the basics. By the end of the day, both Casey and Hannah were able to run the shotguns well. They were incredible students, paying attention and asking good questions. I’ve taught a lot of new shooters (mostly police cadets) how to shoot shotguns over the years and Casey and Hannah were some of the best students I’ve had. They’re already talking about attending pistol classes, so I hope to see them on the range again one day.
So let’s get to the rest of the class. JW started off with a safety brief, then jumped right into loading and unloading using dummy rounds. Once the class started shooting, JW walked them through a logical progression of skills. JW is passionate about running a shotgun and it shows. He demo’d every technique and drill so everyone understood what was expected of them. As any serious shotgunner knows, keeping the shotgun fed is a critical skill so loading was at the forefront throughout the day. All reloads had to come from a side saddle mount (the class description listed a side saddle mount as a requirement) and there were a lot of reloads. In addition to various reloading techniques, JW covered ready positions and push-pull technique. The ready positions were low ready, high ready and “closet” ready. “Closet” ready is another name for what coppers know as “cruiser” ready – tube loaded, chamber empty, trigger pulled, safety off or on – according to your preference. Just before lunch, JW had everyone shoot part of the Gunset Shotgun standards to get a base time. For this part of the standards, there are three steel targets 10 yards away. There are three strings. Each individual string is timed and the shooter starts with the safety on and in the low ready position. String one is one shot to the center steel. String two is 3 shots on the center steel. String three is one shot on each of the three steel targets. Added together, the “patch” time is 3.5 seconds or less. The class standard was 4.5 seconds. My time was around 3 seconds.
After lunch, JW had everyone break out their chosen premium buckshot loads so we could pattern them. JW spent time talking about why certain loads are better than others and demo’d how to go about patterning your chosen loads. After the demo, we all patterned our chosen loads.
As would be expected, the Federal 00 buck FliteControl loads were the best performers. I know how the FC loads pattern in my 1301, so I chose to pattern some Fiocchi Exacta 9 pellet loads. As you can see, they did OK out to 20 yards. After we got done shooting patterns, we did some more shooting with buckshot loads to get used to the difference in recoil. After that we shot some slugs out at 25 yards (another part of the Gunset Shotgun standards).
The day ended with most of us shooting the Gunset Shotgun standards. In addition to the standards we tried before lunch, the Gunset Shotgun standards include:
⁃ 1 shot from closet ready
⁃ 1 reload 1
⁃ 1 reload 2
⁃ 3 slugs from 25 yards
Video and a full breakdown of the standards can be found here: https://youtu.be/bj-cVukvDbY?si=Pcsm2CLHU8YT-JlV
I didn’t keep a running round count, but the advertised round count was 150 birdshot, 40 buckshot and 10 slugs.
Final thoughts:
There were very few equipment and/or gun related issues that I saw. The only gun related one I remember was JW’s 1301 safety getting finicky. I offered to let him shoot my MKA1919, but for some reason he declined. A few students showed up with buckshot or slugs that weren’t optimum (someone sold one of the ladies some 3” magnum buckshot), but there was enough good ammo to go around and several people gave appropriate ammo to those who needed it. My 1301 ran like a champ. I was a little concerned since Hannah was using some light (1145fps) Winchester target loads, but it never hiccuped.
The Gunset crew is a great group of guys. In addition to JW and Scotty, two other Gunset guys – Bobby P and Zan – were in the class. When Bobby P and Zan weren’t shooting they were helping with targets and encouraging other shooters. The Gunset guys are very down to earth and easy to learn from. At the end of the day, all of the students were welcomed into the Gunset “family”. And that’s exactly how the Gunset crew sees their students – as member of their extended family.
I’m looking forward to taking more classes from the Gunset crew. If you’re in Southwest Ohio, you should check them out. If you do, be sure to bring a Turkish box magazine fed shotgun to run. Especially a bullpup. It’ll make JW’s day.
