TIPS ON SHOOTING FROM A BOAT/WATERCRAFT
SOME TIPS ON HOW TO SHOOT FROM A BOAT
Who needs to shoot from a boat you may ask?....Why MARINE PATROL Officers of course, along with Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and Naval Police. It can be a challenging task to master much as firing from a moving vehicle. And as of late Judges are becoming more and more interested in an Officers firearms proficiency when being questioned in Court.
If you are going to be shooting from a boat you really should qualify while on the water, much like K-9 Officers bring their " partners" to the range to acclimate them to the sounds of gunfire and such. Firing from dry land is all well and fine but in my opinion if you're going to have to draw your firearm on the water practice the techniques involved, the rolling and pitching provides a much different footing environment and this can mean the difference between life and death in some cases.
Shooting on open waterways is prohibited in most States and Provinces so using them as a training area is out of the question basically so what we are going to have to do is to simulate an on water environment for our training scenarios to achieve a level of proficiency suitable for our profession.
Rolling and Pitching Drill:
One of the most easiest and cheapest training methods to use to practice aimimg and hitting a moving rolling target is to take a length of cord or twine and one of the empty 2 litre soda bottles. Tie the cord around the neck of the bottle, throw this over a cable, target stand, open saw horse, or ladder. Pull the other end of the cord to produce and bobbing motion such as waves would produce. Take a few shots...it's harder than you realize. Add a some weight to the bottle either using fine sand or water, this makes it even more challenging. With a reactive target the level of difficuly raises immensely, and when you get a hit the bottle will explode or depending on the ammo used at least spring a great leak.
Practice on the range while you are being shaken by an instructor or your partner/shooting buddy. Grab each other by the collar and belt and do a bit of gentle shaking while you're firing at the down range target, increase the level of the shaking to simulate really rough waters. This is difficult to hit your target when being "tossed around". Check your range scores from shooting at a target while staionary and then check again after being "tossed around", I'll guarantee your shooting score is way down from when you were stationary.
Go to your local tire shop or service station and scrounge around for some used inner tubes for our next scenario, lay the tubes on the ground and lash them all together with cord so they don't seperate during the shooting drill. The next part involves putting a small boat or dinghy on top of the tubes, but take care to cover all the sharp edges on the bottoms with something like duct tape or strapping tape or black electric tape to keep from puncturing the tubes. Now you have a tool that simulates the movement/rocking of a boat on the open water, hop on board and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you stand up and walk abit it will feel like being on the water, use this on your dry range and it will be like water training. SAFETY IS ALWAYS YOUR NUMBER ONR PRIORITY WHEN TRAINING so here is a few basic rules to observe:
Avoid shooting when standing up in your makeshift "boat" as it's too unstable.
Try to make yourself " part of the 'boat" you're training in by bracing yourself with a good stance feet apart to try too be rigid like a flag pole. On a patrol boat the gunwales are usually high enough up to lean into them with your knees and brace yourself. On rowboats/duckboats the gunwales aren't high enough to lock your knee's against, so your best bet is to use a sitting position with your back against a gunwale and your feet braced against the opposite gunwale. In smaller sized boats brace yourself between the seats in them.
This makes the smaller boat want to tip over and this is where a great shooting coach comes into play, have him/her hold onto one side of the boat to stabilize it, and the other part of the job intails rocking it to simulate the wave action on the boat. While this drill is not perfect it will be as close as you can come to a simulation on dry land and combining this with the bobbing bottle will make this a damn good practice drill.
Usually after range training a lot of teams do some force on force manuevers with Airsoftt or Simunition or even marking rounds, now thats really hard to do with water training but not entirely out of the question with a few improvisations
Try to scrounge up some older used boats to use for "boarding practice drills", but do make sure they float before you go on a "boarding party mission", trying to board a boat that is sinking is no way to start or end a training day when you are soaking wet from the get go. Practice in a secluded pond area or shallower part of the river.
Now get out there and train, train,train!!!!!!
WORK SAFE, BE SAFE, STAY ALERT!!!!
Who needs to shoot from a boat you may ask?....Why MARINE PATROL Officers of course, along with Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and Naval Police. It can be a challenging task to master much as firing from a moving vehicle. And as of late Judges are becoming more and more interested in an Officers firearms proficiency when being questioned in Court.
If you are going to be shooting from a boat you really should qualify while on the water, much like K-9 Officers bring their " partners" to the range to acclimate them to the sounds of gunfire and such. Firing from dry land is all well and fine but in my opinion if you're going to have to draw your firearm on the water practice the techniques involved, the rolling and pitching provides a much different footing environment and this can mean the difference between life and death in some cases.
Shooting on open waterways is prohibited in most States and Provinces so using them as a training area is out of the question basically so what we are going to have to do is to simulate an on water environment for our training scenarios to achieve a level of proficiency suitable for our profession.
Rolling and Pitching Drill:
One of the most easiest and cheapest training methods to use to practice aimimg and hitting a moving rolling target is to take a length of cord or twine and one of the empty 2 litre soda bottles. Tie the cord around the neck of the bottle, throw this over a cable, target stand, open saw horse, or ladder. Pull the other end of the cord to produce and bobbing motion such as waves would produce. Take a few shots...it's harder than you realize. Add a some weight to the bottle either using fine sand or water, this makes it even more challenging. With a reactive target the level of difficuly raises immensely, and when you get a hit the bottle will explode or depending on the ammo used at least spring a great leak.
Practice on the range while you are being shaken by an instructor or your partner/shooting buddy. Grab each other by the collar and belt and do a bit of gentle shaking while you're firing at the down range target, increase the level of the shaking to simulate really rough waters. This is difficult to hit your target when being "tossed around". Check your range scores from shooting at a target while staionary and then check again after being "tossed around", I'll guarantee your shooting score is way down from when you were stationary.
Go to your local tire shop or service station and scrounge around for some used inner tubes for our next scenario, lay the tubes on the ground and lash them all together with cord so they don't seperate during the shooting drill. The next part involves putting a small boat or dinghy on top of the tubes, but take care to cover all the sharp edges on the bottoms with something like duct tape or strapping tape or black electric tape to keep from puncturing the tubes. Now you have a tool that simulates the movement/rocking of a boat on the open water, hop on board and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you stand up and walk abit it will feel like being on the water, use this on your dry range and it will be like water training. SAFETY IS ALWAYS YOUR NUMBER ONR PRIORITY WHEN TRAINING so here is a few basic rules to observe:
Avoid shooting when standing up in your makeshift "boat" as it's too unstable.
Try to make yourself " part of the 'boat" you're training in by bracing yourself with a good stance feet apart to try too be rigid like a flag pole. On a patrol boat the gunwales are usually high enough up to lean into them with your knees and brace yourself. On rowboats/duckboats the gunwales aren't high enough to lock your knee's against, so your best bet is to use a sitting position with your back against a gunwale and your feet braced against the opposite gunwale. In smaller sized boats brace yourself between the seats in them.
This makes the smaller boat want to tip over and this is where a great shooting coach comes into play, have him/her hold onto one side of the boat to stabilize it, and the other part of the job intails rocking it to simulate the wave action on the boat. While this drill is not perfect it will be as close as you can come to a simulation on dry land and combining this with the bobbing bottle will make this a damn good practice drill.
Usually after range training a lot of teams do some force on force manuevers with Airsoftt or Simunition or even marking rounds, now thats really hard to do with water training but not entirely out of the question with a few improvisations
Try to scrounge up some older used boats to use for "boarding practice drills", but do make sure they float before you go on a "boarding party mission", trying to board a boat that is sinking is no way to start or end a training day when you are soaking wet from the get go. Practice in a secluded pond area or shallower part of the river.
Now get out there and train, train,train!!!!!!
WORK SAFE, BE SAFE, STAY ALERT!!!!
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