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Practical Riflecraft with NRA Outdoors

by Shawn Skipper - Thursday, July 30, 2015

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It Starts in Class

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You can't go to school without spending some time in the classroom. Peacemaker's owner, Cole McCulloch, personally oversaw the entirety of the Practical Hunting Rifleman School, and imparted his years of wisdom on students each morning in the classroom, before moving things to the range.

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Frontier Range

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Peacemaker offers a variety of ranges, each suited to an individual course's needs. We spent our time on the Frontier Range, which offered no shortage of realistic shooting situations. Throughout the course of the weekend, students took shots from as close as 60 yards to as long as 1,100.

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Lessons on the Range

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Cole McCulloch personally demonstrated each position and technique before putting students behind the gun.

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Real World Scenarios

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The course is dedicated to "practical" riflecraft, and a big part of that was putting shooters in "real world" situations. It's not often that you'll have your bench with you during a hunt, and the shots we were asked to take reflected that. Here a student uses a fallen tree to help him steady his shot on the target, some 200 yards away.

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From the Trees

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The heavily-wooded property of Peacemaker's Frontier Range offered students a chance to use nature as helping hand when establishing stability before a shot.

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From the Sticks

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Shootings sticks made an appearance, too, presenting students with another opportunity to simulate "in the field" conditions.

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Like Father, Like Son

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Students from across the United States traveled to West Virginia for course, each with varying degrees of experience in riflecraft. The father/son duo pictured here were experienced clay shooters, but had never so much as fired a rifle before in their career. That's not the case anymore.

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One-on-One Training

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Peacemaker's staff oversaw every shot that students too, both to ensure safe rifle handling, and so that they could later provide firsthand analysis of the student's form. Here, owner Cole McCulloch oversees a student's offhand shot.

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On the Spot

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The course didn't just cover shooting—it covered effective communication with your spotter, too. Classroom sessions covered proper terminology and proven techniques, and our Swarovski spotting scopes took care of the rest.

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Going Long

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The final shot of the course finally allowed students the opportunity to take try to reach out and touch a steel target that sat more than 1,100 yards away. Here, the author lines up his shot from the bench.

Building upon the success of its 2015 Long Range School program, NRA Outdoors recently announced that it will be offering even more courses in 2016. On top of that, they announced a "Practical Hunting Rifleman School," this time on the east coast. Spots in each course have been selling like hotcakes, and the class sports partners like Weatherby, Huskimaw, Swarovski, Hornady Ammunition and Caldwell Shooting Supplies. American Hunter wanted to get an inside look at one of the classes, and so Web Managing Editor Shawn Skipper recently journeyed to Peacemaker National Training Center in Glengary, West Virginia to get a refresher in practical riflecraft. The ensuing gallery offers a look at just what our friends at NRA Outdoors are offering. Be sure to keep an eye out for more coverage in our print edition in the coming months.

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Practical Riflecraft with NRA Outdoors

Gallery

It Starts in Class

Frontier Range

Lessons on the Range

Real World Scenarios

From the Trees

From the Sticks

Like Father, Like Son

One-on-One Training

On the Spot

Going Long

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