CCW training in bad weather lessons learned, gear notes.
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 7:04 pm
Now that Illinois is CCW-compliant I can start working on carrying my 649 on my person as opposed to just as part of a backpack get-home kit. For the purposes of backpack carry, I purchased a soft nylon CCW holster from Passport when I first bought the gun. It fits perfectly in a hard-to-see section of my day pack and with a little ingenious clip use it and the gun stay very secure.
The Passport fails as a belt holster in practice. The holster collapses faster than the Turkish lira and it's near impossible to reholster your firearm if you've got extra mass around your waist. It's not a good holster for its intended purpose unless you're skinny as a rail. Even then, I'd avoid using it for its intended purpose because it'll still be tough to put your gun back in the damn thing. As a thing to keep the crap out of your gun while you carry it in your backpack it's good. Sadly, this wasn't the intended purpose of the holster.
I wanted to remedy the crappy holster situation ASAP. Thus I went to one of the bigger tacticool shopping sites and bought a Galco IWB holster. I was hoping to have the thing in time for my CCW class. I'm a left-handed shooter and apparently left-handed IWB holsters are laced with unobtanium and tanned in the tears of virgin unicorns. The site says "One left!" so I place my order. The next day I get an email stating "Our bad! It's on backorder!"
It's on backorder until March. My CCW class ended yesterday.
Things to remember about Illinois CCW courses: you do not need to qualify with your preferred carry piece, nor do you need a fully-concealable firearm and holster. Most everyone else brought their full-size polymer-framed weapon of choice and a holster that they could cover with a jacket. With the terrible ground conditions I decided to go with my actual carry piece so I could save the brass. I'm also a believer in training with your carry piece. You have a tiny gun for CCW? Practice with it and qualify with it so you'll have that muscle memory.
Fan of adverse training that I am, I soldiered on with the crappy Passport holster for the first of two classes. We did our first qualification shoot outdoors. The weather was a lovely 35 degrees with a wind out of the northwest at 25mph and heavy wet snow falling on us. I'm actually not kidding about that, either. I'd prefer shooting in adverse conditions for a CCW class than being in a well-lit indoor range. After the first trouble with reholstering I said "to hell with it" and removed the holster. I went with a pocket draw instead. The 649 performed admirably from a pocket draw without snagging or even printing. I'd still prefer it to be a bit more accessible, but it's nice to know that if I wanted to go with a pocket holster it would fit as is. Reloading is of course a pain as firing either .357 or .38 with a short extractor means pawing at the empty cases to remove them.
I also found another problem while shooting with gloves. I have a pair of Manzella jogger's gloves. They're lightweight and warm, and supposedly the smartphone fingers work. They used to be form-fitting but have stretched out over time. I found out just how stretched out they were when shooting during our sighting-in stage. The gloves' index fingers have stretched out enough that they'd catch in the trigger, causing a FTF. The cylinder would move but the hammer would only fall partway. That's definitely a good lesson to learn in training as opposed to a real situation. I found myself losing a little traction here and there as snow built up. Most of the students wore deep-treaded hiking or tactical boots. I went with LL Bean's Maine Hunting Shoes. (I've been their demographic since 1973 so why not?) They're great for finding ice patches as you slide really well. Adding a set of Yaktrax worked just fine after that.
The next CCW session, I knew that the Passport was right out. I went with a OWB holster from Blackhawk... for an N-frame. It worked fine and reholstering was easy thanks to a reinforced front lip. Unlike the previous week's snow, we just had lots of wind. The temperature was about 50, which was just enough to make sure the snow melted quickly. Of course, this meant our outdoor shooting range was a giant mud pit that would try to steal your boots. Verdun and other Western Front jokes were made all around. While quite a few students wore their waterfowl boots I wore the same pair of LL Bean boots from the previous week. They kept traction despite the really shallow chain-link tread and the mud slid right off when I cleaned them in a small snow drift. I also didn't get quite as muddy as expected. Thank goodness for small favors. I qualified with perfect scores in both sessions despite the annoying environmental factors.
So to sum up:
Get a good holster. Do not get a round tuit. Just get a good holster and be done with it.
Gloves that may work for keeping warm during some athletic endeavors won't necessarily work for CCW shooting.
Pocket carry on a J-frame is possible even with S&W's larger rubber grip. Also, if you're used to firing .357Mag out of a J-frame you'll find that even .38 +P is pleasant to shoot afterwards. I'll likely stick with that for daily carry and just save the .357 for hiking/emergencies.
The tread on LL Bean boots looks stupid, but it works well in mud. It sucks when walking on ice, but mud is not a problem.
Training in less-than-ideal conditions is good for introducing external stress to shooters. I'd say it's as good as trying to shoot under a time limit like in IPSC or IDPA; not perfect, but still better than slow fire in an air-conditioned and well-lit indoor range.
When I get some more money saved up I am going to get the 649's cylinder modified to take moon clips. (Well, they're more like star clips in the case of a 5-shot revolver, but semantics schmemantics.) Reloading in a hurry will be much simpler that way. I may also replace the original barrel with a 3" just for a little more accuracy. It was fine enough for 10 yards but I want finer accuracy at 10 yards.
Anyway, that's what I learned about my firearm carry preferences from 2 days of CCW training.
The Passport fails as a belt holster in practice. The holster collapses faster than the Turkish lira and it's near impossible to reholster your firearm if you've got extra mass around your waist. It's not a good holster for its intended purpose unless you're skinny as a rail. Even then, I'd avoid using it for its intended purpose because it'll still be tough to put your gun back in the damn thing. As a thing to keep the crap out of your gun while you carry it in your backpack it's good. Sadly, this wasn't the intended purpose of the holster.
I wanted to remedy the crappy holster situation ASAP. Thus I went to one of the bigger tacticool shopping sites and bought a Galco IWB holster. I was hoping to have the thing in time for my CCW class. I'm a left-handed shooter and apparently left-handed IWB holsters are laced with unobtanium and tanned in the tears of virgin unicorns. The site says "One left!" so I place my order. The next day I get an email stating "Our bad! It's on backorder!"
It's on backorder until March. My CCW class ended yesterday.
Things to remember about Illinois CCW courses: you do not need to qualify with your preferred carry piece, nor do you need a fully-concealable firearm and holster. Most everyone else brought their full-size polymer-framed weapon of choice and a holster that they could cover with a jacket. With the terrible ground conditions I decided to go with my actual carry piece so I could save the brass. I'm also a believer in training with your carry piece. You have a tiny gun for CCW? Practice with it and qualify with it so you'll have that muscle memory.
Fan of adverse training that I am, I soldiered on with the crappy Passport holster for the first of two classes. We did our first qualification shoot outdoors. The weather was a lovely 35 degrees with a wind out of the northwest at 25mph and heavy wet snow falling on us. I'm actually not kidding about that, either. I'd prefer shooting in adverse conditions for a CCW class than being in a well-lit indoor range. After the first trouble with reholstering I said "to hell with it" and removed the holster. I went with a pocket draw instead. The 649 performed admirably from a pocket draw without snagging or even printing. I'd still prefer it to be a bit more accessible, but it's nice to know that if I wanted to go with a pocket holster it would fit as is. Reloading is of course a pain as firing either .357 or .38 with a short extractor means pawing at the empty cases to remove them.
I also found another problem while shooting with gloves. I have a pair of Manzella jogger's gloves. They're lightweight and warm, and supposedly the smartphone fingers work. They used to be form-fitting but have stretched out over time. I found out just how stretched out they were when shooting during our sighting-in stage. The gloves' index fingers have stretched out enough that they'd catch in the trigger, causing a FTF. The cylinder would move but the hammer would only fall partway. That's definitely a good lesson to learn in training as opposed to a real situation. I found myself losing a little traction here and there as snow built up. Most of the students wore deep-treaded hiking or tactical boots. I went with LL Bean's Maine Hunting Shoes. (I've been their demographic since 1973 so why not?) They're great for finding ice patches as you slide really well. Adding a set of Yaktrax worked just fine after that.
The next CCW session, I knew that the Passport was right out. I went with a OWB holster from Blackhawk... for an N-frame. It worked fine and reholstering was easy thanks to a reinforced front lip. Unlike the previous week's snow, we just had lots of wind. The temperature was about 50, which was just enough to make sure the snow melted quickly. Of course, this meant our outdoor shooting range was a giant mud pit that would try to steal your boots. Verdun and other Western Front jokes were made all around. While quite a few students wore their waterfowl boots I wore the same pair of LL Bean boots from the previous week. They kept traction despite the really shallow chain-link tread and the mud slid right off when I cleaned them in a small snow drift. I also didn't get quite as muddy as expected. Thank goodness for small favors. I qualified with perfect scores in both sessions despite the annoying environmental factors.
So to sum up:
Get a good holster. Do not get a round tuit. Just get a good holster and be done with it.
Gloves that may work for keeping warm during some athletic endeavors won't necessarily work for CCW shooting.
Pocket carry on a J-frame is possible even with S&W's larger rubber grip. Also, if you're used to firing .357Mag out of a J-frame you'll find that even .38 +P is pleasant to shoot afterwards. I'll likely stick with that for daily carry and just save the .357 for hiking/emergencies.
The tread on LL Bean boots looks stupid, but it works well in mud. It sucks when walking on ice, but mud is not a problem.
Training in less-than-ideal conditions is good for introducing external stress to shooters. I'd say it's as good as trying to shoot under a time limit like in IPSC or IDPA; not perfect, but still better than slow fire in an air-conditioned and well-lit indoor range.
When I get some more money saved up I am going to get the 649's cylinder modified to take moon clips. (Well, they're more like star clips in the case of a 5-shot revolver, but semantics schmemantics.) Reloading in a hurry will be much simpler that way. I may also replace the original barrel with a 3" just for a little more accuracy. It was fine enough for 10 yards but I want finer accuracy at 10 yards.
Anyway, that's what I learned about my firearm carry preferences from 2 days of CCW training.