S9: Episode 284: The Training Rifle Isn't Dead — It May Be the Fastest Way to Master Your Rifle

So in last week's episode, we talked a lot about the training and what it really takes to become a great marksman and really try to narrow it down or put it into something like a round count, like how many rounds or quality rounds do you have to put down range to really become and grow into a great marksman? And we mentioned that there was a video that come out.

It was from a really popular YouTube channel where they had said that the training rifle is dead.

And he had some really great points in which he mentioned and talked about.

But, you know, I'm going to go on the opposite side of the fence here and say that it's more valuable now than ever.

And you don't have to build a $12,000 clone to your custom rifle to get the value of a training rifle.

And so I'm going to go over three things that you can do with your personal rifle, as well as two bonus contents here at the end that I think are worthwhile mentioning.

So right out of the gate, let's get after it and talk about the value of a training rifle.

So my experience with a training rifle, I will tell you that I have shot many, many rounds through a .223.

The long range shooting school started using .223s as school rifles simply because I would loan out my trainer rifle to those who came to the class and rifles broke down.

So it wasn't uncommon back then to have eight and 12 and maybe 14 students in a class, two or three instructors, and I'll guarantee it, two or three rifles broke are going to go down over the course of three days.

That was just the average.

I mean, it sounds like a lot, but I will tell you over the decades of doing this that that was not uncommon at all.

And so rather than have them sit there off to the side with a broken down rifle for a school that they paid for, I would offer to let them use my training rifle.

And it was in .223.

So it wasn't really hard for me to, you know, give it up and put it onto the line.

I wasn't really worried about the round count through it.

You know, it wasn't my personal match gun.

And by the way, I have actually left people use my personal match gun at the school in years past because that many rifles broke down.

Now, this eventually led into me making three, four, five rifles in .223 that then became the school rifles.

And we'll talk more about school rifles in the next episode when we talk about caliber selections and making a great dual-purpose rifle.

In other words, it's a trainer slash match shooting, which I think is really important.

But what I've learned in doing this, now here's to catch this in the value of a training rifle, right? Is by using the smaller caliber .223, less recoil, the ability to self-spot, the ability to have a controlled follow-through with a little bit of a bump, mind you.

I mean, they're not recoil-less.

They just have a really small amount of recoil.

They could master and learn the art of fundamentals of marksmanship way faster.