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I spent last week taking the Jager Crouse presented by Von Steuben Training & Consulting. The course was held at the Brushbeater Training Center in North Carolina.
The class is scenario based with a serious real-world possible event. At the beginning, you are briefed that a WROL situation has been ongoing and that you are part of a local Mutual Assistance Group. Your group has received word of a bandit group raiding farms that has camped in the area. You will conduct a five-day patrol operation to locate, harass, and interdict this group. This is certainly a mission I can see developing.
Day one began with some instruction on what goes into your ruck and how to pack it. This included weighing the packs and your chest rig/belt kit. I stepped off with 56 pounds - mine was not the heaviest.
After the classroom portion, the squad patrolled down to the range for marksmanship training. All of the rifles were zeroed and then instruction was given on various ways to use your ruck as a support for your rifle. After training, we moved to a known-distance range and engaged targets from 100m out to 380m. The marksmanship ended with a drill involving a 25m sprint wearing the ruck, dropping the ruck, and then using the ruck to assist in engaging 11 targets from 100m to 380m. It was a pretty fun drill.
A class on water purification happened while we were at the range and near a water source. We covered various filters and various chemical options.
We then patrolled back to an overnight site and had a class on shelter building. Mike Von Steuben demonstrated making the "Royal Marine Rig" out of paracord and using that to throw up shelters very quickly with tarps or thermal tarps. Personally, I used my camouflaged thermal tarp. The emphasis was on putting up shelters that can come down quickly. Mike covered three different types of tarp shelters.
After setting up shelters, we returned to the range for a night shoot.