Part six of the Rogers Shooting School test is, in my opinion, the hardest out of all nine stages.
Stage 6: strong hand only, from the holster loaded with exactly five rounds, 15 seconds
Maximum points: 10
T5 through T1 appear in order from farthest to nearest, SHO reload, T1 through T5 appear in order from nearest to farthest
This is the only part of the entire 125-point test where make up shots are a bad idea. You begin holstered with exactly five rounds and exactly five targets appear.
Also, the Rogers staff will tell you repeatedly: begin your draw on the sound of the hydraulic pump! If you wait for the first target (T5) to appear over the wall, you’ve lost a significant amount of time.
Tip #1: Know the sequence. The plates don’t all come up at once so you want to engage them in order. On the draw, it’s T5 at the top of the wall, then T4 on the left of the wall, then T3 on the right side of the wall, then T2 over the hostage’s shoulder, and finally T1. After the reload pause, they come back up in the opposite order, from T1 to T5.
Tip #2: The first part of this stage, T5 through T1, is unforgiving. First, you’re got the only time in the entire test where you begin on anything but the closest target: you draw to T5, and strong hand only to boot. Then, as mentioned above, you do not have any extra ammunition. You will see five targets and you only get five rounds with which to knock them down. To make matters worse, not all of the targets stay up for the entire time. Each target goes away after a short pause, so taking the time to fire make up shots at it can be very costly. You need to have it in your head at the beginning of this test that you are going to fire one round at a particular target and then transition to the next one regardless of whether you hit it or not.
Tip #3: You get a ridiculous amount of time for the reload (about six seconds). If you’re not fumbling, you should be back in action and aimed in and slack out of the trigger at the T1 plate’s location before it begins to rise. Ambush it on the rise and then drive to each successive target (T2, T3, T4, then T5).
Tip #4: After the reload you need to make a mental shift because now you do want to fire make up shots. You’ve got extra ammunition in your gun and there is no reason to leave a near target standing just to shoot at a harder one farther away.
Here is a video of me shooting it:
I missed one plate. Did you see it?
Watch carefully, and you’ll see that I miss the very last plate, the closest one, on the first half of the stage. I got overconfident, went too fast, and had no way to make up the shot. Out of six tries during the week at Rogers, I cleaned this stage only once.
You’ll also see two things about the reload portion of the test. First, I came out from “cover” before the slide was forward, which is very much frowned upon at Rogers. Get caught doing that a few times and they’ll start to deduct points. Second, you’ll see that I finished the reload fast enough to be waiting on T1 which allowed me to ambush it and drive on to each successive target before it rose. Being ready to knock them down the moment they start moving is a huge advantage.
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
The Roger’s test is a skills test. I get that. Do they allow other SHO reloads? I ask because putting the gun between your knees would seriously hamper mobility.
Tony B — I don’t know what other reloads they may allow. We asked if we could use the appendix holsters as a “bucket” and they asked us not to due to concerns that the in-battery reloads would be too dangerous.
Did anyone use a traditional belt holster for reloads? Say, a kydex holster on the strong-side hip.
I’m pretty sure everyone used the between-the-knee method. Clarifying that a bit … it’s really a between-the-thigh method. They wanted you to squeeze your thighs together, making a V, laying the gun in that V. This prevents the trigger from getting trapped, which makes it easier to reacquire your grip because it’s not buried between your legs.
“…it’s really a between-the-thigh method.”
Phrasing.
Was curious as to the reasoning/purpose behind the test. If you know when the test is about to begin, via hearing the sound of the hydraulic pumps and memorizing the squence of the targets, doesn’t that reduce the potential training/skills effect?
I don’t say this as a smart*ss, but out of a genuine curiosity of expanding my knowledge base. I have been out of the shooting community for a number of years and am playing “catch up,” on the theory side.
Thank you.
JB — Regarding the pump as a start queue, it’s no different than using a shot timer. My guess (and it’s speculation on my part because I’ve never discussed it with the guys at Rogers) is that the pump is what the computer controls and thus it’s very specific and consistent. The time the pump takes to make the plate actually rise probably varies a little bit from day to day and lane to lane. There is an obviously greater delay between the pump and T5 compared to the pump and T1. So going off the pump is likely a more consistent and fair way to go. As long as the exposure times are right, it wouldn’t matter what the start signal was, really.
As for memorizing the sequence, on some tests — like this one — the Rogers folks tell you specifically. Again, the exposure times are set so that you don’t have time to search, locate, identify, and then engage. It’s not intended to be a tactical exercise or a judgment exercise. The sequence has to be consistent from shooter to shooter and test to test because otherwise it would create an unfair advantage for some folks. If one guy gets T1 and T2 but another guy’s exposures are T4 (far left of the wall) and T7 (way out in right field) they’re not being evaluated equally. So Rogers is doing the right thing by having a preprogrammed test.
It’s important to point out that during the training and practice portions of the class — which is most of the day Monday through Thursday plus a good warm up session Friday — you’ll frequently be given random targets to engage.
Having said all that, I’ll just repeat what I said in the very first “Gaming the Test” post a couple weeks ago: not everyone wants to use these tips and tricks to eek out a better score. That’s perfectly all right with me. This information is here for folks who want it, and I understand completely that other folks would prefer to have as unplanned “reactive” approach as they can.
Appreciate the response. And as for there being no difference between the buzzer of a timer/hydraulics gear, I never thought of that.
Thanks for your time and all the effort you put into your website. I really appreciate your endurance tests.