Todd Louis Green has been on a roll lately with some top-notch articles. I’ve actually been meaning to write up my comments on his “1H Shooting” for a while now… better late than never I guess.

First, go read the original article. It stands alone just fine and I think Todd makes a great point about perspective. Is learning to shoot and manipulate your gun with one hand important? Yes. But how important depends upon your actual need and shouldn’t depend upon things like “well what if you’re injured in a fight?”  I mean, yes, that’s still a valid point to consider, but should it dictate that you spend all your time learning 1H shooting? Probably not. Yes you should know it and if you don’t know how to do 1H shooting and manipulations you really need to learn them. But I like Todd’s reasoning here:

But just keep in mind that the time you put into polishing your WHO double feed malfunction clearance technique is time you’re taking away from improving the skills you’re far more likely to need, like drawing and hitting at speed with two hands.

Very true. Our time and other resources are finite, so we have to keep that perspective.

But then Todd goes on to say:

For someone who hasn’t yet learned the proper way to draw, reload, and clear malfunctions both SHO and WHO I’d recommend fixing that flaw, but in terms of sustaining those skills you need to look at your actual needs. For example, competition-oriented shooters will probably never have to perform WHO draws or one-handed reloads but SHO and WHO shooting is extremely common in both USPSA and IDPA. A K9 officer, on the other hand, is extremely likely to need strong hand only skills.

So again, it all comes down to YOUR needs. What are YOU training for? What does your context require? You shouldn’t neglect things, but just find perspective. I don’t NEED WHO shooting that much, but I need to practice it more because, as an instructor, I need to be able to demonstrate things to students. I’m expected to have a higher level of skill. That said, I still don’t kill myself to practice it to death tho. As you can see from my recent dry fire logs, I have other things that need my primary focus.

Learn to shoot one-handed. Learn to manipulate your gun one handed (and consider how hardware may matter, like Dawson Precision Charger rear sights). Practice these skills, but keep perspective relative to your context and needs.

Or rather, the joys of FLITECONTROL.

I love Federal Premium’s FLITECONTROL wad in their shotgun loads. It allows you to deliver a tighter payload at longer distances. I know popular (faulty) knowledge is that you want to use a shotgun to spew forth a cloud of instant death, but really you don’t want that sort of pattern. You want as tight as possible for the application at hand.

I was happy to read the new Box O’ Truth #56 doing some tests with Federal FLITECONTROL in #1 buck.  You don’t see much #1 buck, but “Old Painless” makes a viable case for it. The thing is, patterns matter because pellets matter. You are accountable for every pellet that comes out of that gun. I recall hearing a story told by Tom Givens of some police action, but I admit my memory is fuzzy on this particular story. The key thing I remember was a shotgun was involved, buckshot was involved… and all the pellets hit the bad guy… well, all pellets but one, which hit the innocent hostage. That’s not what we desire. When you have more pellets coming out of the gun, you now have more bits of lead that you have only so much control over, but still all the responsibility for. So having 15 #1 pellets vs. say 8 00 pellets, the math says with 15 you have a better chance of one going where you didn’t want it.

But then, in comes FLITECONTROL. Look at the pictures Old Painless took. Very consistent with my shotgun ammo trials. This is why FLITECONTROL is a must-have for personal defense shotgun rounds. This isn’t to encourage taking long(er) distance shots, but more so that it helps to keep the payload on target. It improves your chances of taking care of the matter at hand, and reduces chances of undesired issues.

I’m not sure I’ll adopt this #1 buck, even with the FLITECONTROL. It’s new, relatively speaking, and I’m not going to rush out and deal with this. 00 buck is pretty standard and established. In fact, I’ve desired to move from the 9 pellet to 8 pellet loads (Federal Premium Tactical FLITECONTROL 8 pellet 00 buck, reduced recoil — ATK catalog # LE133 00). But what’s cool to see from TBOT is more demonstration of FLITECONTROL and why it’s the solid (only?) choice if you’re going to use a shotgun for personal defense.