Night time

[1Admin]

How much of your weapons related training do to devote to night time or low light work?

What about other night training like knowing how to correctly use your vision at night, movement techniques, etc.

Other than the bugs, this is the perfect time of year to work on your night time stuff because it's so blasted hot during the day!

What are you doing/have you done for night/low light training?

[1Admin]

For those of you with some night training, what insights can you share with others?

[Longhunter]

Having spent a good deal of my time in the army doing training and missions at night, I can say being able to comfortably operate at night is a very important thing. Everything gets more complicated at night. Light and noise discipline are huge things to work on. Sound usually carries farther at night and even the smallest light can be seen shining for quite some distance. Knowing where everything is on your kit and in your BOB is very important so you don't have to use a light to find anything. Movement is slowed down at night especially when moving a large group of people in any kind of formation. At night when moving thru the woods, the file is your best movement formation.

When starting training at night, start slow and start with the basics. If you are planning on using any kind of NVG/NOD's, practice putting them on, adjusting them and walking around with them. Sounds simple, but you will be surprised. Practice quitely communicating, hand and arm signals don't always work at night and pssst, pssst isn't always the best way to get someones attention. The list goes on as to what you should practice doing at night. Suffice it to say that whatever you can do during the day, you should be able to do at night. Go from equipment familiarization, to basic movement techniques and navigation, to setting up patrol bases and laying in ambushes, to executing battle drills and shooting.

The biggest piece of advice I can offer, is to just get out there and do training at night. That is the only way to get comfortable working in the dark. Believe it or not many people, even in the army, are still afraid of every little thing that goes bump in the night. Control your fear and become that thing that goes bump in the night.

[Firedoc]

One time some friends and I were doing a little night shooting and one Dude had a laser on his rifle. He was hitting pretty good, but through NVG's it looked like a lightsaber leading right back to him. IMHO any benifit was negated by the loss of concealment.

[EX121]

I think that before you start any weapons practice you should get comfortable with moving at night. Do several night compass walks, also just sit and listen to sounds around you. If you are at a retreat or specific location get to know what things look like under various lighting & weather conditions. Like was said earlier start slow.
Make sure you don't have neighbors that will complain, or worse call L.E. if you do shoot at night. We are getting a huge influx of new people from the west side of the state so when folks shoot at even well know locations there are several 911 calls, I can't imagine the results of nightime practice, especially, semi-auto.

[Lowdown3]

A lot of nighttime shooting is definitely remembered for a long period of time by those living in the area.... Can be a good thing or a bad thing

[road warrior762]

yea the same trails you walk in the day can be totally different at night.If you have a retreat you should walk it at night to be familiar with the shadows.they can play tricks on you if your not use to them.