Sure, no problem. This was the first trial run for this course I think, but I think it went pretty well and they're planning to continue offering them every year for the foreseeable.
The course is run by a chap who is ex-Game Warden from Zimbabwe. I think he was doing that full time around 20 years ago, but has maintained connections in the country and the industry. As such, the course is based loosely around the training and testing that the current wardens undergo, with a few tweaks to better suit the recreational hunter, as opposed to a PH type role.
The course itself is run down in Cornwall and lasts 2 days. It's a fairly even split between general rifle skills and practical shooting with the drills and skill set fairly heavily biased towards a mauser type bolt gun (although a few guys quite happily adapted a lot of it to double rifles and I muddled through with my Tikka, despite not being able to top load). Attendance was 12 on the first day, 9 on the second.
On the general skills side of things we covered off safe misfire drill for a Safari type situation (ie how to cycle the bolt safely with a round which may cook off when you don't have the time to wait the customary 30 seconds), general considerations for safe but rapid deployment of the rifle, ammo storage and it's influence on actually topping up the mag, kit, what the 'accepted' procedure for a warden or PH in a charge type situation would be (mostly so as a client you know what to expect and how to act so as not to get in the way), safe ways to carry a rifle in field conditions such as underloading etc, a few drills to familiarise yourself with the rifle under pressure such as timed loading and blindfolded manipulation, stuff like that.
The shooting side of things basically aimed to practise the training items under field conditions and was entriely done under a degree of time pressure. We covered static target shooting in field positions, which also included stuff like a hang-fire situation with snap caps, deploying the rifle from a sling and making ready under time stress, reloading against the clock, fire and movement type stuff. Basically all the things you may need to do in the course of general hunting, and potentially need to do sharpish under stress if you end up injuring an animal and needing a fast follow up, especially for DG species.
An example stage, and one I particularly enjoyed was to start with 3 rounds loaded, 2 live, 1 snap (mag loaded by the RO so you didn't know when in the sequence it comes). On the command you have 10 seconds to shoot 3 targets at 25, 20, 15m, but you also have to perform the misfire drill when the snap cap fails to fire, and load an additional round into the rifle to complete the stage. The target had a 2" bull, and then a 5" and 10" roundel for lower scoring hits. Was certainly interesting to see which of the guys with the big bores had a bit of a flinch on that one as well...
We also practised some moving target stuff, so procedure for a charging lion, anchoring shots on the rear end of a hippo type target (running away from the shooter) and all the usual stuff like aim points and drills for a charging buff. We also did a few practice runs on the lion target where you start with an unloaded rifle and have 4 seconds to move a couple meters to the firing point, load 3 rounds, cycle the bolt and assume a kneeling position before it charges, at which point you have roughly 3-4 seconds to get 2 shots off into the kill zone before it 'gets' you (I would have been eaten twice on this round, to my shame).
The Buffalo was probably my favourite round. You start standing with 3 rounds loaded, 2 live over the top of a snap cap. You get 5 seconds to shoot into the heart area at roughly 50m and then on report the buffalo charges you and again you have roughly 2-3 seconds to put the second live round into the head kill zone. The timer then stops once the shooter has taken two shots and cycled the bolt to load the snap cap.
On the whole, I can't directly comment on how applicable the drills would be to a safari or DG hunt, having not done one, but the chap seemed to know his stuff and I had a good time. There were also a few bits and pieces I hadn't really considered as a UK stalker, some good practice for varous drills and even really mundance stuff like how to rapidly cycle the bolt that you wouldn't ordinarily practice for stalking. The 4 or 5 attendees who had done some African hunting before, both DG and PG seemed happy enough with the instruction as well, so I guess it is at least a little applicable for the real thing.
Plus the shooting aspects were good fun and I hadn't used one of the 'charge box' systems before, so shooting targets coming either towards you or directly away from the shooter was novel.
