Considerations for Night Brutality
Night Brutality 2023 is working up to be THE best opportunity in Canada to get an honest, unfiltered assessment of your night shooting capabilities.
For many that’s going to be an astonishing wake up call that you are not as prepared as you believe, for operating in the darkness that consumes more than half our lives here in Canada.
There’s a lot of folks currently registered for the match that have little to no night shooting experience, and have never attended a Brutality match before. It’s very exciting to see folks willing to jump in head first, and I hope this write up can help guide your preparations over the next month.
White Light, PCCs & Handgun Freeze
First and foremost, Night Brutality, along with our Night Fighter Essentials course are NOT night vision events. They are night shooting events, and that includes white light as much as night vision. Streamlight Protac 2’s are $160, and Streamlight TLR-1’s are under $200, the HLX/HL variants cost only an extra ~$50 each.
If night vision is your current hold back on participation, get set up with the Streamlights and go experience night shooting.
Tom at Canadian Multigun has done an excellent job in setting up Night Brutality to include PCCs, and anyone who doesn’t own a handgun. Neither of us want to see folks excluded from events based on legislative decisions outside of any of our control. So bring what you got, and let’s prepare for a fantastic shooting experience.
Check out Tom's great FAQ section for more info on participating in Brutality matches.
Safety
Shooting at night increases the importance of knowing what's in front and behind your target, situational awareness, and what's immediately around you for hazards and movement.
As the risk level rises, to maintain a prudent safety margin the theshold for leniency drops away. Ensure you are comfortable manipulating your firearms in all states during daylight and with the lights off at home, including basic movement, reloads, and malfunctions.
If you feel your level of experience is lacking and you have concerns about progressing from daylight shooting into night, come get some proper training with us.
Training
As part of that preparation, we’re hosting a Night Fighter Essentials course on Nov 18th. Especially if you’ve never attended a formal training course, conducted live fire in a no-light environment, and/or participated in a Brutality match, I highly highly recommend attending the course if able. We have some highly experienced instructors to work with white light and night vision shooters at all experience levels, and will be working from the ground up with gear set up, fundamentals of drills in the dark, manipulation of lights/NODs, and target identification. We already have a wide range of shooters registered, from first time white light shooters, to current MIL/LEO night vision shooters, coming in from across the country to attend. You will be matched with shooters at your experience level to get the most out of the course.
Cold Harbour Supply will also be making a special appearance, bringing a demo and rental fleet of night vision devices. This is a rare opportunity to get hands on with a variety of different devices, chat with night vision experts first hand, and even rent a set of night vision for the duration of the course.
Fundamental Skills
Consistency is critical when it comes to fundamental drills and weapons handling, and removing visual confirmation from part of those drills is part of dialing that in for a no-light environment.
Continual dry fire reps are the key to developing that consistency: maintaining eye contact on a fixed “target” during dry fire training, equivalent to keeping your eyes on the threat, closing your eyes during reps as dependency shifts to your peripheral vision, and confirmations with the lights completely off.
Be sure to spend lots of time working with your weapon light controls in addition to regular reloads and malfunctions. Get comfortable with how your grip changes to actuate pistol lights and tape switches, and increase proficiency in turning OFF your lights to perform those same drills.
If you find yourself struggling with any progression, slow it down. If speed is not a factor in your mistakes, move back to keeping your eyes open and be accountable to yourself. Looking at your reloads, or accepting mistakes is not being accountable. Fast mistakes will not lead to fast success. Slow it down, and develop the tactile memory that will support increased speed, and ultimately no-light conditions.
Gear Layout
It needs to be constant, secure, and it has to make sense. If your layout isn’t working out, absolutely make changes, but it can take a few thousand reps to really work out your own skill and familiarity as a factor for that change.
With that, we’re reliant on the pouches and content being in the same place every time. If things are sliding or shifting around with movement and use, pouches and items will be difficult to locate in the dark.
Likewise, the layout needs to be natural to use. Magazines on your support hand side, clear space above holsters and mag pouches, and mags indexed properly for expedient reloads. This is something that you'll learn over time, but if you find that after enough time training, a movement or placement feels off or awkward, it probably needs to be changed.
Kit List Recommendations
If you’re new to the Brutality matches, or even multigun in general, I’m putting together a basic multigun Starting guide, which will talk about a lot of fundamental kit and equipment.
Your rudimentary shooting equipment, plus a little bit of gear for ammo carriage is all that’s required to get started with multigun matches.
Brutality matches are simply multigun with added physical and environmental strain.
Night Brutality ventures into a new territory that adds some additional equipment requirements, and some new recommendations:
-Weapon Mounted Lights
These upcoming events ARE NOT NIGHT VISION EVENTS. White light guys, get out there. As I mentioned at the start of the article, I personally recommend Streamlight for most non-duty applications. They're very good quality and value.
-Headlamp
Anything with white light and red light will suffice. Be kind to the night vision shooters and other competitors, and use red light as much as possible.
Handheld lights may be prohibited for use at Night Brutality, as we cannot easily differentiate between a handheld and a weaponlight.
It’s VITAL that others around you can easily identify you as a person, and a flashing light is easily distinguishable from light sources or reflective surfaces that may be down range around valid targets. We recently stocked some Unity SPARK Strobes, in both Green, and IR. I highly recommend green for white light shooters, and IR or Green for night vision shooters. They’re $26, and drastically improve safety while still being tacticool AF.
A friend of mine was killed in a live fire training incident, where he was misidentified as a target, due to glow sticks being used on people, AND targets. Strobes would have helped with target identification.
Layering Management
Particularly at the end of November in Prince George, the night time is cold. Many of you have learned about the effective use of layers at previous Winter Brutality matches. Moving from standing idle to intense bursts of activity requires the ability to adjust your level of insulation to suit.
Generally layers are comprised of 3 main groups:
-Moisture wicking base layers
-Insulative mid layers
-Protective shells/outer layers
That’s not to say you should be wearing 3 layers of clothing, and no more, but your clothing should fit into those categories, in that order.
While many textiles will maintain insulation even when wet, the properties are diminished, and it’s a very rapid downhill spiral into hypothermia if that moisture is trapped.
The easiest way to manage this, is to stay as dry as possible. Something our instructors would always say in the Army is “step off cold”, meaning if you’re comfortable and warm at the start of your activity, you’ll overheat and sweat.
Second to this, some sweat is inevitable, and that’s where the moisture wicking layers come up. Merino wool and blends with synthetic materials do a great job of moving that moisture away from your skin, where it would otherwise pull heat away.
A common misconception with baselayers is that they need to be tight fitting, as next to skin clothing. Insulative layers work by capturing air and separating that warm air from the cold air around you. Aside from your underwear to keep everything in place, tight layers don’t leave space for that air to gather to then keep you warm, and can restrict blood flow in your smaller blood vessels near the top of your skin. We want them tight enough to interact with the moisture on our skin, and loose enough not to constrict blood flow and warm air.
Insulative mid layers can be anything from waffle fleece tops, puffy jackets, other loose warm layers, and often a combination of these. This is where I begin to integrate my fighting equipment in order to adequately manage layers.
Your plate carrier needs to be placed over your innermost layers, and under any mid to outer layers that will be too warm during shooting stages. For myself, I wear a baselayer and waffle fleece top under my plate carrier in cold environments. Then as activity subsides, puffy jackets, fleece jackets etc can be added as much as needed to stay warm.
Lastly, hard shells exist to create a waterproof and windproof outer layer. These layers will prevent the wind and rain from stripping the aforementioned trapped warm air away from your body, but can also trap moisture inside your layering system. Used sparingly, these are a layer best left within easy access inside your day bag.
Heavy winter ski jackets/parka’s are perfectly fine to use as a combined insulative layer and hardshell during static periods. They don’t offer a ton of flexibility outside of extreme cold where the extra layer is a necessity, but not everyone has a closet full of layers that are suitable for use in a Brutality match.
Modern Canadian Shooter Podcast
If you want to get some more details on both upcoming night events, check out the MCS Podcast. Tom (Canadian Multigun), and myself have a chat with Pat and Taylor about the events, answer some common questions, and give a few sneak peaks.
Remember folks, WHITE LIGHTS MATTER. Get out there, actually use the tools you have on your guns, test or grow your skills, and have fun doing it.
As always, any questions don’t hesitate to reach out via the website or our Instagram.
