Overview: Vortex Edge Training
Covering everything from long-range precision shooting and youth instruction to concealed carry, carbine, night vision, hunter marksmanship, and even reloading courses, Vortex Edge has an ambitious list of training options. Better yet, these courses are generously priced and very well-staffed with veteran instructors and small class sizes.
While you wouldn’t expect to find a world-class firearm training facility nestled away in the Midwest-friendly village of Barneveld, Wisconsin, I’m personally grateful that Vortex decided to build its 55,000-square-foot range facility in my home state.
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As a native Wisconsinite, I’m thankful for the location for reasons beyond just its convenience. Vortex created a truly friendly and welcoming training environment in Barneveld. The training facility itself is cutting-edge, but it’s the instructors that made our visit well worth the trip.
Vortex Edge keeps its class sizes small. Despite this, our class had two dedicated instructors: Corey Eliasson, a prior Marine Corps scout sniper and 15-year military and security contractor veteran, and Justin Lipska, a 10-year military veteran, Special Forces sniper, and sniper instructor who served eight years with the 10th Special Forces Group.
That’s a heck of a lot of talent in a class size I could count on two hands without using my thumbs.
Students can reach all the way out to 1,000 yards in the more advanced Vortex Edge Long Range courses – more on that below – but I found the introductory class well worth it, even as a somewhat experienced shooter. On that note, let’s jump into who this class is meant to serve.
Is This ‘Intro’ Class for You?
Let’s start with who took the class with us. There was a father and son who wanted to learn more about precision shooting together. There were also several LEO and military veterans in our class just looking to expand their skills. As for myself, I was joined by Seth Rodgers, another Guns.com writer.
Just between Rodgers and me, we had more than 20 years of writing and video experience in the firearms industry, and the class was still well worth it on a personal level.
The Vortex Edge training classes build on each other. Thus, I’d consider the intro classes to be a great way of gauging where you are as a shooter and refreshing skills before going all the way down the long-range rabbit hole.
This is where you build the foundation for everything else in the Vortex Edge Long Range training series. Vortex gives you everything you need for the intro class: ammo, rifle, spotters, instructors, optics, etc. From there, you can build on what right looks like.
I was trained repeatedly by marksmanship instructors during my time in the Marine Corps, and I would not hesitate to take this course again if the opportunity arose. In fact, I’ve already reached out to some of my hunting buddies to see if they’d like to take another intro class with me this summer.
Range Time: What to Expect
This course starts in the classroom, but I’m leading with the range experience because that’s where you will spend most of your time. I’d say around 70 percent of our time was on the live-fire range.
Your shooting gear matters, and the range training made that crystal clear.
“Think about putting a 15-year-old kid behind the wheel of a Ferrari,” explained Lipska. “Yeah, he can drive it, but not to that car’s greatest capability. Conversely, if you put a rally car driver behind a Yugo, he’s going to drive the heck out of that Yugo, but not to his greatest potential.”
On the range, the instructors demonstrated proper shooting positions, how to use our optics, and ran us through a series of drills at an efficient but manageable pace. All the while, they helped us track what was and wasn’t working for each shooter on the firing line.
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Whether it’s MOA or MRAD adjustments you prefer, almost everyone has had an issue trying to make adjustments to an optic. Our class walked through each part of our optic and how to set up our scopes for future success. Yes, that included a quick class on how to properly mount the scope itself.
This process was proof tested with live fire drills.
From single five-shot drills to five one-shot drills that require a new shooting position each time, the exercises on the range are set up as a progression to get you to one final target. For us, that was a single playing card at 100 yards. Each drill is efficient with ammo and very easy to take home with you for your private range visits.
Accurate rifles are great, but it seems that data is king in precision shooting. In this class, your misses probably matter more than your hits. I was originally taught to fire three shots while zeroing. Previous rifle instructors would even toss out any “fliers” that seemed to “throw off” the data. Not in this class. We did three-shot and five-shot zeros to compare them, and no data point went unrecorded. Five shots leaves even less room for mistakes.
“You don’t want to discount your misses or outliers,” Lipska told us on the range. “It’s still part of our firing solution. Let’s say you survey ten people and ask, ‘What’s your favorite color?’ Ninety percent say it’s the color red, and one person says it’s the color green. You can’t say everybody likes the color red. The world just doesn’t work that way. You still have to account for it.”
Diagnosing misses is a tricky art, but with decades of experience, our instructors certainly helped us figure out some of our issues a lot faster than we could have done it alone.
Classroom Time: What to Expect
If range time is the meat of a Vortex Edge class, then classroom time is the bread that makes it a manageable sandwich. Classroom instruction covered everything from various types of precision rifles, barrel types, and optics to trigger weights, ammo selection, and ballistic data calculators.
It’s a lot of information, but it’s broken into easy-to-digest chunks.
Since this is an overview class that sets you up for future training, most of the ballistic calculations and technical data are used just at an introductory level. I appreciated that as a guy who didn’t thrive in the classroom as a kid.
“All of our classes start at one point and they end at another,” noted Eliasson, who was always on hand to carry the lessons from classroom instruction into the range and vice versa. “Later, we get your gun zeroed up. We chronograph your gun. You build gun profiles in GeoBallistics, and this is all with your equipment. … We validate that data out to 1,000 yards.”
Related: Vortex Introduces New Crossfire Optics
I learn best by doing things, but there is both art and science in precision shooting. That really comes into play with later classes. Since this class was all indoors, we were spared the challenge of compensating for things like wind.
“If you take your brain completely out of the equation, you’re not going to learn this stuff,” added Eliasson. “All those formulas that the ballistics software uses to compensate for our bullet, they’re well-established formulas that are grounded in the laws of science. We understand them very well, and we can correct for them very well. Wind is the art department. It takes a lot of time and experience to get that skill down.”
7 Reasons You Should Attend
Here are my top seven reasons you should consider taking an intro class like this with Vortex Edge:
- Superb Instruction: The instructors are knowledgeable, approachable, and work one-on-one with students.
- Small Class Sizes: I had no issues finding time to talk one-on-one with our instructors on the range or in the classroom. Likewise, the instructors provided direct feedback for each shooter throughout the course.
- Affordable Cost: The price was very accessible for the quality of the training, which included ammunition, rifles, scopes, shooting bags, and a nice swag kit at the end.
- Minimal Classroom Time: We were on the range shooting within the hour after our class started.
- Save Money: Precision rifles, ammo, and gear are not cheap. Start here to avoid the expensive journey of bad purchases that many shooters take. Do it right the first time.
- Skill Development: I learned a lot from the course material, but any shooter can benefit from training in a group. It’s a lot faster to have a partner or instructor help you develop things like consistent shooting positions and target engagement.
- Have Fun: This does not feel like work. It’s fun. Embrace the fun.
Sure, every class has some downsides. The biggest ones that I see here are simply getting a spot in the small classes and travel. There’s a convenient hotel near the range and places to eat just a short distance away. For longer classes, food is also provided. I would make a short two-day trip out of it.
Final Thoughts: What’s Next for Training?
The next Long Range classes get progressively more dynamic and challenging. That includes shooting from barricades and a lot more ballistic mastery with your personal gear.
“You’re getting good, validated data on your equipment [in Long Range 1] that you can take home and stick in the gun safe, and now you have information you can use to go on that Western hunt or whatever you’re trying to do,” Eliasson concluded at the end of our last classroom session. “[Later], we’ll talk about the formulas and things like that. We’ll talk about shooter-spotter communication. Up to that point, we spot for you, correct you, and make sure you hit your target. At that point in the class, we flip-flop and make you guys spot for each other.”
Beyond just the Long Range courses, Vortex Edge offers hunting marksmanship classes that bring precision shooting skills to practical real-world applications. The whole program really is a total-shooter package that you can tailor to your needs.
