HTA Range Day 2024 Summary

HTA Range Day 2024

I always head out to the HTA Range Day when possible, for those unfamiliar, HTA Range Day stands for Human Trafficking Awareness Range Day. The event has been going for a number of years now hosted at a few different locations. This year as with last year it was at the Ben Franklin Range in Pennsylvania.

This event is awesome in that you pay a low entry fee (2024 was $200) which is a direct donation to the Deliver Fund who works with state and federal law enforcement to locate and save trafficked individuals and punish those responsible. For your donation, you receive between 4 and 8 hours of instruction on Saturday, and between 4 and 6 hours on Sunday from a number of well established and vetted instructors. This year for the 8 hour block I found myself back at the Unknown Distance Range with my Lone Star Armory TX4 (14.5″ 5.56mm), and TX10 (20″ .308) rifles to take the “Positional Precision Carbine” which was a modified class from Core Vision Training. This class was great and focused heavily on working from uncommon positions as well as guessing ranges and wind instead of using all types of fancy methods such as kestrels. This made for a unique experience as often instructors seem to try and give you a lot of this data to start, but Kenny with Core Vision made us work for it. The course only could take us to about 730 Yards, but its a great starting point for precision systems and also a great opportunity to stretch 5.56 carbines out to distance.

My second class was a short evening block for night vision with Blake Flannery from Orion Training Group who I assume many of you will be familiar with. Blake did a phenomenal job with this class providing both new and experienced night vision users with new things to think about and an opportunity to increase their skills and familiarity. I HIGHLY encourage you to get out to an OTG class if you have a chance, every one of their team is top notch.

After this the HTA Range Day Team, Instructors, and Students all meet around a table full of raffle items sent over by a multitude of companies. This years sponsors included the likes of Geissele Automatics, Greyfighter Gear, One Hundred Concepts and more! All of the proceeds off the raffle also go to Deliver Fund, further increasing the donation for their mission.

Third class was a 4 hour block on Sunday, I took the Introduction to Breaching by Ruhl Tech. Dillon from Ruhl did a great job teaching folks all weekend about breaching using their mobile breaching door. I have only had short “crash courses” in breaching up to this point, so this was awesome to get some real instruction.

As always, the event is an absolute blast, and even if you don’t schedule classes into every open space, the community between students and instructors at the event is unmatched. This year I bunked with the team from the Prepared Mindset Podcast who are some all around awesome dudes and I was quite generous of their offer to host me at their Airbnb. Camping is also available on site, but we’ve found over the last few years that getting an Airbnb or hotel is really beneficial between some packed days of training and travel. If you’re into podcasts, absolutely check those guys out, they have some excellent interviews and discussions with folks all over the preparedness and shooting space. https://www.instagram.com/prepared_mindset_pod/.

I know we’ll be back for the 2025 event as well!