Shotgun Light: A Review of the Olight Baldr Pro R with a Green Laser

This is a quick review of the Olight Baldr Pro R rechargeable light with a green laser. The Baldr Pro R has a flashlight with a 1,350-lumen output and five milliwatt (5mW) class llla green laser located within the flashlight’s reflector. I wanted a light for my home defense shotgun to replace a Surefire® light with a fragile plastic latch that frequently failed. I believe the light failed due to the light’s inability to handle the shotgun’s recoil.

A compact light with a laser seemed to be just the trick and the Olight Baldr Pro R fit my requirements. The Baldr Pro has a selector which gives you the ability to switch between white light only, green laser only, or both white light and green laser. The Baldr Pro is rechargeable and has an internal battery charged via a magnetic charging port. This port also accepts a remote pressure switch which attaches to the magnetic port (the picture below is the light installed on my Beretta 1301).

Recharging the light is simple. Simply take it off the Picatinny rail (it also works with Glock rails) and plug the (included) USB recharging cord into a charging device (not included). You could also charge the light while mounted on the gun although this might not be as convenient. The small LEDs turn green when the battery is fully charged. I always replace the light in the same position on the rail and have had no problems with the laser’s zero wandering.

The Baldr Pro has held up very well so far. I have fired over 300 rounds of buckshot and slugs with the light attached to my home defense shotgun without any problems. 

I zeroed the laser at twenty five yards with the Federal LE-132 low recoil slug—putting four of five shots in a five-inch circle (picture below left). This zero gave me the same point of impact for Federal LE-133 8-pellet buckshot at twenty yards  (picture below right - five shots of Federal LE-133). 

I still had some slugs (I hate partial boxes) so I finished the session shooting four Federal slugs at a 10x12 inch plate 65 yards away.  Four hits for four shots (see picture below and video here).

If you like these articles you can follow by clicking the link in the upper right corner.

Note: I purchased this light and received no remuneration from Olight.
 

Pattern Your Home Defense Shotgun

A critical, but often overlooked aspect of being prepared to use your home defense shotgun is determining the pattern that your shotgun produces with a particular buckshot load. In shotgun circles, this process is called patterning your shotgun.

Without patterning you will not know the size and shape of your shotgun’s pattern with a given load at a given distance. You must do this with the ammunition you intend to use in your home defense shotgun. The way manufacturers produce shotgun barrels means that no two guns will pattern exactly alike--even with the exact same ammunition. Your gun may pattern very poorly with one brand or size of buckshot, yet do very well with another. The only way to know is to shoot the buckshot loads at varying distances.

Pattern Size: A rough estimate is that your pattern size will grow about one inch per yard of travel in a typical home defense shotgun with standard buckshot loads. Federal LE133 and the equivalent Speer loads are the exception and usually shoot a much tighter pattern. You should experiment with different loads and different brands to find the load that works the best in your particular gun.

Pattern Concentricity and Consistency: The pattern needs to be roughly round in shape with pellets evenly distributed throughout the covered area.

Effective Range: With buckshot, your maximum defensive range is the distance that all of your pellets impact within 4-inches of your point of aim (i.e. within an 8-inch circle). This may be 10, 15, 20, or even 25 yards or more depending upon the load/gun combination you select. The distance where your gun with the particular load you are using throws even one pellet outside of the 8-inch circle is the maximum defensive range for your shotgun with that load. Once you reach a distance where your pellets impact farther than 4-inches from your point of aim, the odds are very high that you will miss with one or more of the pellets and potentially endanger others in addition to your target.

A Pattern Experiment: In December of 2023 I experimented with the Federal LE-133 8-pellet buckshot load in two different shotguns—one was a Remington 870 pump shotgun and one was a Beretta 1301. Both shotguns had cylinder bores. I fired five rounds from each gun at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 yards.

The pattern from both guns at five and ten yards was essentially one hole (the lower right hole at ten yards with the 1301 was shooter error. 

At fifteen yards, the Remington 870 and the Beretta 1301 patterns remained acceptable. At twenty yards, the Remington 870 threw one pellet out of the acceptable pattern circumference (small circle). The Beretta 1301’s pattern remained within tolerance. 

At twenty five yards, the Remington 870’s pattern was over fifteen inches in diameter while the 1301 remained (barely) within an eight inch circle. I need to check the zero of the Beretta 1301's optic and laser at twenty five yards. For a YouTube video of the patterning process click here.

Unless your house is very large, the maximum home defense engagement distance is likely to be less than twenty yards and for most of us, less than fifteen yards. That said, both of these shotguns patterned acceptably at five - fifteen yards with the Federal LE-133 buckshot lot that I used in this experiment. 

If your target is beyond the maximum defensive buckshot range for your gun, you would either need to transition to a slug load or maneuver to get closer. Never forget that a single buckshot pellet can kill and you are accountable for every pellet that leaves your gun.

As we saw in this experiment, at shorter ranges your buckshot charge will not have opened and you are essentially shooting a very large single projectile that must be precisely aimed just like any bullet.

In an earlier experiment, a Fiocchi 9-pellet standard buckshot load in my Beretta 1301 shotgun at a distance of twelve yards generally put all nine pellets within a ten inch circle. I say generally because occasionally this load throws one wild pellet off the target at that distance. 

With the wild 9th pellet flyer potential, I consider the Fiocchi 9-pellet buckshot load to have a ten yard effective range in that particular gun. In contrast, the Federal 8-pellet 00 LE133 Buckshot load put all 8 pellets through a hole 2-inches in diameter at the same distance.

My Remington 870 and my Beretta 1301 have occasionally patterned acceptably out to 35 yards with some lots of Federal LE133 in the past. That said, I have noticed erratic behavior from Federal 8-pellet LE133 lots at times so I will stick to 25 yards or less for the Beretta and fifteen yards or less with the Remington 870 which exceeds the maximum potential defensive engagement distances in my home. 

If you like these articles you can follow by clicking the link in the upper right corner.

HE STOLE MY STUFF!!

Searching Vehicles

On 2 December 2023, gunfire shattered a San Antonio, Texas neighborhood’s quiet. Apparently, a group of young thugs were breaking into a truck when the owner caught them. The thugs fled and the owner reportedly got in his truck to chase them, driving around the neighborhood until he came across the thieves actively breaking into another neighbor’s automobile. The truck owner exited his pickup and confronted the thugs. One ran to a resident’s driveway and hid in front of their car. The thug then opened fire on the truck owner with a pistol.

The resident reported that she heard two gunshots and that she immediately ran, got her kids out of their beds, and onto the floor. Six additional gunshots followed the first two while the resident called the police. When the police arrived, they found shell casings on the caller’s front porch.

When it was all said and done, the thugs had fled and no one was hurt. According to the police, gangs of thugs are searching neighborhoods and looking for unlocked vehicles to ransack or KIA cars to steal. This particular variation of criminal behavior is becoming epidemic in San Antonio, Texas and surrounding cities.

One has to wonder what the truck owner was thinking when he exited his vehicle and confronted the thug. Probably the same thing a number of defenders are thinking when they leap to confront fleeing criminals—NO ONE STEALS MY STUFF!! The defenders certainly are not thinking of the potential life changing consequences of their actions. In this case, the criminal was willing to use deadly force against the truck owner and the owner survived because the thug was a poor shot.

This was not the case in another incident that news organizations widely reported. A man and his female companion exited a shopping mall and the man noticed that his Ford pickup truck was missing. As the pair attempted to locate the truck, they saw it in a nearby parking lot at the same mall with the presumed thugs still sitting in it.

The owner approached his truck, displayed a pistol, and ordered 34 year old Kevin Eric Garcia (the driver) and the Garcia’s 25-year-old female passenger to step outside and sit on the pavement. Moments after the owner called police, Garcia drew a pistol from his waistband and shot the truck's owner. The owner returned fire, hitting, and killing Garcia and critically wounding his companion.

Police Assisting Garcia's Wounded Companion

After police arrived, the truck’s owner and Garcia's female companion were taken to the hospital. The owner was in stable condition and the female thug was in critical condition at that time. As of this writing, no charges have been filed against the truck’s owner.

In most states, using deadly force to defend property is problematic at best. Although Texas Penal Code (Title 2, sec 9.41 & 9.42) does permit using force and (under certain circumstances) deadly force to protect or recover property, the consequences faced in doing so can be considerable.

Trying to hold any individual at gunpoint is extremely dangerous—particularly if that individual has a hidden weapon. At least for the moment, the thug knows that you have decided not to shoot; otherwise you would have already fired. That gives him the advantage of being able to plan an immediate response to your inaction. If you are in the open and in close proximity, the thug has a clear (if fleeting) time advantage.

Your ability to react to the thug’s movements come into play as well. The Force Science Institute conducted several experiments in a 2014 study to measure police officer reaction time to start and stop shooting. In experiment one the officers were positioned in a firing stance with a training pistol, finger on the trigger, and were instructed to fire the pistol when a green light came on for 0.5 sec.

On average, it took officers 0.25 sec to begin the trigger pull (i.e. react to the stimulus) and 0.06 sec to complete the trigger pull (defined as the actual travel time of the trigger from a position of rest to a position back against the frame) for a total reaction time of .31 sec. This was when the police officer knew he was about to fire. (Lewinski, Hudson, & Dysterheftt (2014). Police Officer Reaction Time to Start and Stop Shooting: The Influence of Decision-Making and Pattern Recognition. Law Enforcement Executive Forum 14(2), 1-16).

If you are trying to hold someone at gunpoint, your reaction time in response to the thug’s movement will be much greater than 0.31 seconds because you must not have your finger on the trigger until you have made a conscious decision to intentionally fire a shot. Your reaction time will likely be closer to .50 to .75 seconds at a minimum and this assumes that you see and react to the thug’s movement the instant it occurs. If you are multi-tasking and calling 911, looking around for other threats, or dealing with other distractions, bystanders, etc. your reaction time will be much longer.

If you are going to try and take someone at gunpoint, it is critical that you do so from a position of cover if at all possible. While true cover is sometimes difficult to find, anything is better than standing in the open. Even if such material does not stop a bullet, it may deflect it or slow it down and reduce its wounding potential.

Massad Ayoob tells us that, in general, very few criminals dismiss or defy an armed citizen holding them at gunpoint – they tend to believe that citizens are more willing to shoot than the police. That implies that only irrational subjects with an emotional disturbance, a death wish, or extreme hatred/disdain of the armed citizen in question will defy commands at gunpoint. That does not mean they won’t try something as shown in this example.

Perhaps an even better solution is to tell the thug to depart. While it may grate on our conscience (HE STOLE MY STUFF!!), it is clearly preferable to being shot. Unless you are a police officer, you have no duty to try and hold the thug(s) for the police. Once again the thug’s reaction may be irrational. He may decide that you fear to shoot him and may start or resume threatening behavior so be prepared for such a reaction. 

If you find these useful, please follow via the link in the upper right.

The Range Master Nov 23 Drill of the Month

I went to the range this weekend and shot the Range Master Drill of the Month for November 2023.  Tom Givens and Range Master include their drill of the month in the Range Master monthly newsletter.  

Per the newsletter:

Target:  Use the IALEFI-Q, IDPA Cardboard, or RFTS-Q target

Scoring:  10 points for any hit inside the 8 inch circle in the chest, or inside the head ring. 5 points for any hit inside the silhouette but outside the 8”circle or the head ring.

Drill: Begin with the weapon holstered and concealed, loaded with only two rounds. On signal, draw, fire 2 rounds to the chest, reload the pistol and fire 2 more rounds to the chest, then one to the head circle. Record the time for the string.

Fire the drill at 5 yards and then again at 10 yards.

Ten rounds total. 100 points possible. Add the two times for a total time.

Hit Factor: Total points divided by total time = score. (Hit factor scoring)

Par score = 6. The goal is a score of 6 or higher.

This drill covers a concealed presentation from the holster, fast accurate shooting, an empty gun reload, and a transition to a smaller target. It also requires a timing shift when changing from 5 yards to 10 yards. This integrates a number of important skills in one fairly quick, low round count exercise.

I started my practice session with the Nov 23 DOTM shot cold with my P320 full size from concealment per the instructions. My five yard run was 4.69 seconds and my ten yard run was 6.87 seconds. I shot it clean with a total time of 11.54 seconds giving me a hit factor of 8.66.

I then ran the drill seven more times for practice and averaged my hit factor for those seven runs. My best run was 8.72 seconds with 90 points producing a hit factor of 10.32. The worst run of the seven was 11.34 clean with a hit factor of 8.81. My average for the seven “warmed up” runs was 10.22 seconds with a 9.56 hit factor.

My reload average for all runs was 2.37 seconds -- not very fast. I don't practice reloading as much as I should.

Good drill; I enjoyed it. The Range Master Monthly Newsletter has a lot of good information and is available at:

https://rangemaster.com/newsletter/

If you like these articles you can follow by clicking the link in the upper right corner.