The Forum on brianenos.com - aka, the Benoverse. I've been editing and re-editing this post for a while, now (like, since the inception of this blog), cause I'm finding it hard to be succinct. I could go on for days... Anyway, let's start with this.

Started by legendary shooter Brian Enos in the 2000 timeframe, I can comfortably tell you that the Forum at brianenos.com is the best shooting community forum on the web. Bar none. Period. End of story.

Don't believe me? Read on... ;)

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One of those FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) that seems to pop up on the Benoverse every so often is something to the effect of "I'm a new shooter, what should I read?". Many of us have our favorites, of course - Brian Enos' Practical Shooting: Beyond Fundamentals, for instance, or Saul Kirsch's Thinking Practical Shooting perhaps.

Those books are awesome resources, without any doubt. But both really require some background in the game to use them to the fullest extent. So, if a new shooter isn't going to get the best out of those books until they have a little bit of experience (and their gear squared away, etc), where do you point them? The answer has been with us since 1995 in the form of Matt Burkett's Practical Shooting Manual.

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For most complex activities, the learning curve is steep and riddled with plenty of chances to strike off in the wrong direction. "Back in the day" (which, for our purposes here, means pre-2005), most of us picked our way up the curve through trial and error, question and answer, and lots of fits and starts as we discovered that we were on a dead-end path. Things like match preparation, understanding the implications of the scoring system, maintenance schedule for our equipment, stage and match tactics - all of these things were passed down through word of mouth, and many times learned through hard experience.

In 2005, author and international top shooter This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it changed all of that with the release of his book Thinking Practical Shooting (well, changed it for those who bothered to read it and digest it, anyway). If I'd had this book in 1992, when I started shooting IPSC, it would have saved me a lot of time and energy. Saul's giving away all the "secrets", and for that reason, I highly recommend Thinking Practical Shooting as a "must read".

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