Whew! Just got home from a week filming my segments for next season’s Personal Defense TV show. PDTV was the brainchild of outdoor sports authority and gun owners’ rights advocate Tom Gresham, who is the host and director of the program. Those who appear on each show are Clint Smith at Thunder Ranch in Oregon, the Gunsite crew in Arizona (both filmed on location at those excellent training facilities), and me. New regulars on the upcoming fourth season will include Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor George Wehby, firearms instructor Tiger McKee, and to add a female-oriented element I find most welcome, Il Ling New from Gunsite.

Each season we’ve filmed my segment at a different venue: Gunsite the first season, my police department the second, and PASA Park in Illinois last year. This time around, we used the Del-Tone/Luth Gun Club range on the edge of St. Cloud, Minnesota, the home of some of the best three-gun practical competitions in the country, lots of traditional trapshooting, and most recently a “zombie shoot.” (Yes, you heard me.) Owner Randy Luth, founder of one of the world’s leading manufacturers of AR15 rifles, DPMS, was a wonderful host for the PDTV crew, and the same was true of his staff.

I got to shoot cool guns. Yep, all made by the show’s sponsors, but fortunately, we have sponsors who make good stuff. Ruger’s P345 auto pistol, and their new little LCR .38 revolver. The new subcompact 1911 .45 from Smith & Wesson, and the same company’s Model 686 service revolver. XD45, the new XD(M)9, and match grade TGO-II 1911 .45 from Springfield Armory. A snub-nose Tracker .45 revolver and a .410 Judge wheel-gun from Taurus. Had occasion to shoot while vertical, and while horizontal; left-hand and right-hand, and then doing it again for slo-mo shots on high-speed camera, close-ups, different angles, and all of that. Even sacrificed what little dignity I have left by demonstrating what to do when you’re legally carrying a concealed handgun in public, and have to drop your drawers in a public rest room.

The first couple of years, Personal Defense TV was one of the two most-watched gun shows on the Outdoor Channel, and some weeks, the most watched. Viewer feedback tells me it still has a very healthy audience, but since the group that owns the production company bought The Sportsman’s Channel, we went to that last year, and it’s not Nielsen-rated, so I don’t know the current numbers.

The season we were shooting for last week will begin to air next October. You can get it on cable via Sportsman Channel, or for a small fee can download it real time at www.sportsmanchannel.com. That website will also tell you more about the show, other cable networks where you can find it, etc. There are also DVDs of past seasons available.

If you get a chance to watch it, I hope you enjoy it as much as we all enjoy putting it together for you. Meanwhile, a Google search should find where you can listen to Tom Gresham’s great radio show “GunTalk” every week. It’s downloadable to iPod in podcast form, and is one of my favorites.

Setting up to film “the New York Reload,” live fire. Hay bales are to catch an empty handgun that will have to be dropped. Blade-Tech holster contains Springfield TGO-II .45 auto pistol.

Erik Fleischhacker lines up Camera 2 on Mas before filming demo of defensive shooting technique.

From left, host and star Tom Gresham, Mas, and lead cameraman Mark Ambroz review last scene in-camera as producer Scott Mayer takes notes on elapsed time. Revolver in Blade-Tech holster is S&W Model 686 .357 Magnum. All filming is done with live ammo, sometimes with remote-control cameras downrange.

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