Paintball sniper players will spend a disproportionate amount of time and money on paintball sniper guns and mass-produced ghille suits.  Now I like a tricked out marker as much as the next guy but I need to say this clearly.  You will hear me be completely honest on this site, in all the training I offer.  I will dispel myths, throw dirt in the face of commercial gimmicks and dismantle anything that smacks of everything other than practical, real-life and effective.

If you want to increase the number of stealthy, sniper-style kills you’re bringing in.  If you want people whispering about you in fear of your shadowy presence, focus on these two core skills exclusively.

Stealth – Most paintball sniper-style players want to be the shadow.  They want that “one-shot, one-kill” and fade into the greenery.  But I’ve met nearly ZERO players who want to act stealthy and do what it takes to achieve stealth. I don’t know how many deer hunters are reading this but let me bring you into that world for a second. The whitetail deer is a stealth master. When they move, they move deliberately. They place each step like it could be their last. They use the shadows, literally. They stay in the dark places. They stand perfectly still for minutes at a time before making their next move. They will get very low when needed. I’ve seen whitetail crawling on their knees to escape danger. Tricky buggers. I’ve had over a dozen kills inside of 11 yards.  My closest kill was just inside of 8 yards. (I tell you this because if you can get close to even the most clumsy wild creature, humans are a sneeze to get close to.)  However, if I hit the field and moved like most paintball players, I wouldn’t see the local junkyard dog let alone get close enough to shoot anything. Here’s what it takes to get the kill.  Remember it this way.

Move slow, get low, where no others go. Break it down.

1) Move slow. Typically that means slowing down roughly 10 times your normal speed. Think of it this way. If it takes you 1 second to take a normal step, when you’re moving stealthy, take 10 seconds to make that step.

2) Move low. 90% of your opposition will walk standing fully straight. They will not vary their elevation and they will rarely look below their waist. Get lower than waist height and you’ll notice an instant improvement in your shot opportunities.

3) Where no others go. That same percentage of players (perhaps more) will not move off of the beaten path. They will likely move on the main trails. Some may take the brushier and more narrow  trails, but very few will step off the easy path. That’s where you need to be. Take a couple steps off the main trail, find a shooting lane, lay down, pull some concealment over you and wait. I promise you will shoot someone with one shot and scare the beejeezus out of them in the process.

Camouflage – Most players wear camouflage like they wear a floral print Speedo – awkward, embarassing and ridiculous.  I know, I know. You mean well.  And please don’t take me for making fun of players.  You bought what the magazine sold you. You’ve done what you were mislead to do.  I’ve done it too. But true camouflage, in both real-world special operations and in serious tactical paintball, is not a uniform. It’s not supposed to match and be fashionable. It’s not supposed to make you look like the guy beside you. It’s intended to make you invisible. The cargo pants, jacket and boonie hat are not supposed to match, like a track suit you’d buy at Wal-Mart. Camouflage is intended to break up your uniformity. Uniformity is the very thing that makes the human body easy to spot. Change it up. Wear a darker tone of camouflage pants and pair it with an open tone upper body. Throw some ghillie just on your legs or just on your shoulders. Take a close look at the trees and underbrush. You’ll see trunks, limbs, living leaves, dying leaves, dead leaves, mosses and lichens, bark that’s on, bark that’s off and different sizes of each of those. Your camouflage should mimic that kind of variety. A suit of 100% Woodland Marpat will get you 50% hidden and 50% dead.  If you want truly universal camouflage, you can’t be uniform.
No $700 tricked out sniper paintball gun needed. No $300 set of Multicam BDU’s. No engineered First-Strike paintball rounds. Just straight up, 100% down-and-dirty, coyote-cagey common sense. Take an $80 dollar marker from Big 5 Sports and combine it with these two essential elements of the paintball sniper and you’ll be adding a ridiculous amount of value to any tactical paintball team.

If you’ve read this far, it means you get jazzed about the skills of the tactical paintball player, particularly skills like camouflage, stealth movement and one-shot eliminations. That’s what I love too. So I created the training course and resource entitled “Tactical Paintball Sniper – The Codex of Stealth Elimination and Covert Recon”.

Enter your e-mail address here and subscribe now to download our free training module designed specifically for the paintball sniper entitled “10 Keys to Killer Camouflage” and take your tactical paintball sniper skills to the next level.

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