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Two soldiers spend several hours stealthily reaching their vantage point. And then after long and careful observation, a rifle is aimed, and a shot rings out. But there’s much more to being a sniper than that, as we’ll find out.
This podcast is for and about soldiers of the Canadian Army.
Its primary goal is to provide them with useful information through thoughtful and open discussions that reflect their mutual interests and concerns.
Though soldiers are our primary audience, the topics covered on this podcast should be relevant to anyone who supports our soldiers or who has an interest in Canadian military matters.
[Fast paced music plays]
Sergeant Geoffrey Boutilier: We get into places people don’t want us to be. We do things that people don’t want us to do. We’re just pretty much out there to cause as much chaos as possible.
Capt Adam Orton: Hi! I’m Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. Canada is renowned for producing some of the best snipers in the world. Just read about it in the history books. From WWI to Afghanistan, we’ve been doing some pretty incredible stuff—including, more recently, breaking multiple world records for longest shot. Here to tell us what it’s all about Sergeant Geoffrey Boutilier who is a sniper instructor from the Infantry School in Gagetown. Welcome to the podcast!
Sgt Boutilier: Awesome. Thanks for having me.
[Music ends]
Capt Orton: I guess let’s get the common misconceptions out of the way. How is being a sniper different than, you know, what people are gonna see in the movies or on TV? Everybody has that image in their mind of what that looks like. But, you know, what’s the real story?
Sgt Boutilier: So, everything you kind of see in the movies, and on TV and stuff like that—you get to see the end result. So that roughly is about the twenty percent of the whole package of actually getting to that point. So they don’t get to see the actual planning—the training to get up to that point of actually pulling the trigger.
Capt Orton: Yeah. And I think it’s a common misconception that snipers are considered lone wolves, when in reality, they work as part of a det or a detachment. Can you explain kind of what the individual members do in the det?
Sgt Boutilier: That’s a four personnel det. So you’re gonna have a shooter. I think that pretty much speaks for itself. The spotter is there to make corrections. So once that round leaves the gun and it’s travelling through the air, the spotter gets to see the actual projectile fly through the air, and can actually make a more precise correction. So, instead of it taking four to five rounds if you were just just a shooter on your own, you’re looking at one or two to actually hit the intended target if you have a spotter. While those two members are actually focused on actually doing the business, you have your security team. So now they don’t have to focus on that. And then you have your det commander who’s running it. So, once again, you're just taking away responsibilities from each one of the people that have to do their specific job.
Capt Adam Orton: So, you’re going out as a det? What kind of equipment are you carrying with you?
Sgt Boutilier: Well, I'm actually going to talk about all of our weapons systems that we currently have that are specific to us. So the C3 Training weapon—that’s what we use on our basic course; the C14—that’s like our mid-range sniper weapon system; the C15 is long range. And then we have our new C20 that just came out which is our automatic gas-operated weapon system. Besides the actual weapon systems, we are issued specialized kits to just kind of help us complete our job with a little bit more ease. So we have stuff like rucksacks with gun sleeves, so we can carry the actual gun with us, plate carriers, specialized TAC vests when we’re lying in the prone—it makes us more comfortable. And it even goes down to as far as rain gear. So, just specialized rain gear, and that’s just to be more protected—lasts a little bit longer, so we’re not actually dealing with the elements.
Capt Adam Orton: So you have all these different weapons. What do you consider when you’re going out the door and you have all these different weapons packages?
Sgt Boutilier: So, different weapon packages are pretty much sure laid out for us. So when we’re heading out the door, we look at the overall mission requirement and the overall intent that needs to be achieved. And then we select our weapon system based off of that.
Capt Adam Orton: Why do we use snipers in deployment? What do snipers do?
Sgt Boutilier: So snipers are a force multiplier. They’re the most hated on the battlefield. One round can completely change the course of what was the intended overall mission.
Capt Adam Orton: Why? Like, why do you say that?
Sgt Boutilier: We get into places that people don’t want us to be. We do things that people don’t want us to do. We’re just pretty much out there to be—I don’t want to say the badass of the battlefield, but we’re pretty much out there to cause the most chaos as possible.
Capt Adam Orton: And what does that look like in terms of, you know, how that affects the enemy? For example, in Afghanistan, I’ve been on the receiving end of sniper fire—well, sniper fire, probably not. But, being on the receiving end of fire where we’ve been pinned down for, like, an hour, because one or two people were firing from a grape hut somewhere. And the entire company was basically, temporarily—I wouldn't call it paralyzed, but we weren’t moving, weren’t in action. So it kind of disrupts your ability to operate. So what can be some of the larger impacts on the battlefield?
Sgt Boutilier: Well, actually, you used, actually, a really good example. So let’s say your company now had to move forward and you had a time—you had to meet that limit exploitation at a certain time. One sniper round completely crippled that company moving forward for one hour. And it only took one round. He doesn’t have to fire multiple rounds after that. You just know that that fear that’s instilled in you now to put your head up to actually start moving forward, makes people second guess. It takes a lot longer for them to actually build that movement piece again—get the guys motivated to move.
Capt Adam Orton: What are some of the challenges of actually implementing that kind of effect? We see a lot of—again I'm gonna go back to the original movie question, you know what I mean—where you see like guys sneaking around the battlefield, and you know, they’re up in the bell tower. It all looks good on TV, but like, what are the challenges of that process or that part?
Sgt Boutilier: Weather, from my personal experience, is the overall crippler. You know, if you’re wet, cold, hungry, for an extended period of time, it makes—to achieve that overall mission a lot harder. And we’re expected to do that for extended periods of time, because it’s not like we can travel with a company that provides a lot of security. When we travel into small dets, we have to be quiet; we have to move slowly. We can’t be seen. So every movement takes a little bit longer. And so the overall weather plays the biggest effect for us.
Capt Adam Orton: How do you prepare to face those challenges over a prolonged period of time?
Sgt Boutilier: I’m just gonna go back to personal experience from times when we were doing training. You pretty much have to get close and you have to share some sleeping bags. And we refer to that as hot bagging. So the guy that kind of gets to go down—he heats up the sleeping bag for you; your turn to come off that shift, you crawl right in. And that’s just how we move forward. And that’s just simply because, the amount of specialized kit that we have to carry with us, there’s usually not a whole lot of room for the creature comforts. What I mean by creature comforts is the extra puffies, or the extra boots, extra socks. It’s all about mission and completing that mission.
Capt Adam Orton: One of my section commanders, like, forever ago, once said that anybody can just go outside and be miserable for a couple of days. And that’s just fine. But one of the hardest bits about being a soldier is being comfortable in difficult environments. And that’s just like baseline infantry guys. So how do you guys take that to the next level?
Sgt Boutilier: It’s mental resilience. It’s being so cold that one time that you can’t move; you can’t feel your fingers. You get past it—you still achieve that goal. And then the next time you reach that overall coldness level, you’re like: “Well, I've been here before.” So there’s a whole lot of comfort with kind of breaking through those mental barriers. And then the one thing that we do have that I personally really enjoy about snipers, is camaraderie between our small teams. There’s a whole lot of reflection off each other. We trust each other. And when you’re seeing a really close friend of yours going through the same thing as you, you just kind of laugh it off and kind of carry on.
Capt Adam Orton: You know, a friend of mine once called that type two, fun. Type one fun is where you know you’re partying with your friends or at an event or something. Type two fun is the kind of thing you look back on a year later. And it’s like: “Oh, my god—I can’t believe we just sat in that OP for two days straight, freezing and hating our lives.”
Sgt Boutilier: There it is. Yeah.
Capt Adam Orton: And one of the things that a lot of people don't see in any type of military operation is kind of the battle procedure aspect, which is, you know, everything leading up to going out and doing the thing. So how does that figure into how you approach the execution of your tasks?
Sgt Boutilier: A big thing for us, part of that eighty percent is observing. And you may not always take that shot; you may not always get to see that twenty percent where you actually had to pull the trigger. You might actually go and just, still, observe—collect that intel, interpret it, and pass it up higher. Yes, I understand, drones are a big thing in the last few years. But, back in the day, you had an actual person on the ground, a human interpreting what he’s observing, and passing it up through to give a better idea of exactly what is happening on the ground.
Capt Adam Orton: Yeah, humans are better. Full stop.
Sgt Boutilier: I know.
Capt Adam Orton: So talk to us a little bit about camouflage techniques, and, you know, the stealth approach to, you know, engaging a target. Nailed it.
Sgt Boutilier: So, for us, it all starts from that eighty percent we talked about earlier. So our mission planning on actually how to conduct our mission. So, from the time that we get: “Hey, this is where you’re going and what you’re doing,” we started looking at the ground. You know, where can we go where less likely people are going to be? You know, it makes it a little bit easier for us to move a little bit faster. Then we start looking at open fields. You know, do we have a cross open field? Is it wooded? You know, and allows the same thing just to kind of stay concealed from what’s above us, or, you know, less likely to bump into people. What it actually comes to is equipment, we refer to it as a ghillie suit. So that’s what you would see. And the twenty percent movies where, you know, you’ve got the big ghillie suit which looks like the mammoth kind of thing. We do have ghillie suits, but we like to use natural vegetation. So as we’re slowly moving through the battlefield, we’ll obviously always be updating what we’re in to help us stay concealed within the actual natural environment around us.
Capt Orton: We’re talking about stealth and all this. But if you’re seeing major events like G8, G20, Remembrance Day - you have snipers up on buildings in urban environments. What’s the difference between the kind of Army sneaking around piece and having snipers up on buildings that everybody can see at special events?
Sgt Boutilier: Whenever you’d see snipers on buildings or visible and not hidden—to me that would be a deterrent. It’s a show of force. It’s supposed to prevent people from actually doing something wrong. When it’s actually field craft, and we’re hidden, we’re kind of sneaking in, we’re there not to be seen. And we’re there to conduct a mission—like take a shot, and then leave without being actually observed.
Capt Adam Orton: You know, I think in the military, we use the term “best moments” you know in a weirder way than some other people. But like, tell me about some of those moments you just talked to me about where you’re out there, you’re freezing, or you’re having a hard time, and your buddies are keeping you there through that experience.
Sgt Boutilier: The CISC, that's the Canadian International Sniper Concentration. I got to compete as a team. So I actually had to go out and apply some of my skills against other nations. And then I actually got to go and be the coach two years later. So now I’ve gone one step up higher. I got to actually coach the guys, do their pre-training, and then actually bring them to the event. So those were two major ones that I could see as like a competition or a concentration that I’ve done. But some of the overseas deployment kind of stuff that’s kind of brought like a major highlight to my career was Norway. I got to go to Norway, and that was the one time that I actually left Canada to go and do a concentration with a bunch of other nations, but not in our back door. But we actually got to go somewhere else to apply it. So, just different challenges, you know, to overcome.
Capt Adam Orton: Yeah, so what does the International Sniper Concentration look like? Like, what does that event entail?
Sgt Boutilier: Pretty much, we’re bringing people from all over the world with the same passion and desire to be better. We come. Yes, we do compete. But the actual overall intent is to share past experiences so we can all grow and be better and just kind of keep moving that bar a little bit higher each time. But also networking. So that’s how stuff like Norway happens. People come down, get to talk, make those connections. Next thing you know, we can actually say: “Hey, well, we have a competition. Would you like to come?” So it just opens up more opportunities for our community.
Capt Adam Orton: What is the Canadian International Sniper Concentration? When is that happening?
Sgt Boutilier: So the CISC is usually run every one to two years. COVID obviously has been a big part of our lives for the last little portion here, which has actually put it on pause for a short period of time. But we’re always revisiting every year. And we’re always going to see if we can push it to the next year to obviously keep that tradition and that competition going.
Capt Adam Orton: Can you tell me a little bit about your career path? Like, how did you get started in the Infantry? How did you wind up in a sniper cell?
Sgt Boutilier: It started out, like anybody else, just kind of wanted to make some money and join the Army. You know, Afghanistan was a big push at that time, so I signed up and went for it. So, I went overseas, came back and realized that I actually enjoyed the job. I enjoyed being in the Infantry. But at that point, there it was, what is my career path entailed? And when anybody thinks about Infantry, we think about what the most sought after place you can be in the Infantry and that’s being qualified a sniper. So I just lined up my sights on that and did all the appropriate courses to make sure I got to slide into that position and get those opportunities and I’ve never looked back. And I honestly don’t see myself doing anything else. Quite frankly, if I never made it into snipers, I probably still wouldn't be in the Army because I enjoy it that much.
Capt Adam Orton: So what’s the path to becoming a sniper? What does that look like?
Sgt Boutilier: You got to finish your DP1, which is your Basic Infantry Training. After that, you usually do about one or two years, go through a selection process, complete your recce course. Things that you have to do after that is be mentally physically fit. You got to be a volunteer, and can’t be colour blind and be coachable is the main one overall.
Capt Adam Orton: Why is colour blindness a factor?
Sgt Boutilier: Colorblindness is because, when you’re looking through optics, and you have to make a call on if you’re actually going to conduct that final shot that we were talking about earlier, there can’t be any questions.
Capt Adam Orton: You know, you talked about the recce course and some of the training, what are some of the skill sets that lie within the realm of snipers?
Sgt Boutilier: The skill sets, like we were talking about earlier, you want to be able to just kind of pick apart certain things—notice things that other people don’t notice. Good memory; we actually do that with Kim’s Game on the course. We test your overall ability to see stuff under stress for a short period of time and actually recall them later on.
Capt Adam Orton: Explain what a Kim’s Game is for the people that might not know what that is.
Sgt Boutilier: The basic way to kind of explain it would be the most average, generic kind of Kim’s games you can see would be a series of items on a table. You get the candidates slash students on the course to walk around the table and whatever direction you want for a period of time. You can induce stress to kind of bring those levels up a little bit higher. And then, what you do, is you take away the items—and then you ask them what the items were, that could be immediately after covering the items, or it could be later on that day.
Capt Adam Orton: So when you’re doing it, like at the end, also, what are you looking for in the answers there? Because it’s not just like: “Oh, yeah, it was a truck” or something like that—you’re looking for a certain level of detail usually.
Sgt Boutilier: The thing we like to do appears to be, because if you can’t actually remember exactly what that item was. So, for an example, let’s say we put a dinky car on the table. Right? And it's red and has wheels, and there’s a lot of descriptive words you can use towards it. What you’re doing is you’re trying to give as much information about that object. So, even if you can’t say: “Yes, that was a dinky car,” once that information gets passed up to higher, someone above us might be able to say: “You know what? That sounds like a dinky car.”
Capt Adam Orton: Right. And so that would naturally translate in like a combat environment to describing—let’s say, armoured fighting vehicles, or people that are moving around and feeding that information back to higher headquarters.
Sgt Boutilier: One hundred percent. Yes, that’s correct.
Capt Adam Orton: If people want to be snipers, what’s the recruiting process? What does that look like?
Sgt Boutilier: Let’s just kind of paint a picture here. You just finished your Infantry Qualification. You stepped your boots inside, let’s say for an example through RCR, the regiment that you've been posted to, and you’re like: “I want to be a sniper today.” Okay, I would give it a year or two. Okay? I would take a year or two to actually learn the basic fundamentals of what a platoon context does, what a company does, and what a section does. That’s just gonna make you better overall. Once you’ve kind of done a year or two, start pushing out to your warrant and start showing interest being like: “I would like to go on this recce path.” And that’s the first initial course you have to go on. That course there’s the gateway to pretty much any specialized courses that the infantry provides. And start pushing towards it. During the recce course, there are snipers that are actually teaching on those courses, and they’re going to start looking for people that are showing interest that want to be snipers to move to that next level. That’s when the real critical point is kind of met. Once you pass that recce course, those snipers that are teaching on the course—or being around each other or being around that course, they’re looking for attributes. They’re looking for qualities. Okay? If I had to give any advice for those people that are trying to jump into that sniper realm—coachable, coachable, coachable, coachable. And the reason I say that is, you may show up, and you may know how to shoot a gun real well, you may be above certain people. But guess what? That’s as good as you’re gonna get if you’re not coachable. I’d much rather take a guy that doesn't have those same skill sets at that time and build on them. So, biggest recommendation—coachable. And yeah, just try your best to get to that point. And then, yeah, we’ll scoop you up and bring you in.
Capt Adam Orton: Yeah, it’s interesting you mentioned the coachable aspect, because like, I look back at a lot of the people that I know their CAFSAC top shooters. One of the biggest things that they use to get better is that attitude. It’s not just natural talent. You have to be able to go out there and learn from other people and incorporate that stuff to make yourself better.
Sgt Boutilier: Yes, one-hundred percent. Still, to this day, fifteen years in the Army now—still counting. And I’m still learning stuff every day. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to kind of go: “Oh, I've done this one hundred times. I’ve done this one thousand times,” but at the end of the day, someone might just look at it differently, might present it a different way where you’re just like: “Aha, okay, that makes it a little bit easier.” I’m just going to scoop up that little piece and it makes you better and then you get to just pass it on later on in your career. So always remain coachable.
[Music starts]
Capt Adam Orton: Well, that’s pretty good life advice right there. Like, I think if there’s anything you can take away, whether you’re military or not, is remain coachable.
All right. Well, hey, thanks so much for going through all that and covering it all for us. And thanks so much for being on the Podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Sgt Boutilier: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Capt Adam Orton: That was Sergeant Geoffrey Boutilier from the Infantry School, telling us to stay coachable. For more of the basics in shooting, check out my personal favourites, the Marksmanship Podcast. That’s season one, episode nine.
I’m Captain Adam Orton for the Canadian Army Podcast. Orton out.
[Music ends]