AAR Rocky Creek Ranch, Florida January 28-29, 2012

[Sly223]

Date, State, Range Name: January 28-29, Florida, Rocky Creek Ranch

Instructors: SB ItsanSKS, Sly223, Smoak (IIT3), Josh(IIT)

Instructor Promotions: Sly223 (SBIT)

New Orange Hats: None

New Blue Hats: Dave

Total Attendance: Saturday: 3, Sunday: 3, # of individual participants: 3

# of paid walk on students: none

# of free walk on students: none

# of paid no show Pre-registrations: none

# of free no show Pre-registrations: none

Weather: 48 in the morning, warming to 78 in the afternoon, beautiful both days.

# Riflemen: New: 1 (Tim), Re-qualify: none

Good: weather, venue, quality of people both shooters and cadre.

Bad: Low shooter turn out.

Safety Issues: none. One ND; just prior to the fire command, our excited youth engaged the target. He did call the shot, and made the hit.

Range fees were $15; I believe this to be very fair.

This fine venue is in its infancy stage. However, it is quickly on its way to becoming a world class venue! With no history, there is a low probability of walk-ons.

It is a remote location, and we do not have local boots on the ground.

We started Saturday bright and early with Safety Rules, Safe Rifle, Medical, and Misfires, Hangfires and Squibs. We brought the rifles to the line, and engaged the "hits count" target at 8:50am. The results showed room for much improvement. We had Smoak break out the fire hose of instruction with his model from the Discount Agency, Josh. We quickly saw marked improvement.

All 3 shooters returned on Sunday, with the first rounds down range at 8:45. With quick reviews of instruction they showed steady improvement throughout the day. This resulted in eleven year old Zack scoring a 110 on the AQT, and engaging known distance 100 yard hits with a .223; just like William Diamond, the 14 year old drummer boy, He too showed perseverance and was presented with the youth liberty patch. His father Jeff quickly climbed to the 200 mark and is currently on the bubble. Tim proved he knew very well what he was about with a 220, choosing the OD green Rifleman patch.

We closed out the weekend with the hits count target, a solid one hundred yard silhouette from Zach, a head shot from Jeff, and a cleared target by Tim. It just doesn't get any better than this! Great weekend everybody, thanks a lot! See you on the trail.

[Some Guy]

This was my second AS shoot - and once again, I brought my son out for some fun and adventure. As stated before - the weather was perfect, and a teachable attitude was brought by all in attendance.

Admittedly, I have had an "issue" with a strong grasp of the stock of the gun  so some creative instructorship was put in place and I was required to shoot the first redcoat target with a potato chip in hand (pictures I am sure will be posted later). Smoak also let me know that he planned on eating the chip and preferred that it was in one piece. Once I showed that I fully understood how to cradle and support the rifle - rather than have a death-grip on it - things progressed... and smoak had his snack.

My first AQT was 129 - which was a 1 pt improvement over my last AQT last December. I ended the weekend hitting 200 (with 3 of my tests in the 190-200 range). One thing I learned was that shots on target are much better than those off target and I might as well take 8 good shots than finish all 10 and have 2 off target. Unfortunately for me - this is haunting me but I will get to that later. Throughout the day - I saw only improvement and no
The stories about the events of April 19, have always held my interest, but I wanted to give kudos to the team of instructors. I thought I would hear the same thing as I did the month prior - but even though  the basic message was the same - there were more details told that kept our interest.
Lessons learned.. First, Zach will have his rifle set up much before the event. Each time we attended, he was spending the night before getting something new set up (or in the case of December ) unwrapping his new 10/22.

Second, same with me. I will stick with my current setup and make sure if I am going to add anything it is done prior to the day before the event. Even though this time I only added a USGI sling, it was in need of some serious breaking in just to get working smoothly.

Third,  though Zach had a great time shooting the AR on the 100yd KD range, he will not shoot centerfire again until his score improves.

Finally, we will be able to do some practice with the slings on each of our rifles - as well as practice drills to have that little but extra for the next event.

[Some Guy]

Ok - its later and I will get back to my story about the haunting. You see - my highest AQT was a 200. I know this for sure not only because I remember being oh so close - but so far away - from the elusive 210 rifleman's score, but also because the target greets me every day at work. If I look up from the computer, I see the target.
Taunting me...
Talking to me...
saying "had you had a better NPOA - the score would easily be in the rifleman's range"

and had i found NPOA quicker - i might have had the time to get the 2 shots off that i never took and easily made... ahh nevermind.. enough woulda- coulda- shoulda.. im going to 7th step to the next AS event i can attend and see where i can go from there.

[Gray Man]

What a great weekend!  Spring in January - you gotta love Florida!

Rocky Creek is a great place and getting better.  I hope we can make it more popular and get more shooters on the line.

These three shooters brought a teachable attitude and this showed in their improvement on the line.  One more Appleseed and I think they all will be riflemen.  Tim, my son, stuck with it and did an impressive job late Sunday afternoon making rifleman.  Great job Tim.  Your sister Katie can't rib you as much now! 

Thank you to all the instructors that made this event possible and educational.  I am pleased to join the ranks of Appleseed - taking the Blue Hat.  But as you saw this past weekend I just can't keep from being an instructor.  Maybe there will be an orange hat in my future - if time permits. 

Below are a few pictures from Rocky Creek.  Notice the potato chip teaching tool in the first picture.  This training aid prevents the "white knuckle squeeze" of the fore-stock. What a great idea!  Below the pictures is a link to see almost 70 more!  Enjoy!




https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=09308724b579bf43&Bsrc=Share&Bpub=SDX.SkyDrive&sc=Photos&id=9308724B579BF43!378

[smoakingun]

I have been an instructor for a little over a year, and some of my best appleseed experiences have been at rocky creek. With so few students, and such good attitudes, instructing was a a joy, and a great learning experience for me. The instructors got to spend a lot of time, one on one, with the students. I will be working more events at rcr!