Glen Helen, CA

[rrhartley]

What a great weekend, to be under cover that is. It is another beautiful warm sunny day in northern Fontana, CA under the shade trees and covered line of West End Gun Club. The firing line was recently refurbished by a local construction company and it looks great. We have fourteen shooters on the line, after the safety briefing, ready to make some holes in the Red Coats. The results were good for the first round but like at the Lexington Green we lost a few of our men to the bayonet. After a few rounds and some great teaching the groups start to form up and now we cane adjust to get them in the black. Lunch time we gather up at the picnic tables under the mistletoe laden maple trees for the three strikes. After the intro and the first strike Jester did his first strike if superb fashion as he took the shooters to the North bridge and Barrett's farm. The third strike and a little discussion about how they gave their all for us we head back to the line for some more practice. We have our first AQT and our first Riflemen, congratulations Gordon with a 227. The final Red Coat was great with much better results and only one bayonet casualty but sever in Morgans Rifle company. While we clean up from the day Gordon sees a Four foot Diamond Back next to the privy resting in the shade of the table next to it. Jester, being our resident photographer took some pictures I am sure he will post. This report is a few days late because I am in St Louis having to catch an early morning flight Monday morning and in no shape to do anything yesterday after being in the air or airports all day, but my Grand son is GRAND. Bless you all!
Second day soon.

[rrhartley]

Day two, another beautiful day with plenty of the California sun. Almost a 100% return from the day before. First the safety review then the Red Coat, and finally the lesson reviews from the day before. The AQT grind was showing promise for Gordon to shoot rifleman again this time with a scope. He finally gave up the scoped rifle for the one he used the previous day and shot back to back 209s. Then it happened the magic 210. Oh yes, he did get a little North Bridge water to cool him off. Carlos was knocking at the door with scores in the low 200s but just didn't quite make it. The IITs were able to get on the mat and enjoy a few rounds down range. A BIG thank you to WEGC for a great range and thanks to Bruce, the President, for welcoming the participants to the range and the kind word towards the Appleseed program. A great weekend and looking forward to the next. Thanks to all, SB Rick

[Jester]

What a great weekend for an Appleseed! The range facility, location and surrounding trees made for a very nice weekend of shooting and celebrating our heritage! On both Saturday and Sunday we made it through all the points of instruction, scrapping only a couple of non-critical courses of fire in the interest of time. Many shooters started off strong, and only got better as the day wore on. We even had a first time firearm user with us (a friend of mine whom I gave an appleseed gift certificate to for Christmas). By the end of Saturday we already had one Rifleman and a couple more were within spitting distance. Unfortunately, over the course of the weekend we were not able to get those shooters into that sweet spot of NPOA and rifleman's cadence to capture that elusive 210+. Even without the patch to show it, all shooters went home with a better understanding of marksmanship, the history of this great nation, and hopefully of themselves as people and citizens.

Some pictures will be forthcoming as soon as I get back to office and get them uploaded. 

[Jester]