Ramseur NC, January 17-18 2015

[Moylan]

An excellent event on a beautiful winter weekend at the home range in Ramseur!  We started out Saturday morning with 7 shooters with varied shooting backgrounds, ranging from former college-level competitive smallbore shooters to folks who had never had any formal marksmanship instruction at all.  Of the seven, one was already an IIT (Hornblower) and one has now become one (Schooner).  These folks all had outstanding positive attitudes straight through the whole weekend, and they were a delight to work with. 

After our safety briefing and initial redcoat, IIT Thaddeus did the bulk of the teaching through the morning and sounded like a veteran instructor.  I told the first strike in the middle of the morning.  We returned to the line and did some more instruction before breaking for lunch, where M1NC told the second strike.  By afternoon, almost all of the chill had gone out of the air and we were well into a really beautiful North Carolina winter day.  The instruction continued with Lawrence teaching sitting and standing.  We got in an AQT and produced our first new rifleman of the weekend, Matthew, a young officer in the Navy who had driven quite a few hours to join us.  And we also had a requal, Schooner.  We closed with Lawrence telling the third strike, and me giving my first attempt at a Benediction. 

Sunday mornings at Ramseur are no-shootin'-til-noon, so we got rolling at 9 with a survey of the dark days of 1776, and then a KD talk up at our 500 yard range.  We then had time for some position review, taught by IIT Hornblower.  We had an early lunch and then at about noon we were ready to fire.  We shot a redcoat with 5 shooters (one of our initial 7 had left early on Saturday--another, Hornblower, was working instead of shooting).  Then Matthew took advantage of the opportunity to head up to the full distance range and spent the day shooting with M1NC up there.  Our remaining shooters began AQT's.  We quickly got our next rifleman, Sean, who joined Matthew and M1NC up at the full distance range.  Two or three more AQT's produced another requal from Schooner and a third brand new rifleman, Jonathan.  Both then joined our full distance crew, which left us one shooter, Thomas, on the 25 yard line.  Thomas is capable of rifleman quality shooting, for sure, and I am confident that he will make the score at his next event.  He was working with two bolt action guns, one of which had really inadequate sights, so he was facing a tough challenge, but he persevered, had a great attitude through the day, and worked hard to put our instruction into practice.  IIT Engineer Jim got a chance to shoot an AQT Sunday afternoon, and requalified with his AR15 at 244, our highest score by far for the weekend.  Nice shooting, Jim! 

Because of the dispersal of rifles and riflemen, we did not fire a final redcoat on Sunday.  I also forgot to make time for Thaddeus to tell the Dangerous Old Men stories he'd prepared.  Just lost track of things there.  I'm sorry!

So for those keeping score at home, we have three new riflemen, and one new IIT.  So please welcome Schooner to the instructor corps!  We are blessed here at Ramseur with an extremely able group of IIT's, and this weekend allowed for several promotions, including Engineer Jim to IIT1, Cousin Hart to IIT2, and Thaddeus to IIT3.  My son, Hornblower, is working on his IIT3 promotion and has just a few more elements to complete. 

[Lawrence]

Congratulations to our 3 new Rifleman, Matt (our Navy Submariner, on the first AQT), Sean (another computer guy on our list) and John (our Firefighter).

All persisted and  displayed excellence! None fell asleep during my 3rd Strike. (I notice that stuff)

"At a Boy!", Engineer Jim fired a 244 Sunday.

I can remember only one higher score with iron sights on an AR at Ramseur. A competitor on the Air Force Guard marksmanship team named "West" scored a 247 while at the Ramseur 2/10 RBC. He also went on to become a CMP Distinguish Rifleman.

Brings back great memories of Crashkid2k, kDan, jmdavis, dragonfly, martin and other good souls whose names escape me but their faces are clear.......

Also reminds me of one retired SI who probably shot a 250 but would never think of publishing the results.

[Lawrence]

Whose got some photo?

[Thaddeus]

Our newest orange hat!

[Lawrence]

Welcome Schooner to the NC instructor corps!

[Moylan]

Whose got some photo?

I have some on Sam's camera...I just need to figure out how to get them off the camera and onto the computer.  Where's the enlarger and chemicals when you need them? 

[Moylan]

Here are the pictures we managed to get.  Hornblower's still working on his photography skills.  The top picture has our IIT's Engineer Jim, Cousin Hart and Hornblower, along with Julia...I forget her forum name!  And Matthew, our first rifleman.  The out of focus pic is Jonathan, and the last picture is Sean.  Next time, I will try to be better about taking some extra pictures of the day!

[Engineer Jim]

I hope everyone will forgive the tardiness of my response.  It takes me a while to get my thoughts together.

With 7 shooters, we didn't have a huge cadre out there for instruction, but of our 7 shooters, 5 either earned their rifleman patch or re-qualified.  That's a pretty huge percentage by estimate, and is testament to the great group that we had there.

It was my first day as an IIT, and let me say this: the other instructors make it look a lot easier than it is.  The amount of organization and preparation behind the scenes is amazing.  I was fortunate that I had such a wealth of good role models in the other instructors and IITs at the shoot.

Thaddeus and Cousin Hart were there setting a high bar for IITs everywhere.  When I arrived as a student for my first Appleseed back in October, this husband and wife team was there making me feel welcome and providing some of my first instruction.  On this day, Cousin Hart did a fantastic job as Line Boss, providing a perfect role model for when I attempted the same duty on Sunday afternoon.  Thaddeus gave the bulk of first day of instruction, and did so in a professional and authoritative fashion, worthy of emulation.  They also have the coolest business cards I've ever seen.  Seriously.  Ask to see one.

M1NC put on a superb demonstration of body position and natural point of aim using the action-less stock and a laser.  I had the opportunity to conduct a similar demonstration at the Winterseed in Boone this past weekend and can only hope that the clarity of his demonstration was at least partly reflected in my own.  If it was, I owe thanks to M1NC.  His demo made it clear not only how important NPOA is, but in how quickly you can move it and reacquire it.  The students saw the light. 

M1NC also has a knack to offer corrective instruction clearly and concisely.  As I read through the instructor manual, there was emphasis on precise, clear, and direct instruction as the means to convey unambiguous information in a manner that can be understood and retained.  I hope I get the opportunity to be on an instruction team with him again.  I, and any other new IIT, can learn a lot about how to be clear and precise by instructing alongside him.

Lawrence is by far the best and most engaging storyteller I've had the opportunity to spend time with.  Making history come alive for students, in my mind, is a difficult undertaking.  It's somewhat easy to recall a string of facts, but difficult to make these distant facts relevant and engaging.  And that's our business: to make this great history of ours relevant to people today.  Lawrence is great at this.  As I try to compile and rehearse my own retelling of the April 19th history, I will aspire to telling it as well as Lawrence.  I doubt I'll ever get there, but who would?

Hornblower, Moylan's son, lived up to his namesake of Horatio Hornblower from C.S Forester's novels.  He not only demonstrated rifle positions well, but has the knowledge and the courage to confidently engage shooters on shooting issues.  I find that one of the hardest things to do as an instructor is to properly engage the shooters and correct issues.  I admit that I had a bit of a crisis of confidence here at my first Appleseed as an IIT.  I found it very difficult.  After all, I just attended my first Appleseed in October.  As young as he is, Hornblower does this well.  I remember walking down with him towards a series of sighter squares and listening to him as he confidently told the man shooting - a couple of decades his senior - that his vertical stringing was an issue with breathing.  A completely correct observation, of course.  Thank you Hornblower for showing me how it's done.

Moylan did a terrific job as the SBiT for the event.  He's got a great cadence to his instruction and was responsible for what I took to be the high point of the Appleseed.  At the end of the first day, he gave the benediction about his own nom de guerre, Stephen Moylan.  When he closed the benediction he prompted the listeners with a quote from, I believe, G.K. Chesterton: "Anything worth doing is worth doing. . ."

'Well', right?  Anything worth doing is worth doing well.  That's what everyone in the room guessed, and we were all wrong.  The quote is: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly".  It's tough to underplay how shocking that quote was in the context of the American Revolutionary War.  I can say it hit me like a slap.  This is the era in our own history where we derive our most vaunted heroes.  Men who shaped this country into a bastion of freedom and liberty in a flawless drive of heroism; the bedrock foundation of leaders which are still revered and celebrated today.

Stephen Moylan wasn't that guy though.  When he was appointed the army's first quartermaster general position, he lost the job.  He was forced to resign, essentially from incompetence.  But he didn't leave the army or the encampment.  How easy it would have been to walk out of the army and fade from history.  He was then appointed command the 4th light dragoons and showed up with he and his men wearing red coats!  After being ordered to change the color of their uniform he went on to fight in the army in a number of largely undistinguished engagements before leaving with health problems. 

The inspiration here is that even though you may not be the best at what you do, there is a place to help.  We strive to constantly improve, but even when we fall short we can be doing good.  It was just the thing this IIT needed to hear.

Thank you to our great students and instructors.  It was an inspiring Appleseed.  I hope every one of them is this good.
Engineer Jim