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Farragut Shooting Range, Farragut State Park, Idaho May 14 -15

Started by eert, May 16, 2016, 11:44:10 PM

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eert

Greetings Shooters!

Thanks for getting off the couch and coming to an Appleseed Event to learn about rifle marksmanship and hear about our nations true birthday.  It was great to see so many familiar faces and meet some new folks.  The best part of being an Appleseed Instructor is meeting you and sharing our love of rifles and liberty.
 
This was a new venue for Appleseed, so it was a learning experience for the Shoot Boss and fellow Instructors.  We had some last minute cancellations, so we went from a full line of 12 to 7 shooters registered for the event.  Luckily, we had an additional walk-on to help fill out the line.  Five of the 8 shooters were returnees, so it felt like a reunion of sorts.

We started with the Pledge of Allegiance in a bit of a peculiar way.  The range Officers didn't have a flag raised yet, so we utilized the flag patch on my cap.  It seemed a bit odd to me, but everyone was appropriately respectful. 

After the initial Red Coat qualification target, we changed up our usual course of fire to include Kimber Custom's Lap Drill, trying to instill proper trigger finger placement and trigger control early on.  As I hadn't called this before, I have a sense that I could improve on this a bit!  The Instructors thought this was a good addition, but I'd like to hear the verdict from the students.  Please don't be shy!  We can only adapt our instruction technique when we get feedback! 

Theophilus gave a rousing First Strike at Lunch, and I gave the Second during the afternoon break.  After break we got in two AQTs.  Both of which were timed and scored as one of our returnees was only able to come on Saturday, and we wanted to make sure there was an opportunity to shoot for score. 

Shooters made a wide range of progress, and the afternoon Red Coat showed improvement of 5 of the 8 shooters.

Day two opened with the Third Strike by Theophilus.  I loved that line discussing Heath's Circle of Fire- …"dispersed thou adhering".  I'll be stealing that for my future Third Strikes! 

After the morning review, we broke for lunch as we seemed to be a bit behind the time curve.  I presented an abbreviated KD session, focusing mostly on range estimation using a Duplex reticle, and a brief trajectory discussion.  Since we had only a 100 yard range available, shooting was accomplished using the 100 yard AQT targets posted one above the other to demonstrate trajectory versus point of aim.  Sue nailed the KD targets with authority, with 3 shots in the V. Perhaps with the longer distance more attention was paid to the 6 steps and NPOA??  Again, I would appreciate your critique on the KD session.

After the KD session we shot 5 AQTs for score before the Range Officers came by to confirm we'd be done shooting by 5:00 pm.  Zach closed off the final Red Coat target running a 7.62 x 54R Mosin Nagant.  Left handed by the way, and let me tell you, he'd spent some hours behind that rifle to run the bolt as smooth/fast as he was.  All the Instructors were suitably impressed!  It was kind of reminiscent of when I first met Grissom years ago and he was running an Enfield-Gibbs lefty style.  High praise indeed.

We did patch one Rifleman, Antoine.  Huzzah for sure!  Roland is now batting .750 for friends he's brought to Appleseed.  Had Amanda been able to attend day two, I'd give good odds that she would earn one too.  Zach running his iron sighted AR also came close, and I'm not sure who was more surprised that he didn't hit the magic 210, the Instructor cadre or himself.  I almost forgot to award our single youth shooter, Katherine, a Young Patriot patch, but luckily Theophilus was there to save the day!  Thanks too to Grandpa Michael for bringing Katherine to the shoot.  Youth are our future and what better way to instill continued respect for our Second Amendment than attending an Appleseed to hear the stories of April 19th. 

For the rest of the shooters, by the end of day two, everyone's positions had improved and we were even seeing consistent NPOA shifts during stage 4.  Shooters seemed to struggle to remember trigger placement (lots of dragging wood!!!!!) consistent trigger squeeeeeeeze, and follow through.  DRY FIRE is the answer!  If you want some close range scaled dry fire targets and/or instructions, send me a Personal Message or email.  Ditto if you want some range time with yours truly.

Thank you all for sharing the weekend with me!

A special thanks to my old fellow Orange Hats Theophilus and Joni, who traveled a good distance to help out Instructing and watching the line.  It was fantastic working the line with you again, and Theophilus, your story telling is second to none! 

I hope to see all of you again!  Remember October is a center fire Known Distance shoot! 

EERT

Undercroft

Finally getting around to writing this out. I'll try to address points as Eert raised them, and then finished with my assesment of the weekend.

I think the lap drill was an excellent way of illustrating some potentially obscure concepts. Trigger reset isn't something that's easy to pay attention to for beginning shooters. Right about the loud bang and recoil of a rifle it can be challenging to give proper thought to tiny pop of a trigger reset. I think this drill did a good job of providing practical, tactile definition to some of the details of trigger squeeze and follow-through.

I was very grateful for the short KD session. It's been an interest of mine since I first began shooting, and learning some of the practical aspects of subjects such as range estimation helped me wrap my head around the concept more thoroughly than before. Knowing a bit more about how to use the marking of the scope to range targets also made the idea of getting an second focal plane scope much less intimidating.

Many congrats to Antoine. He wrapped up his Rifleman score with a beautiful 47 on his stage 4 under quite a bit of pressure (and with an instructor scrawled 2-2-3-3 on the back of his trigger hand thumb as a reminder for shot order). It was quite well executed.

That Mosin was my first ever rifle, back when .22 was too hard to find to bother getting one, and 7.62x54r was the cheapest plentiful round I could find. I spent many weekend sessions and evening dry fire drills behind that rifle, and it was good to be reunited. Although she did insist on biting me (as penance for the long time left on the rack, I'm sure).
__________

The weekend was frustrating for me. Having shot Rifleman in the past, I suppose I was expecting a little too much of an easy "win" with my AR-15. The hours of dry fire and familiarization I had with my 10/22 had not been duplicated with my AR, and this weekend demonstrated that thoroughly. I purchased "just enough" ammo for the shoot, and thus did not get much live fire under my belt with this particular rifle prior to the event. The rifle is comparatively heavy and unwieldy, so I tended to leave it on the shelf and do my evening dry fire with my much handier 10/22, which did little to improve my trigger control with my AR.

The lack of actually running through the AQT stages with my AR also left me uninformed as to certain shortcomings that could have been better overcome with practice or modifications. Case in point, the lack of an ambidextrous magazine release (I share Eert's gift of being a southpaw shooter) meant regularly disturbing my shooting positions during stages 2 and 3 to change magazines. I also struggled with a ~12 MOA sized front sight post. My 10/22 (With which I shot Rifleman thrice last year) has a National Match style front sight with a significantly longer sight radius compared to my AR. While I'm certain that excellent shooting can be achieved with that standard sights, choosing to substitute my 10/22 for my AR in dry fire lead me to doubt my sight picture all weekend long, and put me on my heels accordingly.

I was hoping for a stronger performance going in to the October KD shoot. It's such a rare event around here that I'm left a little apprehensive. I'm patching up my equipment issues, setting a budget, laying out a regimen, and come October I'll have a lot more dry and live fire under my belt before showing up to throw my hat in the ring.

Thank you to all the instructors for volunteering their time. I was taking things perhaps a little too seriously this weekend, and it was the people (instructors and shooters) who helped to salvage it and make it enjoyable in the end. And the Mosin. The Mosin always makes the day better.

P.S. Yes, Theophilus' storytelling abilities are indeed excellent as reported.