Bone Creek Gun Club - Pittsburg, KS - 22-23 Oct 2016

[Lomshek]

Had a great weekend of shooting with mild fall temps in southeast Kansas. 

This was my first Appleseed as a stand alone real live grown up Shoot Boss (thanks to TomCat for mentoring me to this point) and I was lucky enough to have a solid crew of orange hats helping out and what turned out to be some very capable shooters to make me look good!

We had a fairly full line of 15 shooters!  We lost two after Saturday but gained one Sunday.




Out of the 15 shooters we awarded 7 badges with just one of those being a re-qualify.  That shooter had qualified at his first Appleseed last January where he earned a Winterseed badge (12 degrees!) and proved he still knew what he was about.

We had 3 shooters qualify on day one.  A father/son duo (Morris & Drew) who said they'd read up on how to prepare for an Appleseed on the website and obviously took it to heart plus our re-qual (Jonathan).  Jonathan also took an orange hat at the end of the weekend.  I look forward to working with him in the coming years as he moves up the ranks!

Day two brought us four more Riflemen including our Sunday only shooter (Rick) who'd attended our July shoot and missed earning his badge by about 15 points. He came back for Sunday only and proved he's been doing his homework by shooting 3 qualifying AQT's in a row right off the bat.

Here were the Rifleman stats for the weekend-
Day One - 3 total Riflemen
1 re-qualification (Jonathan)
2 first time Appleseeders (Morris & Drew)

Day two - 4 total Riflemen
2 First time Appleseeders (Brook & Joe)
1 Second time Appleseeder (Rick)
1 Multi-Appleseeder (Jon)

We also had two young shooters (Tallon and Sequoia) who showed much improvement over the weekend.  It won't take long before we're handing them some well deserved Rifleman badges too!

One of our day one first time Appleseeders (Drew) went on to re-qual Sunday with iron sights after earning his first badge with a scope.

One of our day two qualifiers (Joe) had battled a rifle/ammo combination he suspected was not the most accurate and on Sunday was loaned a proven accurate rifle from one of our Saturday qualifiers and sure enough scored Rifleman on his next AQT! 

That kind of solidified my leaning toward a more accurate rifle being a better learning device than a less accurate rifle.  If a rifle will barely shoot a Rifleman score in a mechanical rest how can we expect a shooter to self-diagnose problems or call shots?

This was beat home to me on Sunday when I shot my Daniel Defense carbine.  It's a free floated 16" 1:7 5.56 with a Burris MTAC scope that I'm able to consistently shoot 2.5 - 3 MOA 10 round groups at distance using 55gr FMJ ammo (Wolf Gold, XM193 and others).  I was short on 5.56 so had slapped in my Ciener .22 conversion kit which had shot (barely) accpetably in my Bushmaster 1:9 rifle.  Did my demo including use the sighter square for a one shot zero lesson and as soon as I started the AQT things fell apart.

We all had a laugh at my expense but holy cow did that look bad!  I had good called shots that were inches away from the 400 yard targets and the whole thing probably didn't score over 160.  The rifle would put a few rounds right where they were aimed then randomly throw a shot in a random direction 12 - 15 MOA away from the aiming point.  It was ugly!

The lessons being don't use my .22 conversion in that rifle and it is impossible to teach a new shooter how to shoot accurately with an inaccurate rifle.  It just cements my desire to build a dedicated .22 upper with a Beyer aluminum barrel for practice and as a loaner.

Enough whining about me!  On with some more pics.

Here's Tim orange hatting at his very first Appleseed giving a DOM speech.


We had the good fortune of using some huge map banners that a former Appleseed Shoot Boss (Rifleman Riley) gifted me just a week ago.  These were very helpful as props during the Strikes and subsequent stories.


Here are the six Riflemen with the cadre as of lunch Sunday.


And our final Rifleman (Joe) on the first AQT after Sunday lunch made possible by the loan of an accurate rifle!


We had one shooter who was handicapped by the 15/22 ban.  He struggled with a pure factory 10/22 with fiber optic sights.  Hopefully he'll give it another shot as he worked hard all day Saturday.  There's a loaner with his name on it if he needs it!

Look forward to more shoots in 2017!

[DUSM]

I again offer many thanks to the "Hats" that participated in the event.

At the closing briefing I thanked the instructors for their time, efforts and caring.  One of the orange hats said that no thanks were due as I had shot my Rifleman out of the box without instruction.

I beg to differ.  Looking at the bigger picture, my thanks were not so much for me and my score but for the folks that volunteer their time and efforts to educate and help others reach toward their goals if for nothing else but holding events like this.  The information and instruction you offer the participants often raches far beyond where you imagine it going.

I had a great time and look forward to seeing you folks next time!

Thanks again!!!

Rick

[Lomshek]

I again offer many thanks to the "Hats" that participated in the event.

At the closing briefing I thanked the instructors for their time, efforts and caring.  One of the orange hats said that no thanks were due as I had shot my Rifleman out of the box without instruction.

I beg to differ.  Looking at the bigger picture, my thanks were not so much for me and my score but for the folks that volunteer their time and efforts to educate and help others reach toward their goals if for nothing else but holding events like this.  The information and instruction you offer the participants often reaches far beyond where you imagine it going.

I had a great time and look forward to seeing you folks next time!

Thanks again!!!

Rick

Rick you're very welcome!

It was obvious you'd done some "homework" to bring your shooting level up to the point of being able to knock out one Rifleman qualifying AQT after another one.

Even if you didn't need a lot of coaching this time you're right that the "hats" put a lot of time in to make these happen and it couldn't work without all of them/us pulling together.

[Morris]

Rather late logging in as I did not return home from directly from the Bone Creek Appleseed Project shoot. 

Just wanted to add my thanks and appreciation to all the orange hats, but especially Rob who worked our end of the range the first day.  Rob made it a user friendly, but challenging introduction time.  I appreciated his approach to the day.

My son and I both commented on Roger's leadership and were surprised to learned it was his first Green Hat assignment.  Again a nice balance of making the event safe, encouraging and professional.

We will definitely shoot again as I want to attempt to qualify with iron sights.

Keep 'em in the Black.

Morris