Man what a great weekend, great Americans out learning their heritage and marksmanship, great weather and General George Washington came by for a good long visit and presentation. One of my most enjoyable Appleseeds yet.
To start, we had 28 shooters show up on Sat morning, 26 made it back on Sunday and we had 7 newly qualified Riflemen by the end of the day!! OUTSTANDING!!! It's not often that we get 25% of the shooters present to qualify (for the first time and all but one of them at their first Appleseed) for their Rifleman's Patch. Several of the newest Riflemen where relatively inexperienced shooters and our guest reporter from the Washington Post, Dan Zach, who'd never fired a rifle before two weeks ago qualified, with a huge smile on his face, with a 216. It was also my first opportunity to award Rifleman patches to a husband and wife who qualified on the same AQT, they're looking forward to sharing the news with their son in Iraq. Thank you, to him as well.
We had 6 young shooters who all hung in there for the full weekend and did a great job. Unfortunatly, none of them made the illusive 210 but they ALL showed great attitudes and great improvement. Several were in the 195+ area. They'll all be back and will get their full patches, to go with the Junior Shooter patches, soon. I was really impressed by one of the young men, after he very graciously accepted and thanked us for his Junior patch, he was overheard telling his brothers that "we got this for showing up,,, I want the real thing!!" That ladies and gentlemen, is a young man who knows very well of what he is about! He, his brothers and the other young men there made me very proud to be an American!
Of the 7 newest Riflemen we had a high score of 244!! (he wasn't one of the inexperienced ones) The rest ranged between 211 and Roy's 244, Great Job to Roy, Shaun, William, Liz, Roger, John & Dan.
We also added 2 new IIT's for the weekend, Beowolf_357 and N2OGuy who helped out on the line all weekend, with some breaks to shoot themselves. Then after shooting his Rifleman score on his last AQT Cheeks took the challange of the 7th step and accepted his own orange hat. Roy, who shot the 244 was shooting his first Appleseed and promised to be at the next one and then start on his own IIT trail. So we essentially got 4 new IIT's this weekend.
I really want to thank everyone who came out this weekend, they all had great attitudes and came to learn. We covered all of the history and had a wonderful visit from General Washington to boot.
We had one Gentleman who while coming to his first Appleseed, brought five other shooters. We challenged him to keep that pace of recruitment up, I think he will.
Overall a great weekend. I want to give special thanks to SMWWoody, Matt, VTMountainer, Beowolf_357 and N2Oman for all of their work this weekend. Without these guys this shoot would not have been the success it was. Thanks Guys!!
Pics to follow, Thanks again everyone!
FiremanEd
Matt, Woody, John & Carl give excellent instruction.
Our Flag's, and a father and son practicing their heritage.