Springtime in Texas... You never know what you're going to get. Although the weatherman had been saying for a week it was going to cloudy with a 50% chance of rain and a high of around ~60° I didn't figure it would play out that way.
Unfortunately the weatherman was mostly right on everything... except the high for the temperature. If it ever got over the mid 40° I'd be very surprised. As an added bonus, we received a nice brisk north wind all day as well to help it feel nice and chilly even in the afternoon.
However, we a good group of 13 folks (nice number, eh?) there eager to reach for their goals and soak in the activities for the day. Although the weather wasn't friendly we got a lot of solid work in. We split the line at lunch and about half of the attendees stayed at 25 to work on fundamentals and transitions on the AQT. The rest of the bunch headed to KD with their center fire rifles to give distance a try.
Stitz and Jeremy did a bang-up job with the guys on the 25. You'll see the results below. On the KD range, we not only got to apply the rifleman's trajectory and IMC at each distance to get some initial dope on their rifles, we also got a good dose of reading the wind. Although the full-value wind was fairly consistent in direction, it was gusting from 10-20 and changing rapidly. Even though we were compensating for the wind, the targets, once again, didn't lie and showed us the difference we were experiencing as the wind changed speeds throughout the course of fire. It was very good learning opportunity for everyone who experienced it.
At the end of the day we had 4 new Riflemen cross the 210 threshold.
Congratulations to:
Barry - You have been a marvelous ambassador for the program with a group of local youth and their dads/families. Thank you! I'm very glad you finally had a chance to focus on solely on you at this event and get this done. It was in the air, and it was time!
Dan - You are quick learner and it was awesome to see you take full advantage with a new Marlin LTR and Appleseed gift certificate. Two days and done! Nice work, sir.
Trevor - Centerfire from the get-go and you just went through our 1-day Fundamentals class intro a couple of weeks ago. Once you got that sling situation worked out, BOOM!!! You and Dan probably don't realize that you are in the minority to be able to only go through 2-days of Appleseed and walk away with a patch. It's a fairly rare thing. O0
Forrest - Forrest, Forrest, Forrest. Brother, first of all I want to thank you for everything you've been doing for Appleseed over the last year or so. For those of you reading this that don't know, Forrest has been a huge advocate for the program and has been spending a lot of time working behind the scenes on some of our "projects" and with other shooters. The first things that come to mind when I think about Forrest are selflessness and persistence. Very glad to see you reach this goal and am very thankful you're on our team. :bow:
Very nice!