Three shooters and three instructors gathered on a beautiful morning for a one-day Appleseed at Wears Valley Ranch in Sevierville, Tennessee. Since the weather was so pleasant, we started the day outside instead of in the usual classroom. Attendance was light, likely due to the holiday weekend, but the thirst for history and marksmanship instruction was not! Matt came and brought sons Isaac and Noah and they got their own family Appleseed!
After the usual introductions and opening remarks, we started with 416_Rigby telling us about the battle of Lexington during the first strike.
Afterward, we did the safety briefing and brought rifles to the line. First up was the morning redcoat target, which showed us that we had some work to do. We went right down the list of marksmanship instruction blocks: eye dominance, slings, steps 1-3, NPOA, prone, steps 4-6, and the trigger exercise. After some dry fire, we shot a couple of 5-round squares and noticed significant improvement right away.
Next up was lunch, and while the shooters ate, Gator0246 gave the second strike, taking us all the way to Concord and back to the North Bridge.
After lunch, we shot some more squares to loosen up, then went over talking targets, IMC, carding the sights, and did a mag change drill in preparation for the AQT.
We needed to get those pesky redcoats back to Boston, so 416_Rigby presented the third strike. Then we got right back to marksmanship.
We did a practical exercise in sitting, then moved to transitions. After shooting the middle stages of the AQT, we had standing class, then shot stages 1 and 4.
Lastly, we went after those redcoats again with the final target of the day, and what an improvement we saw! We went from only one 100 yd score on the morning redcoat to two 400 yd scores, one shingle, and one cleared target on the afternoon redcoat - Huzzah!
The day ended with awarding youth patches to Noah and Isaac, followed by a brief benediction and a hearty "Thank You" to the shooters for coming out on a day when so many other activities could have pulled them away.
This was a fun day with perfect weather at a wonderful range. How much better can it get than that?
Thanks again to Matt, Isaac, and Noah for coming out. Come back soon and bring friends. We would love to see you all back again. Thanks to Gator0246 and 416_Rigby for making the trek from Georgia with me to facilitate this event, and thanks to Wears Valley Ranch for hosting Project Appleseed.