Another gorgeous summer weekend in the Northwest and another sold out event at Interlake Sporting Association! Of the 16 shooters that joined us, 14 had not been to an Appleseed event before and 11 considered themselves to be complete beginners. On the Instructor side we had three volunteers at their first event as well - a huge thanks to zeroMOA, Supernintendo Chalmers, and kRosHairs (formerly Keltecmossberg) for stepping up with BirdDog, Doc Sporseen, and myself to make this event a success! With such a new group all around, I was very excited to see the progress that would be made, and the morning Redcoat target confirmed we had a lot of work to do as only two shooters were able to clear a target of any size past the 100-yard mark.
We started slow, easing into the pace of learning so many new skills and I thought to myself about the variety of wood stocked, classic rifles we had on the line - a half dozen or more bone stock 10/22 rifles with tech sights, an old marlin lever action, a well-loved bolt gun, and an inherited Winchester 74 (a tube fed rifle but the tube is in the stock, how cool is that?). To add to the classic feel, a B17 Flying Fortress and B-25 Mitchell were out flying low over the area, so we were surrounded by American history from the rifles on the ground to the aircraft in the skies. However, that more recent history paled in comparison to the story of April 19th, 1775, and the sacrifices made on that day which started us on the path to being able to gather as we did at Interlake. Day one ended a bit behind schedule and instructors worried we'd been hit by the time monkey, but taking the time to guide so many new shooters through the fundamentals proved to be well worth it as four shooters were now able to hit Daniel Morgan's shingle, five more were able to hit the silhouettes with three well placed shots, and one shooter cleared the whole thing!
Everybody returned on Sunday morning, which was projected to be a scorcher by our standards up here. The shooters had not forgotten a thing overnight and their muscle soreness was clearly not a deterrence as the morning's Redcoats looked exactly as they had the previous evening, but now that everyone had genuine cold bores, those four shooters who hit the shingle could say they could be promoted from cooks in Daniel Morgan's company! We heard Jonas Clark's message given in Lexington on April 19th of 1776 to set the tone for the day, then got back to practicing the fundamentals of marksmanship. The first AQTs were about what I expected, on average around 150-160 points. We took a few strings of fire to work on time management and the seated position and scores jumped up to the 160s and 170s. We continued working on the fundamentals, found and fixed some equipment issues, and reinforced NPOA with another drill then scores jumped again! Dylan held the high score and came so close to a Rifleman patch with a 206. Philip was not far behind, having been very consistently in the 190s he scored 201 on the last AQT of the weekend. Lauren was also so close with a 197. Michael improved on every target, starting at 171 and finishing with 189. Natalie also showed incredible improvement on her stage 4 from the start of the day to the last target.
Remember those old WWII bombers I mentioned? Usually, we try to do a flintlock demo on Sunday afternoon but with only one Kentucky Rifle that's not much of a volley. We were, however, able to bring three M1 Garands that may have been on board one of those planes during the war to the line and the shooters got the opportunity to hold and fire a piece of history for themselves. I've never seen smiles so big after that first trigger squeeze. Remember, the Civilian Marksmanship Program was formed by an act of Congress and exists to enable YOU to practice safe marksmanship and you too can own a piece of American history like the M1 Garand. For my flintlock fans out there don't worry, we still got to see and hear the deep boom and smoke that comes from just one black powder rifle. :---
To everyone who attended this weekend thank you for your persistence, even though I did not hand out any Rifleman patches every single one of you showed an incredible amount of improvement, learned a whole lot more than you were probably expecting, and should be proud of yourselves. I sure am proud of y'all. Thanks again to the Interlake Sporting Association for hosting us, and I look forward to seeing you on the firing line again soon.
Hopefully everyone enjoyed their weekend as much as I did. I was very impressed with the improvements made by all of our patriots, as well as the tenacity that was showed by all. I hope to see everyone out at another event!