The Season of Friends
Our Central Texas Fall KD event in New Braunfels, TX this past weekend was set to be a successful event from the start. The event was scheduled to be a full-house. Sadly, two of our participants could not attend due to attending necessary family matters. We were able to pick-up one "waiting-list" participant, so our final student count numbered nine hardy souls. I was honored to see a number of students were returning participants. John Hobbs made another 13 hour drive from Kansas to attend our event!!! This was amazing to see!
On top of seeing a number of return students, we were visited by Ghostring, our local (actually he lives in Houston) Appleseed Master Instructor! Ghostring was kind enough to attend our event to award a 75 Shoot pin to myself, as well as a 100 Shoot pin to our long-time volunteer "Twinkle Toes". Jerry has been a dedicated supporter of Appleseed for a very long time. He was there when the Fredericksburg, TX shoots first started in 2011. His passion for keeping this program alive and successful in evident in his consistent presence at our events and his upbeat demeanor. Congratulations Jerry for reaching the 100 Shoot milestone!!!
Our first task required getting everyone zeroed in at 25m, if they felt using Battle Sight Zero would be the best option for the day. After the 25m zeroing was done, we walked to the 100 yrd line and proceeded to do the same exercise. After we finished zeroing, we went ahead and completed a Stage 1 string of fire on an actual AQT. We gave the students a chance to see what the change in trajectory was going from the 100 yrd range to the 200 yrd range before completing a Stage 2 string of fire. At this point, we took some time to break for lunch and hear Marshall provide us with a very detailed rendition of the "Battle of King's Mountain". After a bit of rest, food and refreshments, our students pressed on to the 300 yrd marker and repeated the same process to finish up a good solid Stage 3 of the AQT. By the time we moved to the 400 yrd line, the students were eager to finish up this first AQT. Upon checking the targets for our initial KD AQT, it was clear we already had three KD Rifleman scores in the history books! Josh (one of our local IITs) and Arindam both qualified with scores of 207 and 204, respectively. Congratulations gentlemen!!!! Jonathan was also able to nail a 42 hit KD score on his very first AQT! Way to go Jonathan!
This early completed AQT allowed us to post another one up and try and finish it out before the Texas sun began setting. Checking our targets between stages was no longer a priority so we simply banged out stage after stage until we finally ended up back at the 400 yrd point to finish up Stage 4. Having finished our second AQT of the day, we secured the rifles in everyone's vehicles and grabbed some water and snacks to end the day. Once we arrived at the target line to score our targets, there were some smiling faces! Randy found his grove, as always, and knocked out an impressive 50 hits with a score of 239! Impressive as always. Kevin was also able to knock out a Known Distance Rifleman score with 36 hits and a score of 210 – with a bolt action rifle! Way to go Kevin! What a great way to finish out our first day!
We started our second day by testing everyone's ability to prove themselves as one of Captain Morga's Rifleman by taking a cold-bore shot at a small target place 250 yrds away. I am happy to say Kevin and Randy were able to rise to the occasion!!! Kevin basically hit the target in the exact center. Way to go Kevin!!! Randy nicked the edge of the target, but it was still a hit. Way to go Gentlemen! Captain Morgan would be proud.
We knocked down two AQTs in the morning and then took a bit of break for lunch. Josh P. was able to reconfirm his status as a KD Rifleman by putting down a 37 hit/201 score AQT. Way to go Josh! Sadly, Arindam's rifle began to fail him early on. We noticed the scope had began to slip inside of the uni-mount rings. Luckily, Arindam had already knocked out a KD Rifleman score on the previous day. Arindam decided to retire from the remaining AQTs but would indeed stick around for the remainder of the weekend.
After lunch we did a short Range Estimation Exercise to help everyone realize a Rifleman always has the tools on them to make a good guess about how far away a target is. We took range estimates of four different objects downrange. Nathaniel was able to get the closets estimates to the simulated distances out of everyone. The prize was a copy of "The Long Range Shooting Handbook" by Ryan Cleckner. A very good book for Rifleman. Way to go Nathaniel!!!!
The day concluded with two final AQT attempts. While we were able to get more attempts completed for this weekend, our remaining students were not able to capitalize on them. This is fully understandable because our weather was good, but certainly warmer than we would have liked it. Still yet, getting 5 KD Rifleman out of 9 participants was certainly wonderful to see.
This was a challenging weekend for everyone! Our environment is not something we can control, just work around. John H. is a prime example of continuing to give your all, until you know it may be unsafe to do so. John came back to our KD event and performed admirably until he felt he could no longer safely execute the demanding tasks of the weekend. He improved greatly from his previous time with us and will hopefully return. It was great to have him again at our event!
What a darn good way to spend a weekend – with rifles and friends,
Chad Stovell – GenX Rifleman (Shoot Boss)
Marshall – Don'tFix1776 (Instructor)
Mike – Gus (Instructor)
Jerry – Twinkle Toes
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It was a hoot to see 3 bolt-actions out there
Great Weekend! with Great People! well worth the investment of drive time from Kansas. And I always need an excuse to stop for "Arbuckle Mountain Fried Pies" near Davis Oklahoma!!
An old Appleseeder would ask me every time we met, "What have you done to Improve?" being around such great shooters and "Targets never lie" tell me exactly the areas I need to work on! See you at the next New Braunfels KD in March!
Quote from: GenX Minuteman on November 22, 2025, 09:25:04 PMGhostring was kind enough to attend our event to award a 75 Shoot pin to myself, as well as a 100 Shoot pin to our long-time volunteer "Twinkle Toes". Jerry has been a dedicated supporter of Appleseed for a very long time. He was there when the Fredericksburg, TX shoots first started in 2011. His passion for keeping this program alive and successful in evident in his consistent presence at our events and his upbeat demeanor. Congratulations Jerry for reaching the 100 Shoot milestone!!!
Yay Jerry. He was at my very first Appleseed in Davilla back in February of 2009. That guy has more energy than people half his age. He also gets involved in local politics. I wish he was the Guv of Texas. You'd see some real fireworks then. And Ghostring also showed up in Waco after leaving NB on Saturday to give AF5US a pin and also gave me a Pecan Pie. Yum. Thanks Jim.