The Sportsmans Club of Battle Creek hosted southern lower Michigan's Patriots Day rifle clinic and despite the weather everyone had an enjoyable weekend. After the national anthem, welcome and Introductions our crew dove into the safety briefing before our 12 participants were allowed to bring rifles to the line. Our Line Boss for the morning briefed our shooters on line commands, ammo malfunctions and the Red Coat course of fire. The red Coats were shot and the results were collected before the shooters were turned over to Dread Pirate BeBop and her model Molarman for the points of instruction. Once the initial POIs were covered, rifles corrected for proper cheek weld and sight alignment and a trigger drill performed, the first square was shor and individual coaching began. By the 4th square, groups were small enough for BeeFree to present IMC. Sights were adjusted and confirmed before we broke for lunch and Bee presented a preamble to Pirate's First Strike. Pirate did an outstanding First Strike to complete her PC4.
NoLambo took over as Line Boss and the afternoon proceeded with more POIs and drills. Bee presented Second Strike from the view of Hannah Davis which stirred our emotions. Then the first AQT was shot and while Rascal 21 and sister Autumn scored those while a second AQT was shot. Before doing awards i presented Third Strike and the benediction. Two of our visiting Canadians, Dave and Jason, posted identical 230 scores and along with our very own Bill Winkle with a score of 235 were awarded Rifleman patches.
Jason selected a Purple Rifleman patche and was obliged to read the history of Madam Yotnottin and the purple patch. The day's final Red Coat was shot and our shooters were sent home to rest and recuperate.
Sunday dawned clear and cold but with the promise of success in the air. Fidget joined our ranks of instructors for the day and we set about to make the Riflemen. Adrian, who had struggled most of Saturday to find a prone position that wasn't painful discovered he could shoot better from kneeling and only missed clearing Sunday's first red coat target by one shot. Kudos to our crew and Adrian for improvising, adapting, and overcoming. Our shooters settled into shooting some squares targets to refine their skill set while receiving one on one coaching and quick reviews of POI's. Pirate did a review of IMC and Talking Targets to finish up her PC3 and Molarman did yeoman duty being our Line boss to complete his PC2. After Pirate presented our first DOM with Samuel Whittmore our shooters shot Sunday's first AQT, and Cole joined our ranks of requalifying Rifleman with a 218. We broke for lunch and the KD presentation before AQT # 2 was shot. Several of our requalified Riflemen continued to post qualifying score but it was Canadian Jason who topped them all with a 241 for a Distinguished Rifleman patch on that one and Tim broke through on AQT #3 to requalify with a 210. Our forth AQT of the day produced a new Rifleman or should I say Riflewoman as Samantha, who was attending her first Appleseed, broke through the door with a 222 score and then backed it up with a 228 and 226 on the final two AQT's! Shoot like a girl, indeed !
I then broke the shooters into teams of three and we did a Parker's Revenge fun shoot with the team of Jason,Tim and AJ getting top honors with 48 points.
AQT #5 produced no new riflemen but two of our three highest scores with Dave posting a 240 and Bill posting a 243, earning the both Distinguished honors.
AQT#6 showed most of or shooters were wearing down so we broke for some more DM and DW history as we waited for four o'clock and the Memorial Volley. Our shooters did a great job of firing together on the Volleys as the name of the fallen patriots were read and a moment of silence was observed.
The days final red coat target was shot and 7 of our 11 remaining shooters hit the 400 target !
It was a great weekend with some outstanding patriotic attendees.
AJ, Adrian, Jennifer, Tiffany, Jim and Jeffery, you all posted some great scores. Just keep working on the fundamentals and perfect practice and you will be posting rifleman scores in no time.
Kelly, thank you so much for helping with coaching, scoring and providing everyone with hot beverages on a wet cold weekend as well as providing us with a glimpse of Maple Seed and handing out swag !
:pics:
Looking for crew or shooters with pictures to post !
Such a fun weekend! It was a perfect combination of effective instructors and shooters open to learning.