Spring has definitely finally arrived in North Idaho, as we enjoyed beautiful weather for our second pistol clinic of the year at Fernan Rod & Gun Club. We appreciated everyone's attentiveness, safety consciousness, patience, and persistence through the weekend. It made our jobs as instructors easier, and it definitely paid off as we saw great improvement across the board and several new Pistoleer™™™™ scores on Sunday.
Congratulations to new Pistoleer™™™™s Alex (215), James (222), and Chris (227) as well as to Tom, who not only qualified as a first-time Pistoleer™™™™, but also shot a distinguished pistol score with a high target of 230 points! Special congratulations to Michelle, who was voted most-improved/most persistent. Despite being a beginning shooter and experiencing significant equipment challenges (we tried at least four different pistols on Saturday), she maintained a great attitude, returned on Sunday, and turned in significantly improved targets using Beardo's Mark IV .22LR. Huzzah!
Sunday's informal competition on the Big Dot/Little Dot target was close, with "Team Right" eking out a victory over "Team Left" by a four-point margin 80-76. The individual scores in that competition were impressive - Alex in first place with a perfect 20 points, a three-way tie for second between Tom, James, and Chris(l) with 19 points, and Norm and Chris(r) in a two-way tie for third place with 16 points each. The prize box is lighter by a few patches and "Appleseed Trigger Training Devices", but for some reason I still have a bunch of Appleseed temporary tattoos left in it. Perhaps some younger shooters will claim those at a future rifle clinic. ;)
Many thanks to Beardo for handling the administrative aspects of the shoot as well as loaning his pistol to Michelle and helping her with it on Sunday, to Schooner and Kjrr for acting as RSOs and coaching, and to Mr. Clean for sharing the instructional tasks with me. We look forward to having more qualified pistol instructors in the future - Andy and I would like to spend some time on the line shooting, too!
And finally: The repeated misfire on the last chamber of the 1851 Navy turned out to be an issue with the nipple, not the percussion caps. After I got home, I swapped in a different nipple and it fired right away. Sorry, Alex - I wish it would have fired for you, but those old percussion revolvers were still finicky, albeit a big improvement over their flintlock predecessors!
We hope everyone enjoyed the weekend, that we'll see you again at a future event. Remember the seventh step - telling friends, family, and colleagues about Appleseed and encouraging them to join us!
I'd like to thank you and your team for a great pistol clinic. Prior to last weekend, I had been to quite a few Appleseed rifle classes, but this was my first with a handgun and I enjoyed it a lot.