As we celebrate 250 years of American Independence this month, seven very skilled shooters joined us at the Jefferson County Sportsmen's Association near Pt Townsend. Both Saturday and Sunday brought clear skies and manageable winds, with typical amount of sun for a PNW July. Many thanks as always to JCSA for being such a welcoming host. INstruction went by quickly on Saturday, shooters had been practicing since their previous events and only needed quick reviews of the material, so we were able to spend a lot of time on the firing line shooting and coaching. Bandaid, Manofwords, and Shadow Catcher all told the story of April 19th, 1775, and we concluded day one with hearing more details about the Declaration of Independence, issued 250 years ago this month. Shooters now know why John Adams thought July 2nd to be perhaps a more meaningful day, and a copy of the Mary Kathararine Goddard printing on display brought more of the continuing story of the Declaration to life.
All returned on Sunday kind of sore, as expected, and again the pace of the class moved ahead at an excellent pace, allwoing more shooting opportunities for shooters, which they took full advantage of. Pursuing distinguished rifle scores, Dan and Drew were well matched all weekend, Dan shooting a best score of 231, and Drew 227. Jess reualified with multiple targets all near the 215 mark, Deb did not shoot a single target below 201 points all weekend and topped out with a 228. Chris took the weekend's highscore of 234. First time Appleseeder JP could have fooled us that this was not his first event, shooting an iron sighted rifle for his first Rifleman score of 211, which only kept climbing. Being an iron sights shooter, he came the closest of anyone to a distinguished rifle score with a personal highscore of 228 (twice).
Shooters, thank you for spending your time with us at JCSA. Continue practicing these skills on your own time, and we look forward to seeing you again. In the meantime, if you would like to see a selection of our founding documents, many of which we talked about at this evet, the Freedom Plane National Tour is making its final stop in Seattle later this month. More details and free ticket reservations are available here (https://mohai.org/exhibits/freedom-plane-national-tour-documents-that-forged-a-nation/). Chances of running into one of your friendly local Appleseeders there is high!