What a great weekend full of learning at the Everett Sportsmen's Club! 17 shooters joined us, including three families encompassing mulitple generations, most of whom were attending their first event and wondering what this Project Appleseed thing was all about. Saturday was warm and sunny, the blue skies a welcome relief from the week of wildfire smoke that went away just in time. Shooters took to absorbing as much of the firehose of information as they possibly could, learning about how a steady and relaxed position will allow them to find a Natural Point of Aim, which makes them not just accurate shooters, but consistently accurate shooters. Captain Rebop, PNW Carrier, and Bandaid all gave excellent renditions of The Three Strikes, and hot off the 250th anniversary of the vote for Independence on July 2nd 1776, the Shoot Boss encouraged all to take advantage of the final week of the Freedom Plane National Tour a very (https://mohai.org/exhibits/freedom-plane-national-tour-documents-that-forged-a-nation/) a very short way away in Seattle to go see some of the documents we talked about in person. Instructors did a great job interacting with shooters and making learning fun. By Sunday afternoon the sun had warmed us up quite a bit, and there had been a good amount of improvement in shooter abilities, though there was still more to be done on Sunday to help the large amount of information sink in a bit more. On Saturday afternoon's AQT, Jeremy, at his very first event qualified with a Rifleman score of 211! Picture of persistence, Bill, re-qualified with a 214!
All shooters returned on Sunday to more bright sunny skies (and so did the cooler full of ice and capri-suns). After some sleep, and maybe a bit of stretching, the morning's Hits Count/Redcoat target showed great improvement from Saturday morning's! The morning review went a little long, but to the shooter's benefits as they were full of good questions we were happy to answer for them! During the morning's sighter squares, a few more shooters discovered they did indeed need sight alignment adjustments, which quickly fixed many of the group size issues we'd been seeing. After another hot dog lunch by grill master Will and a talk about KD shooting, we started the afternoon's AQTs. Tristan qualified for his first Rifleman patch with a 217, and Scott requaled after a few years break with a 216 (later taking the event high score of 229). Dan re qualified with a 215, and Darren, at his first event on the final AQT made it happen with a 211! Thinking we had time for a historical demo and an AQT, we brought out some flintlock longrifles and an M1 Garand for the shooters to observe and get a chance to shoot. Though the wildfire smoke had just left, we made the sky darker for a few moments with volleys of black powder fire to everyone's excitement. The hands-on experience took a bit longer than I'd planned on, but smiles were all around and I even had exactly enough CMP forms for everyone who wanted an M1 Garand for themselves afterwards! We'd love to see someone back with their own M1 at a future event.
Shooters, Volunteers, and Will at ESC, thank you for making this event so enjoyable and safe. We look forward to seeing you again soon.