Project Appleseed

The 2022 Appleseed events at Redbrush kicked off with a Patriots' Day shoot this past weekend. We had a full line with a troop of Trail Life Scouts and their fathers and several other shooters. We settled into Bay 5 of the Redbrush Rifle Range and got into the shooting instruction and American history business on a windy, sunny, warm Saturday.

Riflemen DO persevere, and we did over some equipment issues. Some of our smallest shooters exemplified the safety rules well and kept rounds on target by good use of an improvised rest to control a rifle almost as big as they are. I want to compliment Gabic on shooting up into the 140s at his age and stature in that manner.

Saturday was a day of instruction, historical event-telling, and was topped off by the Patriots' Day Volley. The young men were pleased to see what applied teamwork and accuracy can do to a redcoat target receiving concentrated fire.

The vast majority of shooters returned for Sunday after a night in a tent camping out, and we resumed the instruction with a quick review and the rest of the curriculum. At lunch, we culminated the Dangerous Old Men and Dames stories with the William Diamond story and stood the young men up in a line and had them face the big, bad Redcoats (played by their dads and other adults). After explaining the grit of the Revolutionary drummer boys, we issued the youth patch of William Diamond to them and moved into the AQTs.

We were able to run 3 AQTS on Sunday and had two riflemen from the Trail Life group. Aaron qualified with a 221, then backed it up with a 213. Steven, a visiting Shoot Boss as well as Trail Life dad, requalified with a 216. Another shooter, Noah, was very, very close with a 208, and I have no doubt he will continue to persevere to qualification score. Basil also chose to persist by continuing with the offered extra AQT after the conclusion of the event.

I very much appreciate, and want to thank, Adam, Josh, Steven, and Patrick for elaboration of various topics and keeping their troop moving along. I also want to thank Noah, Steve, Zach, and Basil for being very professionally mannered shooters.

Lastly, the local Redbrush instructor crew put on an excellent shoot. WilderMars got in her IIT2 promotional duties (and many other points of instruction as well), Darkfoot handled much line bossing of the large Saturday line and history, and sur+rifle gave excellent instruction for the Saturday course of fire and ran the AQT grind.

Picture Captions:
1. Saturday Firing Line
2. sur+rifle and WilderMars teach prone.
3. sur+rifle teaches the 6 Steps of Firing the Shot.
4. Appleseed Banner
5. The First Strike
6. The Trail Life Troop
7. Sunday firing line
8. Rifle repair with sur+rifle and Patrick.
9. Instruction with Darkfoot and Gabic.
10. sur+rifle and WilderMars teach standing steady hold factors.
11. Standing position on the line.
12. Gabic shoots from prone.
13. Drummer Boys vs "Redcoat" Dads.
14. William Diamond patching.
15. Noah and Titus at standing position.
16. Basil, Patrick and Weston at standing.
17. ...and at prone.
18. Gideon and the line at prone.
19. Aiming downrange.

Big John getting a new hat.

Thank you to all the participants for making this a very memorable Patriots Day celebration!

More pics attached.

Congratulations Big John!   

Way to go, Big John!  Keep up the good work!!