Project Appleseed

Rimfire known distance events are making a return to Colorado, with our inaugural rimfire known distance shoot at Skyline Hunting and Fishing Club in Denver, CO!

We greatly appreciate Skyline Hunting and Fishing Club supporting our rimfire KD event at their range. What an excellent range to spend the day at!

After a dismal weather forecast for Saturday made us all worry, the weather turned out to be almost perfect for shooting, with mild temperatures, and enough wind to really make the KD interesting.

We kicked off our one-day rimfire KD with an introduction to the three challenges of a rifleman, some positional review and 25m sight in along with a review of sight adjustments. Since time was of the essence, after everyone felt like they had a solid 25m zero, we headed right into academics about ballistics and trajectory and how to formulate come ups. After learning the theory, we decided to put it to practice and began the process of collecting data for come ups. Everyone started with some standard come ups to get on paper at each distance, then refined for their specific rifles. As we got out to 75 and 100 yards, we talked about how to adjust for wind, since the wind was going to be a factor. Just before lunch, the group had good data out to 100 yards, and everyone was shooting well.

At lunch we heard how marksmanship played a huge role in the American Revolution with the stories of Timothy Murphy, Ephraim Bank, King's Mountain and John Stark.

After lunch, with data collected and wind calls being refined, we jumped right into AQT prep. We reviewed the standing and sitting/kneeling positions along with transitions and shot our first AQT of the day! As we collected scores from the first AQT, three rifleman emerged! Eric, John and Brian all demonstrated their understanding of the three challenges of a rifleman by qualifying on the first AQT of the day!

We took a break for everyone to catch their breath and talked about other environmental factors to keep in mind for shooting at distance. Everyone was feeling excited about shooting another AQT and getting more practice shooting at distance, so we jumped right back into it!

After AQT #2, we had four more new riflemen! Matt, Keith, Mike and Tom all shot the score, demonstrating their mastery of the three challenges! We took another quick break to talk about range estimation and battlesight zero and with momentum building we hopped back into AQTs. Before we wrapped up for the day we had another three riflemen! Bill shot the score on the 3rd AQT and Dakota and Bevan both shot the score on the last AQT of that day, with everyone showing their persistence in applying their newfound KD skills!

I'd also like to take a moment to say thanks to Dakota for feeling inspired to take an orange hat after qualifying. We greatly appreciate you stepping up and becoming a part of the Colorado cadre, and we are all looking forward to you starting your instructor journey!

I can't thank our group of shooters enough for making the inaugural rimfire KD at SHFC a rousing success. I think everyone came away with a wealth of knowledge about addressing the three challenges of a rifleman, about their equipment and about the importance of marksmanship during the American Revolution! Your shooting certainly showed it. I speak for all the instructors when I say it was a blast spending the day with you all!

Many thanks to our team of instructors: codefogey, bravhrt, flux and Mama J for making this event possible.

Pictures to follow!

Group photo!



New riflemen!

Action shots

New Volunteers! Welcome to the cadre, thank you for stepping up!

Mama J officially gets her blue hat!


Dakota takes an orange hat!

Thank you to all the instructors for making the event educational, fun and challenging.  See you all soon!

Now that was an outstanding shoot!

Perfect weather to send some lead downrange, awesome facility, great attitudes, 9 of 12 shooters earned their patch and/or rocker, a new Orange Hat joined the cadre, and our Blue Hat did a fantastic job working her first event.

Special thanks to Lead Sled for absolutely crushing his debut running a Rimfire KD.

This shoot was sold out far in advance, with a lengthy waiting list. We will definitely be back at Skyline HFC for another RFKD (or two) in 2025!