Project Appleseed

Every Appleseed event is unique. The students and instructors form a small community, and a narrative takes shape over the course of a few days. This weekend in Kingsport, TN, nine shooters and the crew of volunteers wrote a story of easy-going teachable attitudes, rapt engagement with American Revolutionary history, exceptional marksmanship development, and a lot of smiles and laughs!

Regarding that marksmanship: The first hits count targets of Saturday (the "before picture") gave us a lot of runway for improvement. However, the very first groups on targets from live fire after the morning of instruction were remarkably tight! They were so nice, in fact, that the instructors had trouble identifying many of the usual patterns that indicate technique errors. We were all rightfully impressed with the early accuracy!

Later in the day David, new to Project Appleseed, summed up our entire philosophy of marksmanship in one sentence. He declared, "That was my best group and took the least effort." That's about it...the rest is just details and practice to achieve that state!

The students were very engaged during the Known Distance presentation on Sunday. They were excited to get on their mats to hit targets at 100 yards. That gave them a taste of longer-distance shooting, and it reinforced the notion that the techniques they learned at 25 meters translate to accurate shooting further downrange.

I hope that we'll see all of these shooters back at another Project Appleseed event soon. I have a sneaking suspicion that we may see some of them coaching on the line as instructors some day! Huzzah to all the Patriots who helped make this a safe, successful, and very enjoyable weekend!

-Tar Heel

Looks like a great event!