Project Appleseed

Wow.  Just got home.  We had a great weekend, which resulted in 2 riflemen (well, 1 rifleman and a riflewoman).

Weather in Davilla is an interesting thing.  As far as I can tell, there are only 3 weathers in Davilla: sizzling hot, numbingly cold, and really, really wet.  This weekend fell into the "really wet" category.  Central Texas had heavy rains on Friday and through the night.  When I left Austin at 6 AM to drive to Scout's place, I drove through sheets of rain.  By the time I reached Bartlett, about 10 miles from Davilla, the rains had let up.  I arrived at a wet range, though we seemed to have a (temporary) break from the range.

The instructor turnout was great - I had three additional red hats (Voortrekker, Doug, and LabRat), as well as three orange hats (Respiratory Pop, Larry, and Will).  Scout, a normal fixture of Davilla, was absent.  He had some serious leg pains on Friday, went to the hospital, and was admitted to the critical care unit when it was discovered that he has a clot in his femoral artery.  He remains in the CCU at King's Daughters hospital in Temple, and will continue to be in our prayers.

We had 14 shooters preregistered, but only 8 showed (likely due to weather), plus one walk-on.  The small turnout led to a great instructor student ratio, and also meant that clearing the line and looking at targets went fairly quickly.  Included in the turnout were 3 married couples and a father-son pair.

We began with safety, first strike, and some red coats.  The initial red coats weren't great.  We had a few shooters ready on the 100 yard targets, but only two that cleared the 200 yard targets, and none that made it farther.  This was actually fine from my perspective - the red coats just tell us where we are - it's the improvement that counts!

Black squares.  Sight adjustments.  Position adjustments.  We manage to teach sitting position before lunch.  We break for lunch and second strike, and return to green coats.  We teach standing position, shoot through the green coats, and move on to our first AQT.

The first AQT produced our first rifleman, Jason, who was shooting a factory Ruger 10-22 with optics, and no sling.  He shot a solid 215.  We has a small ceremony with the awarding of the patch, and admonished him to never shoot that badly again.  In the second AQT, Jason repeated his performance, and resolved to switch to a centerfire for the Sunday shooting.

We knew that several of our shooters would not be returning for Sunday, but we were joined by Maura and Roy (Davilla 11-08 bootcamp!).  Maura wanted to work on AQT's, and we were happy to oblige.  We had only 4 shooters on Sunday, but this meant that we could work on the specific problems that those shooters were facing.  We shot an AQT in the morning, and produced our second rifle woman - Laura.  She was here at her second Appleseed with her husband.  On her previous Appleseed she had only shot in the 160's, but dry firing and range time brought her a solid performance today with a 215 score on the AQT, that was followed immediately afterwards by a 217 score.  We broke for lunch and told the third strike.

At this point, we had two new riflemen, both of whom had brought centerfires.  With as many instructors as we had, we went ahead and move the two riflemen to the known distance range, and we worked with the remaining two shooters on the 25m range.  We managed to get one of the shooters on the 25m range up to 200 on the AQT.  He'll clearly make rifleman at his next Appleseed. 

We experienced some torrential rain at the very end of the shoot, but it was just as we had finished the last AQT.  The wind had picked up, and we could see the wall of water moving towards us.  We had just enough time to get rifles put away before the deluge.

I had a great time.  I've instructed at a lot of Appleseeds, but this one was one of the smoothest shoots I've ever seen.  This would not have been possible without a great core of instructors, and I thank you all.  Thanks also to the shooters who came out and braved the rain.  You did a great job!

Congrats to Jason whom I know from before my time at Appleseed, and to Laura too!  Good job on making Rifleman both of you!  Sorry to hear you had such wet weather, but from what I hear the rain is as welcome there as it is up here in DFW.  We've had 5" since Friday. 

Scout, I am sorry I did not get 'round to calling you Friday, though it appears you had other 'business' of far greater importance to attend to!  I sure hope you recover quickly!

Thanks Vic.

Who needs a sling anyway...lol