Parma ID, August 19/20, 2023 AAR

[Prescott]

A private 25 meter event was held this weekend for a group of families from a local private school.   I would like to thank Doug for setting up this event and recruiting your family and friends to come learn the heritage of our country.

Typically in Idaho, the weather should be great in August, but we had some wild weather over the weekend.   On Saturday afternoon, we had to abandon the range and seek shelter in the club house as a thunder storm passed directly over the range.  However, this did provide the perfect opportunity to tell the 3rd strike of the match.  By the time the story was completed, the storm had passed over and we were able to head back down to the range.  On Sunday, some of the early storm clouds from Hurricane Hillary were pushing into Idaho.  This caused some strong wind gusts on the range in the early morning.   The range is composed of sand and fine silty dirt, so when the gusts get up to 15 mph, the dirt starts blowing around and the grit gets into everything.   Thankfully, by the time the Sunday morning review and safety brief was done, the gusts had settled down.

The families did great a great job absorbing the rifle marksmanship fundamentals and it was fun watching the group sizes of the shooters improve over the weekend.  While there were no new rifleman at this event, the student showed improvement and a couple shooters are on the path to get their rifleman patch at their next event.   As we discussed at the event, persistence is a characteristic of a rifleman.   Practice the skills that you learned and I expect to award you a patch.   Dry practice at home can help you perfect your trigger control skills, your steady hold factors and making NPOA shifts.

Some of the students were unaware of the history that Project Appleseed tells.   They expected to attend a marksmanship clinic and were surprised to learn some Revolutionary War history as well.   The students were all very attentive to the history and appreciated the stories that were told.

I would like to thank the parents for bringing their children to the event.  It is important to pass down the heritage of our country to the next generation and I appreciate that you are exposing your children to both rifle marksmanship and the founding of our country.   It is important aspect of Project Appleseed to inspire the hearts and minds of Americans with the stories of the American Revolution.

I hope to see everyone at another Appleseed event in the future.