AAR Fredericksburg, TX April 27-28, 2024

[GenX Minuteman]

Blessings and Curses

    What an amazing weekend we recently had at Patriot Academy Campus in Fredericksburg, TX!!!  This event was hosted by an amazing organization, Patriot Academy, at their over-the-top teaching facility for our special "Patriot's Day" event this year.  The main focus of the non-profit organization, Patriot Academy, is to teach Americans the principles forming the Constitution and how to be effective in their own personal political lives.  As a longtime Appleseed volunteer, I was overly ecstatic to find an opportunity through which our like-minded organizations may have a mutually beneficial relationship.  As such, they were kind enough to allow our class of 20 students to come use their facilities for our special April event honoring the Patriots who sacrificed so much for our collective freedoms we cherish today.

    Our weekend started with new challenges and new comforts.  The new challenge was trying to organize and begin the event in 20-25 mph wind!!!!  Not fun!!!!  The new comforts were the amazing range facilities at the Patriot Academy Campus.  The discomfort of the blowing wind was countered by the noticeable absences of blowing dirt or rocks because the Patriot Academy range surface is completely covered by either mulch or artificial grass.  This is certainly way too nice compared to our typical locales.  These simple words honestly cannot bring justice to how nice this range is!!!  It is truly a world class teaching facility for marksmanship!!!

    Once we settled into the new surroundings we began the day with our initial evaluation of uninstructed skill by addressing our "Hits Count Target".  We were fortunate to have a rather experienced group of shooters at this event, a fair number being return Appleseed attendees.  More than half of our students were able to prove themselves field effective at 100 yrds, and there were four students who fully cleaned the first "Hits Count Target" of the weekend!!!  Not a bad way to start the weekend for sure.

    We jumped right into our instruction portion of the weekend with AH1Tom teaching the finer points of shooting in the Prone position.  This was a great treat since Tom actually drove 16 hours, all the way from Alabama, just to come and help instruct at this event.  Tom had previously attended a number of Patriot Academy courses dealing with Constitutional understanding and he was so excited to see Appleseed partnering with them, he came all the way down just to make certain the event was a success.  Thank you greatly Tom for doing an excellent job of getting our students dialed in on their first cornerstone of rifle marksmanship!

    After a few more hours of instruction and shooting, our students were needing a bit of a break.  Luckily, it was close to lunchtime, so we all retired to the teaching studio in the Patriot Academy main facility.  This was another example of being spoiled by our gracious hosts.  The teaching studio is a conference hall perfectly setup for Peter (Malibu) to provide our students with a collegiate level discussion on the political outlook on the fateful morning of April 19th, 1775.  Peter clearly outlined why there were rising tensions between the Crown and the Colonists, ones which could not be easily reconciled.  The indoor venue for telling our history stories helped our students focus on the matter at hand instead of dealing with the 20 mph wind which continued to hammer us all day.

      Further taking advantage of our sheltered position, Tom was able to convey the concept of zeroing a rifle's sighting system through the process of "Inches – Minutes – Clicks".  Tom helped our students understand how to alter the point of impact to meet the intended point of aim.  Our students had since been able to increase their precision during the morning hours to the point where they now needed to increase their accuracy to later be as effective as possible on our diagnostic test, the Appleseed Qualifying Test (AQT) later in the day.

    We followed our instruction with teaching everyone's favorite position – Seated/Kneeling.  With a lot of persuasion, everyone forced their bodies into new and uncomfortable positions.  After a few practice sessions in this new shooting position everyone's confidence level increased slightly.  Without allowing everyone to get too at ease, we through an even more challenging shooting position at our patient students – Standing.  With the wind gusts not abating, the difficulty of this new shooting position was amplified, but our students did not waiver from the challenge.

    Before moving onto the final challenge, a shot at an actual AQT, we allowed our students a small break to contemplate the significance of this day.  Gisele helped drive the point home by offering a very detailed rendition of the "Second Strike of the Match".  She showed how the Colonist were no longer willing to take the abuse from a tyrannical governmental system, unwilling to listen to its citizens. 
Excellent job Gisele!!!  This was her first time telling a history story at an event!

    With all of the instruction now provided to our students, we were now in a position test everyone's newfound skill level by shooting a valid Appleseed Qualifying Test (AQT).  There were two students who had previously been to one of our events and made Rifleman with scores in the 220s.  I made sure to go over and challenge them both by saying "So now you guys should be shooting for scores in the 240s so you can become Distinguished Rifleman".  Well, little did I know, this is exactly what they were planning to do.  Both Randy and Kevin had purchased brand new 10/22 rifles from the Ruger Pro-Store and were not going to walk away from the event without a Distinguished Rocker patch!  It was a very welcomed surprise to see upon our first complete AQT of the weekend, Randy had already hit a home-run with an impressive score of 241!!!  This was an amazing accomplishment due to the never-ending environmental challenges which kept coming this day.  Another amazing surprise was to see Peter's wife, Sarah, knock out a Rifleman score of exactly 210!!!  She has attended multiple events over the years and continued to improve every time.  She was able to bring all of her skills to bare on our Saturday AQT and nailed it – Way to Go Sarah!!!!!

    The first day of our event ended with more than half of our students showing field effectiveness at 200 yrds now instead of 100 yrds at the beginning of the day.  As before, we had four students able to fully clear the "Hits Count Target".  We ended the day on a high note and looked forward to a second day of an amazing Appleseed event.

    Our second day started with a good old-fashioned Central Texas springtime thunderstorm.  Dark skies sent us rain and lightning with a rather ominous overtone to start the morning with.  Thanks to Patriot Academy, we had access to their amazing teaching facilities again and chose to sit out the rain for a bit while Tom provided us with an exciting finale to our history discussion by telling the "Third Strike of the Match".  Tom did an excellent job of putting the students in the mindset of the militia members and Colonists who decided to band together in driving the overbearing, unjust forces away from the newly formed spark of freedom!!!  Excellent job Tom!!!!  We continued our extended history discussion until it was safe to proceed with the event.  Once the skies cleared up we began by getting our shooters another chance to showcase their skills by addressing another "Hits Counts Target".  Understandably, our shooters needed to warm up a bit and settle in so the performance was not quite as good as the previous day's result, but this was about to change!

     After we shot the "Hits Counts Target" we moved into sighting in everyone's rifles quickly followed by a series of AQT attempts to help quantify everyone's individual sill level.  We completed two AQTs by the time everyone felt they needed a break for lunch.  During the lunch period we talked a long range marksmanship and Known Distance Appleseed events.  Interestingly enough, we also swung back to a history-based focus on April 19th, 1775 by hearing the story of Prudence Cummings Wright.  Tom did an excellent job of telling the story of this extraordinarily brave women.  She is certainly a name all Americans should know.  We hope Appleseed keeps her memory alive for ages!!!

    After the lunch period, Randy and Kevin were able to make it back out to the event.  They clearly had one goal for the day – crush high scores on the AQT.  We provided them another four AQT opportunities to do just that.  Guess what, Kevin nailed a personal best with a score of 246, earning him a Distinguished Rifleman rocker as well!!!  Randy and Kevin certainly can shoot!  I'm sure it also helps they were partnered up with our resident Marine, Rodger Glenn, offering up sound marksmanship advice.  Rodger consistently achieves a Designated Rifleman score on almost every AQT he puts up!!!  Way to go Randy, Keving and Rodger!!!!

     The final "Hits Counts Target" of the weekend showed how effective the Appleseed teaching methodology is.  Again, over half of our students were able to show field effectiveness at 200 yrds, and one-third effective at 300 yrds.  One quarter of our students were also able to completely clear the entire target!!!!  This was exciting to see for sure!!!!

    I hope all our students enjoyed the event as much as we enjoyed seeing everyone grow as marksmen.  We look forward to seeing everyone return for our additional events in 2024!

Chad Stovell – GenX Minuteman

[GenX Minuteman]

[AH1Tom]

It was a great weekend. Thank you for letting me be a part of it.