Monmouth Maine AAR, December8-9, 2012

[TOMINCT]

 Wet, fog and freezing rain on Saturday did little to dampen the spirits of the attendees at the Monmouth F&G Appleseed this past weekend. An enthusiastic group showed for 2 days worth of rifle shooting instruction and our American heritage.

Saturday started on time with initial instruction starting in the clubhouse and moving to the range after the safety briefing ended. The morning redcoat started with three 100 yard and two 200 yard shooters. The fundamentals of hitting your target commenced, with the somewhat usual equipment maladies and new folks getting used to their equipment. After the lunch break and 1st strike by The Old Guide instruction resumed. NPOA shifts, cadence, sitting and standing position were well covered.

The only thing that stifled the day was the onset of darkness, which appears rather quickly on the lead edge of the time zone. Between the overcast sky and the covered firing line shooting ended at 3:45pm. BUT, not with out some very good results on the pm redcoat, such as seven 100 yd, two 200yd, two 300 and one 400 yard trying hard rifleman. HUZZAH!   

Sunday began cool but clear and after the am redcoat and a tune up on the fundamentals we settled down to the intro to the AQT. Sunday am redcoat started with 5 100, 4 200, and 2 300 yard shooters. Some folks needed a little more personal instruction but it all came to ether during the afternoon.

After lunch the AQT grind resumed and the day finished with another great pm redcoat count of 9 100, 4 200, 2 300 and 2 400 yard shooters.

Two rifleman, Aaron with a 211 and Kurt with a 213. Nice! Other notables were Sherri, a new shooter, pushing it hard with a 203, Dave with a 199 and Raime with a 168.

The Monmouth F&G club has worked hard to make the event successful, in particular Uncle Jaque. Things would not have gone quite as well without his perseverance and efforts. A big thanks goes out to all members that helped in making it happen. We look forward to Appleseed returning in 2013.

The shooters also deserve a special thanks as it's easy to stay on the couch at 7 am, watching the fog, sleet and rain fall. All of the preregistered shooters made it. HUZZAH! 

The Old Guide and North Country Lady made everything flow well and have been consistently attending all AS shoots in Maine this past year. A special thanks goes out to them.

There should be some pics soon. Regards, Tominct.

[Uncle Jaque]

Suffering from a hernia, which makes life a little uncomfortable, I abstained from the firing line again this time (it was a blown blood vessel in my left foot back in June) but managed to hang in back at the galley in order to help our Chef Glenn Miller and fellow KP volunteers keep the coffee pots hot and the hot dogs and burgers sizzling as well as keep our wood furnace fired up to keep a nice warm club house for the damp and chilly shooters and Instructors to resort to in between courses of fire.

On occasion, I wandered down to the line to see how things were going and snap a few pictures. 
Apparently I can only post one at a time here so I'll Att one here and then try something else (photobucket HTML linkage).

At our monthly meeting Tuesday evening Members seemed open to hosting another Appleseed here at MF&GA.  I'm encouraged by the turn out in spite of the weather, economy, and time of year.  Hopefully we can make this a regular event here.

[Uncle Jaque]

Let's try this:

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...That covered line sure came in handy - especially Saturday Morning!

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   Thanks to one of our Members who works at a local textile mill, we had a roll of rejected material that was cut into suitable lengths and pressed into service as improvised shooting mats - and they worked pretty well, too!

  Aspiring Rifleman Checks Target:
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  Instructor Tom demonstrates prone position with a "Quaker (inert) rifle" while fellow Instructor "Old Guide" Roger Ek explains the particulars of the technique.

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[Uncle Jaque]

Of course we have to check our targets and see if we hit anything!

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   We had a Mother - and - Son team shooting with us; seen on the extreme right under the close supervision of ye "Old Guide".

[Uncle Jaque]

To see a "Scrapbook" of both the June and December Monmouth AS, see:

http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/UncleJaque/story/4767#

I THINK you can load your pictures on to that site even if you don't have a Photobucket account. Check it out; it's a new feature.

I've been using Photobucket to illustrate my gun forum postings (such as http://forums.gunboards.com/forumdisplay.php?66-Workbench-Forum ) for years.

[Boreas]

Wish I could have made it! Looks downright civilized with the covered line! Good job guys (and Pat)!