Athol, MA - Feb 7 & 8, 2009

[dwarven1]

Athol, MA - February 7th & 8th, 2009 is a weekend that will go down in the Appleseed record books.

The shooters braved temperatures down to NINE DEGREES (I have a picture of the outdoor thermometer!) and a snow-covered range (we're talking over a foot of snow, with a 2 inch thick crust of ice on top of it) to get off that couch, come out and start learning how to bail out the sinking ship that is our country.

18 shooters came out on Saturday, and 13 on Sunday. This is in oh-so-liberal Massachusetts, the commonwealth that the rest of the country jokes about. Not any more. This weekend, we produced FOUR new Riflemen... one of them FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. He drove up with his father from Putnam County, NY - about a THREE HOUR DRIVE. His brother and sister were signed up, too... and bailed. Bet little brother and little sister are, right about now, hearing young Jonathan talk about his weekend, and seeing his new Rifleman patch.

Saturday started off slow - we had to stomp down the snow at the firing positions, we had difficulty just moving through the snow to change targets and for the LSOs to clear the line, and we had a pretty new crew of instructors who knew the words but weren't too sure on the music. About 220 rounds were shot on Saturday, and all three strikes of the match were covered, along with Dangerous Old Men. (Remember, this is New England, where we typically put 800+ rounds down range in a weekend!)

Sunday, we hit our stride - 471 shots and at least 8 AQTs - so the total for the weekend was nearly SEVEN HUNDRED rounds put off and around a dozen AQTs. We used the Classification AQT's to do a lot of drilling - positions mostly, but basically we had all the instructors walk the line and get very aggressive looking for errors. A lot of right feet got kicked into position...

At one point on Sunday, we got the shooters together and used one shooter with an empty rifle stock as a demonstrator. Most of the shooters were using 10/22s, which, of course, have about zero recoil. We put our demo shooter into the seated position and proceeded to demonstrate what happens with REAL recoil, with an instructor pushing on the front of the stock to simulate the recoil. We watched his arms stay right in place, and his whole body rock a bit with the "recoil"... and fall right back into NPOA afterwards. Same thing for the prone position. You could see the clicking going on behinds the shooters' eyes as they watched his right leg absorb all the "recoil" when his leg was parallel to the rifle stock... and even more so when he got shoved right OUT of position if his leg WASN'T kicked out correctly.

These shooters are as fine a crew of Americans as you could hope to find, and it was my privilege, along with Firewall99, Twiggman and Crak, to be their instructors. Far as I'm concerned, these 18 Americans have some serious bragging rights.

I'd like to say that I think ALL of the shooters did a fantastic job - EVERY ONE OF THEM improved over the course of two days - some by an incredible margin. One shooter had a high score on Saturday of 125 on his AQT. On Sunday, he shot a 228, and if that weren't enough, he CLEANED the Redcoat target - he hit all 5 targets - THE ONLY ONE TO DO SO ALL WEEKEND. And he tells me that when he came to Athol on Saturday morning, he didn't even know how to zero a rifle - he'd put his Tech-sights on but was worried because they weren't zeroed. He knows now, along with 17 other shooters, how to zero the rifle, the six steps to firing a shot, how to shoot standing, sitting or prone, the steady hold factors... and they all know the story of how our Revolution got kicked off.

Final numbers:
Sat - 18 shooters, 220 shots, 1 Rifleman
Sun - 13 returning shooters, 471 shots, 3 more Riflemen

Pictures from Saturday:

NINE degrees when we arrived. BRRR!!!


Twiggman set up the line by himself on Friday, in bone-chilling cold. Great job, Dennis!


He brought wood and a burn barrel for us to warm ourselves by, and Crak brought the instructors Cossack hats, in the proper colors, too - red for instructors and green for the Shoot Boss.


I've seen warmer-looking lines... and that did NOT deter our shooters!


Getting off his feet and getting warm for a few minutes.


No, those aren't shooting jackets... but our shooters, in the spirit of the American Rifleman, persevered against the weather. Hey, George Washington's boys would have given a LOT to have the kind of cold weather gear we have.








Boy, that Liberty Training Rifle looks lonely without a shooter! But you'll notice it's the nasty weather version!








Shooter Jay, at age 65, wasn't quite limber enough to sit cross-legged... but he persevered, and found a seated position that worked for him. This man had a lot of guts - most 65 year olds would think that they'd earned the right to sit on the couch by the fire. Not Jay - he was here with his son, and BOTH of them shot. They even came back for a second day, even they'd only signed up for one.



Our first Rifleman getting his Rifleman badge from a very bedraggled looking Dwarven1. He missed getting a dunking by ONE point, shooting Rifleman with a 211! (Those Cossack hats that Crak brought are WARM... and I was sweating a lot. Not good in freezing temps.)
[photo redacted by request]

Those guys are lying on mats that are on 6-8 inches of packed, powdery, SLIPPERY, snow.


Crowded line makes for cramped shooting conditions. Those are two of our new Riflemen. The targets do not lie...


Getting ready to start a new AQT.


Amazing what you can do with a tripod... or an outstretched arm.


Sitting in the snow. It's amazing how many shooters were in soaked pants by the end of the day... and not ONE complaint was heard.


Rifleman Jonathan.


Rifleman Bob.


Rifleman Chris - who didn't know how to zero his rifle the morning before this. That grin tells it all...

[SavageShootr]

Nice job all of you out there in the snow. I gotta say that those are really impressive pictures.

Welcome aboard to all of the new Riflemen from the weekend. Way to go.

Thanks for the report and the pics. I'd say I felt like I was there but, I was warm most of the weekend. 

~SS

[BoldFenianMan]

Well this was my first Appleseed and I did not shoot for Rifleman, but I did learn quite a bit.
I'll definetley be looking to plan to get to another one as soon as I can fit it into the schedule and hope to bring my son with me.

Oh by the way, to the folks who were there, here's a link to that Letter to Uncle Teddy I wrote about the time that I abandoned the Democratic Party for Ron Paul.  (Caution-I've been called a Tin-Foil Hatter!)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/infowarsnews/message/257

[dwarven1]

BoldFenianMan,

In addition to the shoot in Harvard on Patriot's Day Weekend, we're trying to set up shoots in June, August, October and December. Stay tuned...

[dwarven1]

Almost forgot...

Redcoat target results:


18 shooters        100 yard   200 yard    300 yard    400 yard   Headshot   Cleaned
Saturday AM           8             5              3               0             2            0
Saturday PM           12            9              4               1             4            0

13 shooters
Sunday AM              10           5              2               0              1           0
Sunday PM               6            7              3               1              1           1