Davilla, TX Feb 09 AAR

[alonso1]

On Saturday we started AS with a quick meet and greet.  We had 16 shooters, 3 advised they heard about AS on the radio and the rest had heard from a friend.  No one mentioned the Shotgun News.  That's strange, SGN is required reading in my house.

Because we had just completed a boot camp and with the arrival of several more instructors, all shooters received one on one instruction.

The wind condition on Saturday was awful.  I would guess we had sustained winds of 10 mph and some (frequent) gust around 25 mph.

During the boot camp and the AS Scout had to water down the range in an effort to reduce the dust and he even brought an air compressor to clean out the rifle actions.

Despite the wind we had a great shoot due to the positive attitudes displayed by the shooters and enthusiastic orange hats willing to help.

Sunday morning we started with 14 shooters, 2 from Saturday had to leave but they did say they would attend another AS and before we made it to the line, a new shooter arrived which put us at 15 shooters for the day.

Before the lunch break, Will was the first Riflemen of the day.  Good job Will!

Sometime in the afternoon, Scout brought out a bottle of North Bridge water and poured a little on everyone's shooting finger. 

That was a morale booster,  because shortly after Ben, Nathan and John aka Jethro all shot Riflemen.

By the end of the day everyone's shooting had improved. One of our female shooters cleaned the 100, 200, 300 and 400 yard silhouettes on the "Hit's Count" target. Outstanding!

I almost forgot.  The 3 strikes were all given on Saturday.  TXPirate gave the 1st strike, Voortrekker did the 2nd and SNAITF closed with the 3rd.  Well done guys.

So this wraps it up. 4 new Riflemen, great improvement in marksmanship and a heaping dose of American history.

                                                          I'll see you on the trail
                                                                     Mark

[Flyboy]

Who cleaned the redcoat?  Alison or Tanya?

[oldgrunt]

I stayed with alli and she did it .......I pounded her the rest of the day once you left ....Her boy friend made it to the riflemen score that day too.....I'm still working the pictures still have alot of great shots..we need to trade them around our group of guys ....I heard someone got me asleep with my teddy bear at lunch I want to see them lol dont mess with teddy guys....

  seeya all real soon look for the pictures soon

  oldgrunt ..out

UDATE AS OF 2130 I WILL POST MINE ON FLICKR ....PHOTO BUCKETS JUST TOO MUCH FOR ME TO KEEP TRACK OF.....

[voortrekker]

Hey OG!


photobucket.com works well for posting pics on forums.  Take a look.

Looking forward to the pics you took.


Brett out.

[POP]

two oh nine was one for the books.
i am naturally partial to eleven oh eight, however.

thanks to OG we all were up and on the line.  and, yes, OG, I'll post my pics of you sleeping during the noon lecture with your teddy bear.

the most meaningful rifleman story, as i told on AS radio this evening, was that of Jethro.  he worked all week, never quit, got extremely frustrated but, never let it show; used a number of different types of ammo.  finally over the weekend i had the privilege of scoring his first rifleman AQT.  then i gave it to Doug for confirmation.  then i walked it over to brother jed who held it for the rest of sunday afternoon without telling jethro.  jethro scored rifleman one more time. 

after presentations were over and all were packing up headed for home i had a conversation with jethro.  he told me he had shot all different kinds of ammo over the week, had equipment problems, and was really frustrated.  but, sunday afternoon he started using some old ammo that belonged to his dad who passed away i think in about 1990.  after the ammo change he started shooting rifleman scores.  as jethro held back a tear he commented that 'dad' was still looking out for him. 

i know the elderly Mr. Clampit (now deceased) is quite pleased with both of his sons.  and, my life is enriched just by having a small part in their success. 

hope to get some PICs posted soon.  the clampit hotel is particularly interesting. 

POP

[BDG]

well, I haven't posted yet in the activism thread to inform FF of my video footage, but I basically shredded through an entire hard drive full of video this past weekend. I hope I shielded the majority of the wind out though, as we had constant 20mph winds all day Saturday with gusts up to about 27-28mph. It was almost as heavy as the wind at the November RBC but lasted only the one day. Sunday was a pleasant 6mph constant wind. For those interested, you can get the wind charts in advance for Davilla at http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=davilla,%20tx&wuSelect=WEATHER to see how the weather conditions will be in hourly format. It's good to know that the temp will be 31 at 6am or whatever. 

So, this AS was an interesting one for me, because it felt like it had been two months since the last one and kinda outta rhythm. I smacked my forehead when I got home and realized that the next AS in Davilla is only 14 days later!! Ay Caramba!

I did my usual routine driving up. I wanted to leave around 9am friday morning, and didn't leave till about noon. I convoyed with a friend who was going to Austin for the Liberty convention as a delegate. I split off from him in Austin and kept going to Davilla. I stopped at Nagel's gun shop in San Antonio with him just to check out prices. They were consistently $200 higher on everything. Only Bushies and Colts in ARs. Cheapest was $1400. I arrived at Davilla sometime around 9pm. I pulled in next to POP and set up camp. Not much got done though, as it looked like the RBCers were ready for bed shortly thereafter. hehe.

Woke up about 5am having slept little and got ready to film all day. Good storytelling from our historians. I look forward to compiling the video into some DVDs that will be useful for Orange Hats. There were only a couple of centerfires on the line Saturday. Everything else was rimfire. No surprise there. Sunday followed with 3 centerfires, one of them a bolt gun. It was interesting to see it in action.

I scored many many AQTs and saw the improvement in several shooters. I was particularly looking forward to seeing Scuzzy score his patch after I scored him at a 200 on one AQT. Alas, malfunctions prevented him from scoring Rifleman this weekend. Others were successful in their endeavors though! I remember Will from last month and his experience with a rifle before his 1st AS to his earning his Rifleman patch on his 2nd proved the program works. Congrats to him. Ron scored Rifleman with his AR at least 3 times that I saw. He had already been one from prior AS's and has enthusiastically endorsed the program to all the new attendees after his prior 4 or 5 shoots. He also followed the Seventh step by bringing 2 newbies to the program with him. I'm still looking forward to seeing Scuzzy hold up that patch next time though! It's not something given away freely, and has to be earned, making it all that much more desirable. I'm sure he will have it soon.

Sunday followed up just like the charts had listed. I ran the line for a short time for the last AQT and got to step up to the platform for a bit. We had so darn many Orange Hats, most everybody got a go at SB for an AQT. I was quite surprised by the ratio actually. All you  new RBC grads better be ready to step up and work other Appleseeds! We'll be looking for a crew to get Corpus off the ground and running. With Navasota nearly ready and a couple others, Texas is shaping up to be exactly what it SHOULD be, the leader in the Appleseed program.

After the shoot was over, we had an Instructor pow-wow and covered the usual. I handed out the DVDs I had from January of metalbot as SB. I figured I would give it a go at driving straight home as there was still a bit of daylight at 5pm. I got all packed up and left at 6:09pm. I arrived home at about 1AM. I detoured through Lockhart and Bastrop country as I was told that a diesel tanker spilled on 35 in the New Braunfels area and had traffick backed up for 3 hours. The detour added about 15 minutes to the total trip for me. The last hour of my trip was abominable. I was too tired to be driving. It was really irresponsible to be driving as exhausted as I was into the wee hours of the night. I think I will go back to sleeping in Davilla and driving home the following morning. Or maybe go with POP into Austin or Corpus. We'll see.

Pics to follow. I'm tired after having done firearms related materials for the past 4 days.

[scuzzy]

What to say other than it was one hell of a week. The instruction, the instructors, the people, everything, just beyond compare.

Yup, it was a tad windy but I don't think that kept anybody from doing what needed to be done, although having my tent blown down twice was a pain in the butt. Wish I had taken pictures of all the blown down tents, that was funny as all get out.

Two women shooters showed up on Saturday after the boot camp. OG had em covered:

I stayed with alli and she did it .......I pounded her the rest of the day once you left

I'm not gonna touch that quote with a ten foot pole, heh.

Tanya told me she had never even shot a rifle before. She did pretty dang good. That's one gal you wouldn't wanna mess with. The other, Alli, as has been mentioned cleaned up the redcoats on Sunday afternoon, good shootin' there man.

I pulled in next to POP and set up camp. Not much got done though, as it looked like the RBCers were ready for bed shortly thereafter. hehe.

Yup, we were some tired puppies at that point. By the time I got home Sunday night after the boot camp/shoot I was a bit worn out. These old bones get tired more easily than in my younger days.

A redhat from Amarillo was there for the boot camp named Paul. He is a walking, talking firearms encyclopedia. He gave me some good tips on my standing position and positioning of my sling for a better platform. Paul also loaned me a Marlin Model 795 rimfire to shoot for the AQTs. While I know many really like the Ruger 10/22, I think the 795 is worth a look. It was extremely reliable and the trigger feels more like a battle rifle than the Ruger. It also has a longer butt stock, which is good for people with long arms. I think he said they are only about $150 or so, which is good for people like me who are still waiting for their bail out check. The Rugers I borrowed from several had more misfires, etc, in the sandy conditions than the Marlin, although at one point the sling mount fell off the Marlin in the middle of an AQT.

Many thanks to all the instructors and people that attended the boot camp. It was one of the best times I've had in ages and, especially, gave me hope for this country. Knowing that there are people like you guys out there renewed my faith in the good ol' USA. I remember riding to a restaurant and oldgrunt showing me the pic he posted above of the flag with what looks to me to be a cross. It's a sign man. Ealier that same day during lunch and the three strikes was being told, one of the guys mentioned that it was divine providence that helped create this country. That's what I though when OG showed me that pic.

Here's a link to my pictures on my website: http://techxian.110mb.com/appleseed-200902/images.html

Many thanks to all, and have a good un'