External AAR from a shooter - Kearneysville, WV - October 8-9, 2022

[ITB]

Just wanted to share this with the WV crew.  A post on AR15.com from an attendee - a father and his two young sons.  Nothing but positive feedback.  Great job, WV crew!

After Action Report
Project Appleseed 10/8-10/9/22
Leetown Izaak Walton League of America - Kearneysville, WV

This was my first full Appleseed and I brought my 8 and 7 year old boys with me. I had previously attended a half-day clinic a year ago at the same location with my 8 year old which was 7 at the time.  At the clinic we just focused on prone shooting and did not use the Appleseed Qualification Target (AQT).  We had a great time and were excited to attend the full, 2-day class.

Both kids are right handed but left eye dominant like their mother.  My research in the past led me to have them shoot rifles left handed.  The 8 year old has taken to that just fine and the 7 year old is still getting the hang of it, but by the end of the class was doing it just fine.

The class went great, I'm very happy with the instruction and location.  The 7 year old had a hard time the first day shooting with the iron sights.  He was using a S&W M&P15-22 with Magpul MBUS sights and had zero issues with it.  He's shot fine with irons before so I'm not sure what the issue was.  I put a red dot back on the rifle for the second day and he did a lot better with it.  Next time I might even add a magnifier for the red dot or have him use a scope.  One of the instructors worked with him one on one a lot and just did very well with him.  They had him prone the whole time with a bag which I thought was just fine.  I told the instructor my goals for him were to be safe, have a good time, learn to operate the rifle independently and hit some targets.  He was definitely on the young side for this class and ended up taking a few breaks from shooting which I thought was fine.  He told me he definitely wants to do it again so I think that's a win.

The 8 year old had a blast and loved every second of the class and is already asking me to do it again.  He was shooting a Ruger 10/22 with Tech-Sights and a VQ trigger pack.  He shot all positions and did great.  Only issues he had was that the action and maybe the chamber kept getting really gummed up causing some jams.  He did have a suppressor on for some of the time, we took it off and gave it a good cleaning and the issue came back after another ~100 rounds.  We were all shooting Norma Tac-22 Lead Round Nose ammo which is very similar to CCI Standard Velocity.  I think maybe the factory barrel didn't like the lead bullets, next time I would probably use some FMJs like CCI mini-mags in that rifle.  Also, it's a fairly new 10/22 and the paint inside the receiver was flaking off. I'll probably take a wire brush or something and get rid of all that paint just on the inside of the receiver.  Next time I'll probably have him use a scoped rifle, maybe a 4x, 2-7x or 3-9x.  I think he may have had a little bit of a hard time getting a good sight picture with the irons.  Besides shooting, he loved the stories, especially the one about Samuel Whittermore.

I personally had a great time, it was a great experience bringing two kids to the class.  It was also a bit stressful because I had to keep track of 3 sets of equipment and I ended up helping a lot with loading mags.  We'd all start loading but I'd finish first then help the kids, this made me feel rushed and stressed a bit to get ready on time and we were late a couple times but no big deal.  I used a home built AR with a CMMG bolt and Beyer barrel which functioned perfectly.  I did make Rifleman twice with a high-score of 229.  One point away from distinguished, but I'm very happy doing that at my first full Appleseed class with MBUS iron sights.  I'm not sure if next time I'll do iron sights again or use a scope, the irons are definitely challenging.

Notes for next time:
Finer front sight post on my rifle.  My Magpul MBUS front sight post is something like 7moa and felt super chunky when aiming at the smaller targets.  Will probably pick up the KNS front sight post assortment pack.
Size my sling ahead of time (now that I know what I'm doing) and mark my locations with a sharpie.  I liked the sling size a little different for prone, sitting and standing.
I totally forgot some cleaning supplies, I should have brought plenty of cleaning supplies with me.  The S&W M&P15-22 and my AR functioned perfectly but the 10/22 needed it.
I used a Midway shooting mat and the kids each used the official Appleseed mats.  I'm going to write our names with a big sharpie on the bottom of the mats.  We had stickers with our names but they kept coming off.
I meant to do this before but I thought it would be a good idea to make a laminated card for each rifle that lists the MOA adjustments for their specific sights and maybe some other useful info, kinda like a DOPE card.

Click here for the thread on Arfcom - post #32

[Cold Warrior]

ITB,
Thanks for posting. 
When we saw what the (Sold Out) line looked like, (4 kids) we discussed instructors sticking to them like glue until we had a solid handle on how they'd do. Turns out 3 of the 4 were great, no issues, and his 7 yr-old, Easton, we decided to keep prone on a bag, and one of our instructors (Double A-Ron) helped/monitored him and his brother all weekend.
The fellow that wrote that, Jeff, was such a nice guy, and he really did relax and enjoy the fact we had an instructor on his 7-yr old full-time.

So proud of our crew. 
We're building the WV Cadre back!
Huzzah!

CW Sends