Shelby, Indiana April 19 2025 AAR

[Captain America]

We had an amazing event and Shelby on the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation.

It was only a one day event As neither us nor the range wanted to roll a day into Easter Sunday. We encouraged previous Appleseed attendees to come back and sharpen their skills, and come back they did! It was a sellout with 20 students pre-registered. It had been a cold and rainy night through the 18th and into the early morning of the 19th, so everything was wet and it was still a little bit drizzly when we were doing our instructor meeting. But the rain cleared out before we did the first string of fire!

For all intents and purposes, much of the day went sort of like the second day of a two day event except that we learned about the three strikes. The exception was, it was our nation's birthday! We all made some meaningful reflections on that throughout the day, thinking about the sacrifices that have been made for us. Our students came prepared and excited for the challenges of the day. I don't believe I've ever had a group that was so excited and ready to take on the day.

After a quick review of marksmanship and some history, we got right into the first hits count target. Almost half of the class hit the shingle!  We then spent a little time with the squares, making sure everything was dialed in. After lunch and some more history, we ran through a practice AQT which proved to me that they were ready to take on the real thing!

Once we started with the AQTs, it very quickly dawned on me that nearly our entire group knew very well what they were about. I suspect that they were strongly motivated by history, heritage, shiny new patches, and generous proportions of bacon. Either way, those patches spent the afternoon flying out of my shoot box. I've never seen anything like it to that extent.

Two of our students (Ethan and KT) got exactly 210, but for some reason they both declined my generous offer to get baptized with actual water that I had collected from under the North Bridge 18 months ago and had carefully stored in a bottle growing bacteria since then. Who needs medical school, anyway, KT?

Congratulations to Kyle (Strider, now sporting a lovely new orange hat) who made rifleman with plenty to spare every time he shot an AQT I believe.  Echocharlie also made the score and joined the ranks of instructors. Cesar came, honoring the traditions of our forefathers and taught that AQT and the one after that a thing or two!  We had two Ryan's on the line, and both of them proved two things – they also know their way around a rifle, and they both need forum names!
I dragged my neighbor Josh from across the street to the event, and he brought his entire family! Josh went home with a patch.  We also had two Nicks on the line, both of which made the score! In fact, both were running iron sights, and Nick R also got the distinguished patch! My friend Brandon came back again, and he scored rifleman four times. Remind me not to go up against him.  Hunter got a patch also. This was absolutely an impressive group.

But amongst all that, it was also a very meaningful day. We took the time to give some thought to the sacrifices that were made 250 years earlier that allowed us to be there that day. We did the Parker's revenge Fun shoot at the exact same time that the original Parker's Revenge took place. And an hour later, we had a solemn moment at 3 PM with our memorial volley.
We finished out with some time to reflect on everything that had happened on both April 19, 1775 as well as April 19, 2025. And we gave pause to our liberty going forward.

[EubeenHadd]

I want to take a moment to thank you Cap. It's evident that you run a tight ship and put on an excellent event, and the whole team did an excellent job combining two days of work into one.

[Dagny]

Eubeenhadd is correct.  Wonderful recap of our day!

Thanks to all the shooters and volunteers that came to celebrate the anniversaries and made this day an enjoyable success.