Kingsport, TN, AAR - July 25-26, 2026 Appleseed

[Tar Heel]

Every Appleseed event is unique. The students and instructors form a small community, and a narrative takes shape over the course of a few days. This weekend in Kingsport, TN, nine shooters and the crew of volunteers wrote a story of easy-going teachable attitudes, rapt engagement with American Revolutionary history, exceptional marksmanship development, and a lot of smiles and laughs!

Regarding that marksmanship: The first hits count targets of Saturday (the "before picture") gave us a lot of runway for improvement. However, the very first groups on targets from live fire after the morning of instruction were remarkably tight! They were so nice, in fact, that the instructors had trouble identifying many of the usual patterns that indicate technique errors. We were all rightfully impressed with the early accuracy!

Later in the day David, new to Project Appleseed, summed up our entire philosophy of marksmanship in one sentence. He declared, "That was my best group and took the least effort." That's about it...the rest is just details and practice to achieve that state!

The students were very engaged during the Known Distance presentation on Sunday. They were excited to get on their mats to hit targets at 100 yards. That gave them a taste of longer-distance shooting, and it reinforced the notion that the techniques they learned at 25 meters translate to accurate shooting further downrange.

I hope that we'll see all of these shooters back at another Project Appleseed event soon. I have a sneaking suspicion that we may see some of them coaching on the line as instructors some day! Huzzah to all the Patriots who helped make this a safe, successful, and very enjoyable weekend!

-Tar Heel

[JustKim]

Looks like a great event!

[Smallbore (Timothy_D)]

I haven't seen "freak show prone" in a while.
This is remarkably impressive, young lady!

I don't know that he's the only person in history who shot this way, but Pat McNamara, who coined the name, has done a video on its use.
For the few who have this kind of flexibility, it's incredibly stable, literally, "prone position" stable, but seated.
I would love to have this kind of flexibility, but alas, my 57 year old back just won't bend like that.

[Tar Heel]

I've always referred to it as "monkey pose," but I guess whatever gets the point across...

[UpACreek]

Freak show pose works as long as the shooters know it's said out of pure jealousy. 

This was a great shoot.  The new range is beautiful and quiet - no deer or turkeys meandering through.  The longer range we used on Sunday is more picturesque and only a turkey came to visit.  The shooters were great!  Tar Heel's not lying about how impressive those first squares were.  Especially our sole iron sight shooter, Leslie.  I think her first square shots were all in the black!  The rest of the groups were really good too and all showed progress throughout the weekend.  It was nice to see some familiar faces again and meet new ones.  Keep up the perfect practice and I hope to see you all again.


Rosie and Russ both cleared their Hits Count targets.  They have the benefit of a North Carolina visiting shoot boss - NC cleared target bling.  Congrats to both of you!


Sitting position  Don't let Nan's unorthodox position fool you - she consistently shot in the 4 and mostly 5 ring.  She's steady as a rock here and looks comfortable too.


More sitting positions.


Eileen shows us perfect practice here in prone.  Nice job.

Lots of Ball & Dummy pictures - my favorite exercise as a shooter and a volunteer.  This group in particular were great at coaching!