I'm An Appleseeder

I was going to go into the whole Appleseed philosophy, but I'm going to just provide this and let them speak for themselves -

In a time when many people think this country is heading down the wrong road, the volunteers of the Revolutionary War Veterans Association are working to turn things around by educating Americans in the things they need to know to understand how this country got its start.


We're betting, once you know it, once you hear the Story of April 19th, 1775, the 'story you never heard in school', once you understand the sacrifices made that day by people much like us, you will not want to see those efforts go to naught.


It's the history of men and women who cared about their liberty - and cared about ours. Cared to the extent they were willing to face death, injury, impoverishment. Cared enough, many of them, to set ordinary concerns in their life aside for the eight long bloody years it took to convince the British we were serious about winning our freedom.

As they noted, the purpose is to teach Americans about our Revolutionary War history.  About our American Heritage.  They use the rifleman skills as a "hook" to get people to attend!

We did the whole two-day course (you can do the one-day if you wish, but you'd lose out on so much instruction and history, it would ALMOST be a waste of a weekend).

Day one:  Safety orientation, Revolutionary war history, rifle skills, Red Coat Target Practice, practice the Quick-and-Dirty Army Qualification Test (AQT)
Day two:  Review of safety, quick review of techniques, Red Coat drills, more history, AQT until you drop!

A quick note for the uninitiated regarding the AQT.  There are 4 stages, each of which require 10 shots.  In the first 3 stages, the maximum score is 50.  In the final stage, the scores are doubled, making that stage worth 100 points.  Thus the maximum score is 250.

To get a Rifleman rating, you need a score of at least 210.  Sharpshooter was a score of 170 to 209, Marksman was a score between 125 to 169, and unqualified was below 125.

Stages 2 and 3 are both fairly rapid fire drills and they both require magazine changes.


So, on to some specifics -

The Double 10/22 magazines I talked about ("Ready For Appleseed") worked great.  I only had two failures to fire during the entire 450 or so rounds we shot.  One appeared to be a bad round, and one appeared to be some sort of misfeed.  You MUST super glue them together.

My best score was a 187 - so I'm a "Sharpshooter".   Sux.

Use a scope.  I was one of the few shooters using peep sights, and every one of the folks that achieved Riflemen used scopes.

Don't take that as making excuses, though.  It IS absolutely possible to make rifleman with iron sights.  If I took my best scores from each of the individual 4 stages, I would have made Rifleman.  That tells me that if I had proper concentration on all of the stages at once, I could have met my goal.  Still, at my next Appleseed, I'll be bringing a scoped rifle!

Our group was about 25-30 people.  I believe we were about half newbees and half returning Appleseeders.  We ranged in age from 12 to (I'm guessing) 65+.  Seven made Rifleman, including one guy at his first 'Seed.  A 12 y/o boy, 13 y/o girl and 15 y/o girl all got Rifleman. 

Check out this picture.  It is of the 13 y/o girl.  She shot Rifleman 5 of the 6 times we took the AQT with a bolt action .22 rifle!   Her low score was 217 and her high was 230.  She was incredible!

It was her second Appleseed.  She took what she learned at her first and (obviously) practiced.

Her pink hat said, "Shoot Like A Girl..... If you can!"   I like that attitude, young lady!

This guy shot Rifleman 3 of his 6 tries.  What was cool was his father was also at the 'Seed, and also got Rifleman.

Bring cleaning kit, tools and loctite.  My rear site, in particular, kept coming loose.  The loctite didn't hold.  This made for a frustrating early second day trying to figure out why my accuracy was suddenly so far off.  Thankfully, it was identified and fixed before I did any of the AQTs

I really need to work on my Stage 2 skills - shooting from a seated or kneeling position.  My best score on that stage was a 35 out of 50.

Natural Point of Aim (NPOA) is an amazing thing!  Reading about it was not enough (at least for me).  I had to see it in practice.  The shifting of the hips to get your new NPOA when moving to another target was an invaluable tip.

What was very cool was, as the course progress, I found myself almost falling into my NPOA immediately - my adjustments were much less drastic as my brain started automatically "doing the math" for where I needed to drop or align my body at the start of a stage.

Bring lots of fluids.  I went through 1 gallon of liquids each day.

Wear a long-sleeved shirt and something to protect your neck.  This keeps the sun and hot brass off of you.  I still ended up with two pretty decent burns on my left wrist from the hot brass from the shooter to my left.

There are 3 levels of instructors - Orange hats (Instructor In Training -IIT), Red Hats (Instructors) and one Green hat (Shoot Boss).  Two of our Orange Hats progressed to Red Hats.  There are different traditions what to do with your old orange hat.  Some pass them along to new IIT's.  Some keep them as trophies on the shelf.

These ladies had a different perspective.  That had us blow the hell out of them!

The hats were placed on the berm and we all emptied one magazine into them.

Fellow Californians, pay attention:  Based on how quickly this training has grown, they are expecting to have taught 1 million people in our state alone by 2015.  Get on it and get counted!

Accept The Challenge

Seriously.  You need to do this.  It is so much more than learning how to shoot.  It is much more about why our founders had to revolt.  It is about why we don't need to do the same - we have the ballot box to preserve what they fought and died for.

We have the greatest country and political system ever to visit the face of the earth, but it's being destroyed.  THAT is our responsibility - to get back what has slowly been taken from us.

I saw this at the shoot.  I don't know if it's official Appleseed or not, but I liked it -

13 Colonies
One Nation
One People
One Day


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