Appleseed Event

A year or so ago I stumbled to an organization online that hosts an Appleseed event.  It is an organization geared on rifle marksmanship, teaching better shooting techniques, and a little bit of American history tied in with it.  I read several forums about people who attended country-wide.  The vast majority of the reviews concerning the Appleseed program all stemmed around people increasing their firearm proficiency and tightening their groupings.  Even people who didn’t enjoy the event for various reasons, ended up walking away learning something about their firearm.

Having a background in recreational marksmanship, I was intrigued.  It has been many years since I was on the University of Utah pistol team, and haven’t had a sense of real competition or instruction since.  I feel rather proficient in being able to coach myself with my pistol, and typical bench-rest rifle shooting.  However, I had zero experience with coaching a magazine fed semi-auto rifle.  I’ve taken my AR out to a few ranges, and have been somewhat satisfied with my groupings at 100 yards or so.  The amount of consistency was not there though, and I seemed to be only able to manage decent groupings if I were comfortably in a supported prone position.  Standing, sitting, etc. I was all over the place.  Many people attend an Appleseed with a 10/22, simply because you can learn and practice marksmanship skills the same way as any other rifle, and ammo is cheap.  I don’t own a 10/22, and I felt a desire to become very familiar with my AR and what it is capable of.  

I attempted to get some friends and family interested in going, but was unsuccessful.  I decided there was an event in the early winter where it would be easier to break away from other fair-weather activities.  I arrived early in the morning with a massive box of ammo, and was pretty excited to get some instruction on different methods of firing a rifle with a focus on marksmanship.  Even though I felt confident in the basics of marksmanship, I kept mostly quiet and simply wanted to be taught their methods with an open mind.  My gun was sighted in at 100m, so my bullets were hitting the 25m targets very low, as they were still going up in their trajectory.  It took a little while to get my scope adjusted, especially after some unit conversion confusion between MOA and Milrads.  Soon, I was happy with being sighted in just as we started going over the good stuff.

All in all, the instruction was highly informative and lots of my sight alignment, trigger control, and breathing translated over nearly effortlessly from pistol to rifle.  My one minor bit of criticism was that I had never used a rifle sling before in the manner taught.  It took some modifications to my sling and rifle mounting points to get it to “work” the way the instructors had demonstrated.  However, I was only allowed to approach the firing line and touch my firearm during “prep-time” just before a shoot.  This seemed like a little less than a minute before one had to then focus upon the shooting task.  I made hasty adjustments and had a bit of frustration with my sling malfunctions during that time.  I really wish they could have designated some time where we could try out these new positions and methods in a dry-fire task where we could make modifications, adjustments, and get some 1 on 1 assistance to make sure one is ready for each new method of shooting.

After the first day of the course, I was soaked with mud and rain.  I checked into my hotel, warmed up while cleaning my rifle.  I was then able to make some modifications to the sling mounts, and even luckily had a sewing needle in my supplies.  Thus I was able to un-thread a scrap nylon rope, use several thin strands to thread through the needle and sew parts of my sling that were slipping out and causing frustrations.  I was then able to try my best imitation of various sling shooting positions on my hotel bed and dry-fire for a few minutes until I felt confident I could perform fluidly on the firing line. 

Drying out my pants next to the heater

There was a lot of shooting, and I admittedly went through far more ammo than I had intended to.  I probably should have sat more rounds out, but I was determined to improve at each task ahead of me.  It was a lot of fun for sure.  Since there was so much shooting crammed into those two days, there was very little time in between to take notes, load magazines, and nearly zero time to make any sorts of adjustments to a rifle.  If I go again, preferably with others, I’ll have to instruct them beforehand on how to set their rifle up and have everything “ready-to-go” and be familiar with how their sling functions/feels/mounts before they arrive at the range.  I have a feeling that some of my friends/family who might not be as well versed in the configuration/mechanics with a rifle might feel a bit rushed and frustrated at the pace in which the course advanced, unless they spent a good day or two at the range beforehand trying these methods out first at their own pace.  Or maybe even at home dry-firing. 

I was very impressed with my groupings and satisfied overall at my experience at the Appleseed course.  I really would have liked even a single round at a longer range of like 300m to see the groupings at 25m vs 300m.  I think that would really cement a lot of the methods worked on if attendees could see how their skills directly translated over to longer ranges.  At the end of the first day, I had a feeling that the next day I could make a “Rifleman” (A score of 210 or more) which I did on two of my targets.  I almost did it a third time, but I had a mishap with my sling coming un-done before we started a timed round.

Yay! Got my patch

My highest score

Random tidbit:

Before the Appleseed event I was able to snag a few discounted 20rd Pmags in a light desert color. (free shipping!)  I decided to dye them red before the event to make sure they would be easily distinguished as MINE.  I’ve gone shooting in the past where I started off with 4+ 30rd AK magazines, and returned with only 1.  They all look the same, and people snag them thinking they’re theirs lying around.  Anyways, I got some Rit dye and had some fun customizing the mags.  They are very red, even though the camera made them look a little off.  I tried to find the Red Delicious apple stickers at the supermarket, but they all appeared to have changed over to a less than flattering barcode sticker instead.  Oh well.  I still like the red mags. 

Heating the dye

Freshly dyed Pmags

Ready for Appleseed!