Maryland Project Appleseed 2019

KYFHO said:

Either one would work - the rings would be better if you plan on moving the scope to multiple rifles with standard rails.

As for a recommended riser, I have had good luck with the EGW 1-piece 10/22 rail with 20MOA of elevation on two different rifles. It is $35-40 on various websites. I also like that it offers extended eye relief over a short, receiver-length mount for prone and seated shooting with a sling.

There other other 10-20 MOA rails as well (Leupold, Tactical Solutions, Nightforce, Warne, Talley, etc.). But the EGW is the lowest cost I have found and is good quality.

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KYFHO said:

Plus you can make a sweet D.O.P.E. card for your rifle that will make you look bad ass at the range.

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• 22LR reduces the price of entry of both rifles and ammunition to where anyone can afford to attend - especially since we offer loaner rifles and rimfire ammunition is plentiful at reasonable prices right now. We shoot between 250 and 500 rounds in a weekend – that is a lot of money for a beginner using a centerfire rifle while trying to find their zero and understand the concepts we teach through teaching evolutions and AQTs.
• 25 yards makes Appleseed clinics available to a much wider audience than requiring a minimum 400-yard centerfire range. Maryland and Virginia, for example, would be reduced to maybe one or two events a year, if any, at private or military ranges. Other states would have no events. The costs would be MUCH higher to lock down these ranges for 1 to 2 days.

• Standing at 100 yards in 2 minutes
• Standing transition to seated or kneeling at 200 yards in 55 seconds
• Standing transition to prone at 300 yards in 65 seconds
• Slow-fire prone at 400 yards in 5 minutes

• Stage 1: Standing @ 100: 9
• Stage 2: Seated Transition @ 200: 9 (one miss from the target swinging)
• Stage 3: Prone Transition @ 300: 10
• Stage 4: Slow Fire Prone @ 400: 9

• 100 yards: Hold lower 1/3 on target
• 200 yards: Center hold (far zero of the 50-yard near zero)
• 300 yards: Hold neck area of target (upper 1/3)
• 400 yards: 4 MOA up on scope, center hold
• 500 yards: 5 MOA up on scope from 400, center hold

• One instructor was running a 16-inch AR with a micro red-dot and 77gr IMI Razor Core ammo. Once he figured out his holdovers, he was hitting targets from 100-500 yards without magnification – center hold 100-300, head hold for 400, top of head hold for 500. But when the light changed on the range throughout the day, he could lose visibility on the targets completely – you can only hit what you can see. Plus, it required perfect holds.
• Another was running an AR with iron sights. Like the instructor with the red dot, there were times the targets would just disappear due to lighting. He ended up mounting a scope on the second day and ran it for the remainder of the class.
• One instructor had run an EOTech and magnifier at a prior event and struggled with picking up the targets. This time he brought a 24-inch barreled precision upper and 6-24X Vortex PST scope mounted on the lower he used before. Seeing and hitting the target was no longer a problem. But the upper and lower combination caused extreme reliability issues. The running theory was that the original carbine heavy buffer was not compatible with the soft shooting rifle-length upper. He ended up switching to his old carbine upper with the same set-up as before…and had the same results as before, but at least it would run. He finally qualified on Sunday.

• It was disappointing not to qualify on half the AQTs, but I learned with each failure and got better each time.
• BDCs can work accurately but you need to verify at range with a specific rifle and ammo set-up.
• Don’t make changes to your rifle that can impact your POI without re-verifying your zero. Seems like an obvious one but I obviously needed to re-learn it.
• Canting of reticles really does matter – I used small scope-mounted bubble levels to confirm positioning and it did correct some issues that were not visually apparent from the targets.
• Beware of discounting ammunition and barrel twist issues just because they don’t show up at shorter ranges – they may come to bite you at longer ranges.
• Shooting has an emotional component – when I got too confident, my scores showed it. And I got hooked on the target feedback from steel which made paper jarring.
• Take target feedback early and often. I had one string of fire in prone where two shots hit low and I saw the dirt fly up. I took a 3rd shot at the same POA hold…with the same result. I raised my POA and the rest were hits.
• Concentration is key, but not like you probably think. Yes, concentration is required for focusing your eye on the reticle and your mind on keeping that reticle on the center of the target. But you also must concentrate on your proper holdovers, sight adjustment, target, etc. The more you can convert into good habits the better which is one of the reasons that experienced Rifleman and Appleseeders should attend a KD event. If you are still trying to remember how many rounds to load, remembering everything else will be very difficult.

KYFHO said:

I recently attended a KD Appleseed Clinic in North Carolina and wanted to share my experiences. As some of you know, I am a Shoot Boss with the Maryland Appleseed Cadre, but this was an amazing learning experience and something that I will now incorporate into the clinics I work.

I know this is in TL/DR territory, but I hope some intrepid readers get value out of it.

25 Yards to Infinity and Beyond
I know Appleseed has a reputation as a 22@25 (22LR at 25 yards) organization, at least in certain circles. I am not going to say that is a bad thing, even if it is unwarranted.

• 22LR reduces the price of entry of both rifles and ammunition to where anyone can afford to attend - especially since we offer loaner rifles and rimfire ammunition is plentiful at reasonable prices right now. We shoot between 250 and 500 rounds in a weekend – that is a lot of money for a beginner using a centerfire rifle while trying to find their zero and understand the concepts we teach through teaching evolutions and AQTs.
• 25 yards makes Appleseed clinics available to a much wider audience than requiring a minimum 400-yard centerfire range. Maryland and Virginia, for example, would be reduced to maybe one or two events a year, if any, at private or military ranges. Other states would have no events. The costs would be MUCH higher to lock down these ranges for 1 to 2 days.

The core techniques learned at 25-yards translate to longer ranges – after all, a minute of angle is a minute of angle at any range.

The roots of the organization were in creating rifleman confident in their ability to engage a 20-inch (4-MOA) target out to 500 yards from an unsupported position, what we call The Rifleman’s Quarter Mile. While every 25-yard clinic explains how shooting at 4-MOA targets provides the tools and confidence to shoot longer distances and explains concepts like IMC, bullet drop, and battle sight zero, putting them into practice takes, well, practice.

Maryland’s Tenth of a Mile
We are lucky in Maryland to have several 200-yard events each year at the excellent Delmarva Sportsman Association club in Sudlersville, MD. The 200-yard rimfire events are particularly valuable as 22LR bullet drop is exaggerated between 50 and 200 yards and you must make sighting adjustments at each range. I learned a ton at the one I attended last year and nearly everyone who attends comes away with a new appreciation of their skills and equipment.

The 200-yard centerfire events are also valuable, if only because they put a bit more pressure on the shooter to make the shot. And since folks are more likely to take longer range shots with a centerfire rifle, it is a great opportunity to stretch the legs of their “primary” rather than a rimfire practice rifle. Unfortunately, it is relatively simple to get a battlesight zero between 50 and 200 yards so only minor sighting adjustments and hold-overs are required. Absolutely worth attending and a heck of a lot of fun though.

Rapid Fire Centerfire Prone Stage at 150 yards in Sudlersville

KD at the Appleseed Home Range
An Appleseed Known Distance event conducts the standard positional course of fire, but with full scale paper or steel “D-targets” at each range rather than scaled:

• Standing at 100 yards in 2 minutes
• Standing transition to seated or kneeling at 200 yards in 55 seconds
• Standing transition to prone at 300 yards in 65 seconds
• Slow-fire prone at 400 yards in 5 minutes

This range has a 25-yard range and a covered firing line and static target lines out to 500-yards for steel and paper targets. For those of you who have moved the firing line for each stage of a 200-yard AQT at Sudlersville will appreciate how great that is. There was also an air-conditioned mini clubhouse, but we only spent a little bit of instruction time in there. This event had a TON of shooting time – I went through 475 rounds in two days!

Kickoff and 25 Yard Zero
On the first day, after getting through safety rules and other standard preliminaries, we got into the course of instruction. One of the Virginia Senior Instructors, Monkey, provided an excellent lecture on known distance shooting covering bullet drop, sighting systems, near- and far-zeros, target identification and ranging, etc. We were all instructors, all qualified Rifleman, several Distinguished. But we are always learning – every single shoot has something to teach – but it is good to relearn/refresh shooting lessons via shooting. And it is much easier to preach what you practice when you practice.

We started by zeroing rifles at 25 yards on our standard 4-MOA squares. This is not a call back to the 25-yard scaled targets – a 25-yard near-zero with a typical 5.56mm rifle will provide a far-zero of 300 yards. This means you can score hits on a “D-target” from 25 to 300 yards without, or with very minor, hold-overs. Plus, it is cheaper to confirm zero at 25 yards because you take some of the factors that impact point of impact at range out of the equation.

The line stayed hot until we were satisfied with our zeros. We used small spotting scopes or our rifle optics to confirm at range to verify which saved a lot of time making the range cold and hot so people could walk down. A few people were running new scope and/or upper combinations and took a bit more time to verify. I had zeroed my rifle ahead of the event at 25 yards and took 15 rounds just to confirm and warm up.

Zeroing on the 25-yard Target Line

Friday Rifle and Ammunition Choices
I was excited to see what my rifle could do. I was running what I call my “mini-Recce” rifle, built by 2A Sales. It is built around a 1:7 twist 14.5 barrel pinned and welded to 16-inches – I knew I would lose some velocity, but the rifle has been extremely accurate out to 100-yards. It mounts a 1-4X SFP Steiner P4Xi. Ammo-wise, I was running 55gr Hornady Frontier Match HP – I know it doesn’t seem to be a good fit for the barrel twist, but it has been very accurate at 25 yards and I thought the higher velocity would help reduce drop with the shorter barrel. I wanted to know what this rifle was capable of at longer ranges. Groups were extremely good at 25 yards so off we went to the full-distance range.

My Mini-Recce

Verification of Zero at Range
And it is quite impressive to look out at that hill with multi-tiered berms, steel targets gleaming brightly in the morning light, and think about how you are going to hit those tiny targets out there. The tiering allows all the target lines to be displayed at once, rather than a moving line.

Long Distance Range

To confirm our far-zero, we jumped right to shooting the 300-yard steel targets from prone positions.

Rather than walk out to check the targets over-and-over again (which significantly slows down an event), we paired off with spotter scopes and provided each other with target feedback. The targets are painted white to show hits and provide some contrast with the environment. I have spotted for people at the range before, but this was much more intense and challenging due to the transition between targets, longer ranges, and the fact that it would be used for scoring. I learned a lot about my spotting scope during the weekend as well – it is a relatively inexpensive Celestron Ultima 80, and it performed great out to 500 yards on steel targets with a Slik mini-tripod from a shooting bench. Watching the bullet trace at long range was a hoot!

Spotting Scope Set-up

To his surprise, my shooting/spotting partner found that the BDC on his Vortex Strike Eagle lined up perfectly to the target ranges with his 16-inch barreled AR and 62gr Winchester OTM ammo. Since BDCs are notoriously hard to match, this was very satisfying for him and would prove accurate the entire weekend. It therefore only took him 20-30 rounds to verify zero from 100-400 yards, although he used a 50-yard zero rather than 25 to conform to the BDC.

My rifle also performed well – 4X was more than enough out to 500 yards and I was getting solid hits. I found that I had to use a 6 o’clock hold on the targets 100-300 yards with my 25 yard zero and dial-in 4 MOA up on my scope at 400 yards. I was hitting consistently and shot about 30 rounds to verify. We were taking notes in various ways – I used a notepad, other people used phones.

While other people were still sighting in at 100-400 yards, we were given the opportunity to shoot at a 500-yard steel target and collect data. My partner used his BDC and scored a first-round hit. I dialed in another 5 MOA up from my 400-yard setting and also got a first round hit at 500 yards. We took a couple extra shots and called it good.

Practice Steel AQT – Hits Count
During the practice round the spotter counted hits on steel based on spotting scope and sound. For the first three stages, each hit counts as one for a total of 30 possible points. For the fourth stage, each hit counts double for a total of 20 possible points. You get your totals from the spotter at the end of each round so you can track your progress. 40 out of 50 qualifies you as a Known Distance Rifleman. 48 out of 50 qualifies you as Distinguished.

We had an untimed Practice round to shake any rust off different positions and reconfirm zero. My practice round went very well:

• Stage 1: Standing @ 100: 9
• Stage 2: Seated Transition @ 200: 9 (one miss from the target swinging)
• Stage 3: Prone Transition @ 300: 10
• Stage 4: Slow Fire Prone @ 400: 9

I was pleased with the results and feeling confident – maybe distinguished is within reach.

Round 1 Friday – 1st Steel AQT
I did fine on first 3 stages – dropped three points total and was sitting at 27 out of 30 heading into Stage 4. All I need are 7 hits at 400 yards to qualify. I only got 6. Score is 39. I missed by one point.

Round 2 Friday – 2nd Steel AQT
Ok, needed to tighten up a few things. If I didn’t drop as many “easy” points early, I would have more flexibility heading into Stage 4. I only dropped 1 point in the first 3 stages and was sitting at 29 out of 30 heading into Stage 4. All I need are 6 hits to qualify. 10 hits and I am qualifying Distinguished. I get 5 hits. Another 39. Another failure.

Friday Wrap-Up
We wrapped up for the day and I felt disappointed with my performance. I am not saying this is an easy course but once you know your equipment is dialed-in, it is on you to make the shot. It is a software problem, not a hardware problem. And normally I make the shot. I haven’t shot a 250 yet on a 25-yard AQT, but I can shoot in the 240s with a scope and in the 230s with iron sights.

Could it be hardware? Had the heat of the day changed my zero at 400 yards? Was the 55gr through a 1:7 twist barrel destabilizing at long range and statistically I was seeing the impact? Was the barrel dirty from 220 rounds? If any of that was true, why was I hitting so consistently earlier in the day and on earlier stages?

Software-wise, I had plenty of questions as well. Did I dial in the changes for the 400-yard target on the 2nd round? Immediately after the round I am sure I forgot, or at least don’t remember doing it, and that was the cause of my misses. But when packing up the rifle I see it is set to the 400-yard number. I was very tired, hot, and sweaty – it was in the low 90s, sunny, and late – there is a curve in shooting for score and it starts trailing down at the end of an event. Maybe I was just on the wrong end of that curve.

Overall, my biggest lesson learned from Friday was that KD is a harsh mistress. Just when you think you are in control; it will throw you a loop. It is more unforgiving than 25 yards for sure.

Saturday Warm-Up
I had been debating ahead of the trip which rifles to bring and ended up bringing two – my mini-Recce described above and my “Recce” style AR. The Recce was also built by 2A Sales – it is a 16-inch barreled rifle with a 2-10X FFP Vortex Viper PST scope. This is the rifle I had used to qualify at the Sudlersville 200-yard centerfire event last year and I have a lot of confidence in it. I kept the scope at 6X all day, which I find to be a good power range for this kind of shooting out to 500 yards.

My Recce Rifle

I also switched ammo to 75gr Hornady Steel Match which I had stockpiled a bit of before it was discontinued, looking to take any stability issues out of the equation. The rifle was zeroed at 50 yards, rather than 25, based on the prior 200-yard event. Rather than re-zero for 25/300, I decided to see how it would run as-is and use hold overs more aggressively.

• 100 yards: Hold lower 1/3 on target
• 200 yards: Center hold (far zero of the 50-yard near zero)
• 300 yards: Hold neck area of target (upper 1/3)
• 400 yards: 4 MOA up on scope, center hold
• 500 yards: 5 MOA up on scope from 400, center hold

Saturday Round 1 – 3rd Steel AQT
I started off strong again. Stage 1: 10/10, Stage 2: 8/10, Stage 3: 8/10. Sitting at 26 ahead of Stage 4, I needed 6 hits to qualify like I did in the last round on Friday. I got 10/10. 46 – not distinguished, not too shabby!

Saturday Round 2 – 4th Steel AQT
With the 400-round monkey off my back, I had less pressure on the next round. I was sitting at 25 out of 30 after the first three rounds, mainly from a 7/10 in Stage 3 where I forgot to hold higher and put a couple in the dirt before I figured out what I was doing wrong and adjusted. Those sorts of concentration issues are killers. I needed 8 on Stage 4 to requalify – and got exactly 8. After two 39s the prior day, that 41 looked very sweet even if it was a step back from my prior target.

Paper KD AQTs
We then switched from steel to paper targets. The benefit of steel is that you don’t care where they hit on the steel, it is “hits count” and you get the feedback from the target. The downside is, you aren’t really measuring your group sizes or getting other feedback. Paper targets take a lot longer to set-up, repair, and score, so it meant slowing down the event quite a bit in that regard. But we could also have a target for every shooter rather than doing relays with spotters on the steel.

Paper KD AQT Target Lines

The scoring also changes to more of a standard Appleseed AQT format. There are 5, 4, and 3 zones on the targets, each of the first 3 stages has 50 possible points, and Stage 4 still counts double at 100 points. 250 is the maximum score, 240 qualifies as distinguished with a scope, and 210 qualifies as a KD Rifleman. You don’t see scores until the end of the entire course of fire, so you are not getting the feedback you were getting during the steel AQTs.

Saturday Round 3 – 1st Paper AQT
Stage 1 started off fine with a score of 47. Stage 2 was a disaster for me right from the start. When we got the fire command and I dropped into seated, nothing felt right – I was facing the wrong target vertically, I couldn’t get my eye relief right, all of which led to a very slow start and a rush through the rest. Sometimes you just blow a Stage and I certainly did this time, delivering a measly 35. Stage 3 was ok at 41 – not my best, but it felt fine. Stage 4 also felt fine – plenty of time to fuss every shot and knowing my prior scores were 8 and 10 on steel, was feeling confident that I could make up for seated. Imagine my surprise when I saw the target! Just 3 holes total in the 4 and 5 zones. Everything else was very low in the 3 zone. 35, counts double, so a 70. Total of 193 and not a qualifying score.

What happened in Stage 4? I believed at the time that it was a hardware problem caused by a software problem. Since we were all shooting at the same time, I had added an AAC BlastOut blast diverter to my AAC Brakeout 2.0 muzzle device, thinking it would be more polite. I had never run it on the rifle, never verified my zero with it, just decided to use it for a round with no prep. I won’t say definitively that it changed my POI at 400 yards, but it is certainly plausible when considering that suppressors can do the same. It was off the rifle for the next round.

Saturday Round 4 – 2nd Paper AQT
Similar to the positive impact Friday’s Round 1 failure had on my concentration, I locked down my positions in the next round. Stage 1: 46, Stage 2: 47 (that’s more like it), Stage 3: 47 (much better), and Stage 4: 41 (doubled to 82). Still a little disappointed with Stage 4 but a 222 qualifies and I was very satisfied.

Saturday Round 5 – Rapid Fire Paper AQT
As the scoring, repairing and posting was absorbing time, we decided to switch to a rapid fire AQT for the next round. A rapid fire AQT is all four positions in 4 minutes, whereas a normal AQT takes about 20 minutes due to prep periods between stages and the times for each stage. A rapid fire AQT is therefore very fast from the shooter’s perspective.

For some people, a rapid AQT pushes away perfectionism and they qualify where they have struggled before. For me, it typically depresses my scores because my sling has to work across all positions (and is therefore suboptimal in each), and I rush the first two stages so I can take more time in prone at smaller targets and keep those scores up.

My scores were lower as expected. Stage 1: 46, Stage 2: 43, Stage 3: 40, Stage 4: 34 (doubled to 68). Stage 4 was very low again with 7 shots below the 4 zone, exactly like the 1st paper AQT without a change in muzzle device. So maybe it was a software rather than hardware problem. My total of 197 and it was not a qualifying score. My spotter/shooter partner had his best score of the paper AQTs, proving once again that it can help people break through barriers.

Saturday Round 6 – Rapid Fire Steel
The Rapid Fire Paper AQT was supposed to wrap-up the day at around 430pm but we had already repainted the steel from earlier and therefore had one more set of fresh targets. The Shoot Boss asked if anyone was up for one more course of fire. There were only two volunteers – my shooting/spotting partner and I. The event was scheduled to run through Sunday afternoon but we both had to leave that night for home. More shooting being better than less shooting, we decided to go head-to-head.

Rather than do a standard AQT and make everyone wait through it, we decided to do a rapid fire version on steel. This meant that the spotters would also have to count hits by transitioning through all the different targets, putting a bit more pressure on them to track. After a stage was complete and as the shooter transitioned to the next position, the spotter would line up the new target and give a “spotter ready” warning. My spotter was always ahead of me and it was great to stay in rhythm without worrying about it.

After my poor performance (from my perspective) on the last rapid fire target, I decided not to worry about this last round and just went for it. The ringing steel provided a confidence boost and as I built momentum through the course of fire I felt like I must be doing pretty well through the first 3 stages. I got to Stage 4 with plenty of time remaining, made the quick scope adjustment, and continued to get good hits. We both finished with just under 30 seconds left. Stage 1: 10/10, Stage 2: 7/10, Stage 3: 9/10, Stage 4: 9/10. A 44, and only two under my best score. Thank you and good night! Also learned that I shouldn’t discount the value of rapid fire for getting a shooter into a different zone.

Saturday Night and Sunday
I had to leave that night to head home after a group dinner on the range prepared by the senior Virginia Senior Instructor Wolfhound. By leaving early I missed more instructor boot camp content, some very cool target ranging exercises, more AQTs, 500-yard cold bore shots using the data collected over the weekend (every single person hit on the first shot), and a KD Red Coat. I even missed a night shoot on Saturday where folks were ringing steel with 22LR and 6.5C in addition to .223 at 300 yards. Hope to be able to go to a future event and stay through to the end.

Lessons Learned
There are a ton of things that I and other folks learned that have already been discussed. Let me start with what some other people learned:

• One instructor was running a 16-inch AR with a micro red-dot and 77gr IMI Razor Core ammo. Once he figured out his holdovers, he was hitting targets from 100-500 yards without magnification – center hold 100-300, head hold for 400, top of head hold for 500. But when the light changed on the range throughout the day, he could lose visibility on the targets completely – you can only hit what you can see. Plus, it required perfect holds.
• Another was running an AR with iron sights. Like the instructor with the red dot, there were times the targets would just disappear due to lighting. He ended up mounting a scope on the second day and ran it for the remainder of the class.
• One instructor had run an EOTech and magnifier at a prior event and struggled with picking up the targets. This time he brought a 24-inch barreled precision upper and 6-24X Vortex PST scope mounted on the lower he used before. Seeing and hitting the target was no longer a problem. But the upper and lower combination caused extreme reliability issues. The running theory was that the original carbine heavy buffer was not compatible with the soft shooting rifle-length upper. He ended up switching to his old carbine upper with the same set-up as before…and had the same results as before, but at least it would run. He finally qualified on Sunday.

A quick summary of my other learning points:

• It was disappointing not to qualify on half the AQTs, but I learned with each failure and got better each time.
• BDCs can work accurately but you need to verify at range with a specific rifle and ammo set-up.
• Don’t make changes to your rifle that can impact your POI without re-verifying your zero. Seems like an obvious one but I obviously needed to re-learn it.
• Canting of reticles really does matter – I used small scope-mounted bubble levels to confirm positioning and it did correct some issues that were not visually apparent from the targets.
• Beware of discounting ammunition and barrel twist issues just because they don’t show up at shorter ranges – they may come to bite you at longer ranges.
• Shooting has an emotional component – when I got too confident, my scores showed it. And I got hooked on the target feedback from steel which made paper jarring.
• Take target feedback early and often. I had one string of fire in prone where two shots hit low and I saw the dirt fly up. I took a 3rd shot at the same POA hold…with the same result. I raised my POA and the rest were hits.
• Concentration is key, but not like you probably think. Yes, concentration is required for focusing your eye on the reticle and your mind on keeping that reticle on the center of the target. But you also must concentrate on your proper holdovers, sight adjustment, target, etc. The more you can convert into good habits the better which is one of the reasons that experienced Rifleman and Appleseeders should attend a KD event. If you are still trying to remember how many rounds to load, remembering everything else will be very difficult.

Instructing is Awesome!
But apart from how much I learned at the event about shooting, I think the most valuable component was learning from and with other Appleseed instructors. The choices to become a volunteer instructor with the program comes with significant commitments to work shoots, take the time to learn and practice the points of instruction and techniques we teach, come prepared to solve problems, etc. There was not one instructor at the KD event who said they weren’t shooting a lot less than before they became instructors.

This is not to say it isn’t fulfilling – I have no finer weekend than coming home exhausted after a 2-day Appleseed clinic and thinking about all the frustrations and joys of the shooters I worked with. The downs as they suffer through poor weather, struggle with their body positions or equipment, can’t grasp how to apply a new concept, or do poorly on a course of fire. The ups when they fire a rifle for the first time, have their first truly great group or stage, react positively to the history, or earn their Rifleman for the first time! I do it because we are trying to make a difference in people’s lives and for the future of this country.

Working together with fellow instructors at a normal weekend clinic, sharing a set of values related to the program, and helping each other as well as the students creates a comradery that is hard to find in other environments. So, imagine an event of just instructors teaching together, learning together, shooting together, and hanging out together.

I have shot and worked Virginia events and several of their instructors have shot and worked at Maryland events. But this was the first time we really got to bond through the shared experience and activity that inspired all of us originally to take a hat. To interact with the range of instructors of various experience levels – from the Senior Instructors such as Wolfhound, Monkey, Polonius with 50-90+ shoots under their individual belts to some of their new Instructors in Training with only a couple events completed but a whole journey ahead of them – was also amazing. I can’t thank them enough for the opportunity to attend and will cherish the experience.

All of that is a VERY long way of saying if you are interested in continuing your shooting journey with a great program and people, I highly encourage you to attend Appleseed clinics. If you feel like you have gotten a lot out of those clinics as a student, consider taking the next step to instructor. And if you are an instructor who feels like you are missing what made you come to Appleseed to begin with, attend a one of our advanced or instructor events as a student and I promise you will get a lot out of it.

If we get enough Maryland Instructors and Rifleman together who are interested in an experience like this, we can probably get our own private event set up. But let’s invite some interested Virginians to return the favor.

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KYFHO said:

And Monkey has offered to do an event for the MD Cadre later this year or early next, if you and Shannon are interested in going!


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