I’m going to do a couple of posts on the Appleseed – this one is a general description of the day. My review is here.

I totally neglected to keep a log of what we did all day, so I’m reconstructing this from memory as best I can. As a result, times/order of events might be a little off.

I arrived at the Lewis-Clark Wildlife Club’s range at about 8:20 on Saturday morning. (It’s about an hour from my house.) I checked in and loaded my gear (save my rifle) up to the shooting area. The day was scheduled to start at 8:30, but began a big late as they waited for stragglers.

The first portion of the day was a safety briefing. They did not go over the Cooper rules/Treat, Never, Keep, Keep. If I recall correctly, the rules went something like: Keep your muzzle pointed in a safe direction, keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target, do not load until the load command is given, and everyone is a safety officer. They discussed range commands and common malfunctions, and handed out chamber flags.

At that point, we were allowed to go to our vehicles to retrieve our rifles. If we had more than one rifle, we were supposed to leave the back-up in the car. After checking in our firearms and placing them on the line, we prepared to fire our first string – 13 rounds at a Redcoat target like this – 3 rounds at each silhouette and one into the 250yd headshot square.

I can’t remember exactly the order, but somewhere in here we received our first history lesson. There would be three segments throughout the day, all focused on a very detailed account of the events of April 19, 1775.

We were also instructed on shooting in the prone with a loop sling. Appleseed teaches the support-side leg fully extended in line with the spine, toe turned either in or out to place the foot flat on the ground, firing-side knee bent and leg raised at least perpendicular to the body, abdomen naturally canted so the diaphragm is not pressed into the ground, support arm held snugly by the sling, support elbow under the rifle.

Again, I can’t recall the order, but I know we were instructed in “firing by the numbers,” which are:
1) Sight picture.
2) Sight alignment.
3) Respiratory pause.
4a) Focusing the eye on the front sight.
4b) Focusing the mind on holding the front sight on the target.
5) Squeezing the trigger.
6) Following through by holding the trigger back, as well as keeping eyes open to call the shot.

(We did not actually practice calling our shots.)

We then put up 25m targets with 1″ grid squares, and fired five rounds five times. I needed to shift my zero, but was told we were just worrying about groups at the time and would actually adjust sights in a few minutes. After finishing 25 rounds on that target, we did indeed go over adjusting sights. I needed to adjust my front sight post and had to explain to an instructor why I would do that instead of just adjusting my rear elevation. I am not sure if he thought I was going about it incorrectly, or was just concerned about the time it would take, as we had relatively short preparation periods. After adjustments, we went through another 25 rounds on the same type of target.

I’ll interject here the way a round of firing would go: Generally, we’d be given the command to prep a magazine with x-number of rounds. Theoretically the command was supposed to be issued far enough in advance that we wouldn’t need to use any of our prep period to ready mags, but in practice I usually heard something like, “You should have a mag prepped with five rounds. Your two-minute preparation period begins now.” This may have been because I was at the far end of the line, and the guys calling the commands were in the opposite direction. We would be giving a preparation period of varying length, during which we were ideally supposed to get into position and dry-fire. Again, in practice, I usually found myself using this time to make adjustments to my rifle, sling, etc. and had very little time to prep myself.

We took a short bathroom break, and then had another history lesson. After that, we had about 20 minutes for lunch. I can’t recall if we went back to the line then, or had our third and final history lesson. Total, I’d estimate the history portion accounted for 45 minutes to an hour of the day.

We began working on transitions and magazine changes, after being instructed on standing and sitting positions. The second and third stages of the AQT require a transition from standing to sitting or prone, respectively, as well as a magazine change each. For the standing to sitting, we would load a magazine with two rounds and one with eight. We’d begin standing, with our magazines on the ground. On the fire command, we’d drop to sitting, load the two-round magazine, empty it into the left target, change mags to the eight-round magazine, fire three more rounds into the left target, and the last five into the right target. The standing to prone stage was nearly identical, except there were three targets, and we fired two+one, three, and four into each.

The tempo of the shoot definitely stepped up at this time. The instructors said they wanted us taking a shot per breath, and they started timing the rounds – 55 seconds for standing-to-sitting, 65 for standing-to-prone.

As the sunlight began dwindling, they had us put up an AQT and fire all four stages. We then did a second AQT, and concluded with another Redcoat target to gauge our improvement. By the time the last shots were fired, I’d switched to my large aperture, because the light quality was very poor. Apparently, so is my low-light shooting!

At the end of the day, we cleaned up, debriefed, and headed home.

I believe I fired about 150 rounds total. I received some helpful feedback from the instructors: At the beginning of the day, I was doing a poor job of following-through, and they caught it. I improved greatly when made aware of it. An instructor also pointed out that it appeared I wasn’t keeping a consistent cheek weld from string to string, so I worked on that. He postulated it was symptomatic of my adjustable buttstock, but I did some troubleshooting on Sunday and figured out it was more a result of too-low buttstock positioning in my shoulder pocket, causing me to have to crane my neck downward in an awkward way.

I don’t remember a ton about my first Appleseed, largely because the day was characterized by me trying to wrangle the M14 rather than focus on the material. From what I do recall, I didn’t notice a lot of changes, other than this weekend’s Appleseed instruction seemed to move at an even quicker pace, but there was more history interjected. Obviously, when working in an environment where it’s functionally dark at 4pm, the material had to be condensed somewhat. They glossed over the thorough explanation of holds we got last time (center vs. six-o’clock, the latter of which is their preference) and only talked about the hasty sling in conjunction with the standing position.

Last Modified: Monday, November 30th, 2009 @ 20:19

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