Project Appleseed

[luckyman]

Just attended my first day of Appleseed 2-day rifle training.
I was using a 10-22; other students were all over the map from Garands to ARs to 223 bolt actions. Man, 75$ for 2 days with a 3:2 student to teacher ratio is hard to beat.

The safety procedures weren’t up to Scotty Reitz’s organization but then IMO few places are, and I never felt scared about anything.

They definitely teach “state of the art = WWII, and everything since then has gone downhill”. There are a couple of things that they do different from Scotty that I would love to ask some modern training org why what Appleseed does might be less than optimal. But overall as a beginning rifle shooter I got a ton out of day one. And they were great at helping me adjust my shooting positions to accommodate for various injuries.

So far I’ve learned I generally suck at rifle shooting; except for standing/offhand where I blow everyone else away.

I hope day 2 is cooler; day 1 was 101 degrees or above for most of the day.

[Moylan]

Just attended my first day of Appleseed 2-day rifle training.
I was using a 10-22; other students were all over the map from Garands to ARs to 223 bolt actions. Man, 75$ for 2 days with a 3:2 student to teacher ratio is hard to beat.

The safety procedures weren’t up to Scotty Reitz’s organization but then IMO few places are, and I never felt scared about anything.

They definitely teach “state of the art = WWII, and everything since then has gone downhill”. There are a couple of things that they do different from Scotty that I would love to ask some modern training org why what Appleseed does might be less than optimal. But overall as a beginning rifle shooter I got a ton out of day one. And they were great at helping me adjust my shooting positions to accommodate for various injuries.

So far I’ve learned I generally suck at rifle shooting; except for standing/offhand where I blow everyone else away.

I hope day 2 is cooler; day 1 was 101 degrees or above for most of the day.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope day 2 did cool off for you. I can't speak about carbine shooting from the standpoint of the modern training organization, but if you have any questions about the 'whys' of Appleseed's approach you can certainly run them by me. Organizationally, we do not view contemporary rifle shooting developments as a devolution, but there are probably some individual instructors still out there with a bit of that mindset.

The safety side of Appleseed has always seemed to me to be extremely sound. If there were any gaps or slips that you'd be willing to pass on to me in a pm, I would be grateful. I'm nobody important with the organization, but I can get the information where it needs to go to insure that we consistently maintain the highest safety standards. (I won't be able to respond for several days from the time of this posting, give or take...not ignoring, just more or less offline.)

[luckyman]

I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope day 2 did cool off for you. I can't speak about carbine shooting from the standpoint of the modern training organization, but if you have any questions about the 'whys' of Appleseed's approach you can certainly run them by me. Organizationally, we do not view contemporary rifle shooting developments as a devolution, but there are probably some individual instructors still out there with a bit of that mindset.

The safety side of Appleseed has always seemed to me to be extremely sound. If there were any gaps or slips that you'd be willing to pass on to me in a pm, I would be grateful. I'm nobody important with the organization, but I can get the information where it needs to go to insure that we consistently maintain the highest safety standards. (I won't be able to respond for several days from the time of this posting, give or take...not ignoring, just more or less offline.)

Day 2 was great also….! It started off with an unexpected heavy rain!

I should clarify my “WW2 state of the art” comments above….. I did / still do have the impression that all the techniques etc came out of WW2 era teaching, including sling use, elbow positioning, leg positioning in prone, etc.
On day 2 I asked about each of the differences I had noticed, which resulted in a lot of good discussions, and they had clear “why” rationale for everything. The elbow subject I think I now both sides of, the leg positioning during prone I like the Appleseed answer and wish I could ask Scotty about why his org does it differently.

Kind of separately from that from one of the instructors there was a bit of “marksmanship in the US military has gone downhill” and Appleseed has helped that when we have been given the chance vibe/comments. That sounds worse than it was because some of the comments were related to how in prior eras more recruits came in already knowing how to shoot.

I’ll pm you with the safety differences between Appleseed and the Scotty Reitz org when I get a chance later on; there were 4 main differences. I’ll reiterate that I felt quite safe this weekend and would not hesitate to recommend this to friends and family.