After the success we had with our initial hike we are ready to get our 3rd hike on the calendar as well with an added Appleseed event.

Saturday March 13th at Bone Creek Gun Club north of Pittsburg, KS.  

710 E 700th Ave,
Arcadia, KS 66711

Hike begins at 0800 (be on site by 0730) to be followed by handgun class (free and limited to APC members and candidates).  Class will be taught by Lomshek, 10 year USPSA match director, competitor and instructor.  Expect to fire 50-100 rounds total as the class learns safe draw, movement with a handgun, reloads, multiple target drills, and firing from cover.  Required gear is a strong side OWB vertical belt mounted holster, service caliber handgun of your choice, 3 (or more) magazines or speedloaders and ear & eye protection.

Immediately following the handgun class is a Project Appleseed half day rifle clinic.  The Project Appleseed rifle clinic is not an APC event but all APC members and candidates are invited to attend.  Cost is $40 per adult civilian or $20 for active duty LEO, military and youth under 18.  Instructors are unpaid volunteers, all fees fund the national program.

Here’s the complete timeline for the day
0700 - 0730 - Arrive at range
0800 - 1000 - Hike on gravel roads surrounding range
1030 - 1200 - Handgun class
1200 - 1230 - Lunch
1300 - 1700 - Project Appleseed half day rifle clinic

Project Appleseed is a non-political 501c3 organization that teaches rifle marksmanship and Revolutionary War history.  

Half day clinic attendees will learn how to fire accurate shots from the unassisted (no bipod or bag) prone position with a sling at targets up to 500 yards away (simulated distance) by using very small targets at 25 meters.  

Skills taught will be natural point of aim, sight alignment and sight picture, respiratory pause, trigger control and other components needed for keeping rounds within a 4 minute of angle target.  Shooters will learn about proper scope set up for optimal eye relief and how to use various types of slings (loop, hasty and patrol) to stabilize the rifle and assist in precise shot placement.

Mastering these concepts on a 25 meter range will prepare you for full distance shooting by eliminating common errors and reducing the new skills needed to adjusting for bullet drop and wind.

Registration link for the Appleseed shoot is below.

https://appleseedinfo.org/schedule/?qstate=KS&state=Kansas

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

I’ll be at this one with a full pack!

The roads are low traffic gravel with rolling hills.  Nothing crazy long but it’s definitely not board flat.

Here are a couple targets I shot on different ranges a couple years apart at 700 yards using Appleseed shooting techniques and my 16” DDM4V7 with lightweight barrel and Burris MTAC 1-4x scope.

The techniques work!

80 grain Sierra Matchkings single fed (they don’t fit in the mag).
Attached File


The round above labeled flyer should really be titled “pulled shot”.


77 grain Sierra Matchkings (magazine fed).
Attached File


Looking at them side by side I just realized that each target has one round that’s high and left even though they’re fired two years apart with two different loads.
 Looks like I know what I still need to work on!

I’d be all over this one but I am out of town that weekend. Hope this one is a big hit!

I will see about getting work covered.....thanks for directing me to the thread Lomshek.

The appleseed website says SBRs are allowed at the discretion of the staff running the event. Do we know about this one? I would probably bring an SBR AR15, I already have an approved travel letter for Kansas. It is suppressed so noise/concussion are reduced.

In case anyone missed the OP update here's a summary and timeline for the day's events.



You can find a registration link in the OP.

SBR's are fine.  Suppressors are finer!

We don't check papers.  It may not be a free country but we at least believe in freedom at events I run.

This looks like a great time! I may be out of state, but I'll try and get things locked down one way or the other and register if I'll be around.

For the Appleseed, would you recommend using whatever rifle we use most(4-12 scoped 223 in my case)? Or bring something small like a 22?

Rifle caliber is completely up to you.

Using your "main" rifle has two benefits.  It lets you tweak your real rifle set up and learn how to use it for field position shooting and the recoil (even of .223) will reveal flaws in your position stability that can be hidden when shooting .22.

If you don't mind the ammo expenditure bring the .223 AR.

The Appleseed half day clinic will be something around 100-150 rounds total.

The biggest problem I see people have with magnified scopes is that the scope is mounted too far back for upright, relaxed bench shooting.  When a person is shooting from unsupported positions the head naturally lays much further forward which requires the scope be moved forward for proper eye relief.  That works out to using a cantilevered "SPR" type scope mount with 2" or more of forward offset (mine is 3").

Thanks for the insight; 150 rounds is a few hours of prairie dog hunting, so no issues there.

I currently run a cantilevered mount, I'd say the front of my turret is about even with the front of the receiver (eyepiece about even with back end of pic rail). I do shoot prone whenever possible, but always from a bipod or bag, so unsupported prone shooting is something I need experience in badly.

My sling for that rifle is a QD Magpul. Will that be acceptable provided my forend QD is far enough forward? Or should I drop the QDs and go direct?

Thanks for fielding questions and running the class!

Sounds like your set up is fine.  That's about exactly where the eyepiece of my scope is too.

The QD sling is fine.  Toward the front of the handguard is best.  For a lot of two point slings I recommend using it like the Marine's teach which we'll demonstrate at the class.

Your rifle may be a little on the heavy side but it won't be bad for prone.  Standing may be another deal but maybe not.

You'll probably want to leave it on 4x for the class.  Any power scope is fine but the higher magnification doesn't really help any and can be a distraction.

It is just under 8 pounds dry. I am relatively comfortable with it standing.

Definitely would be leaving it on 4 power,  haha.

Dang!  That's impressively light for the weight I assume a 4-12X scope is.  Maybe I'm way off on weight.

Nikon Buckmaster 4-12x40. Not the greatest glass, but it holds 0 and the weight is a huge advantage over my 4.5-27x50 FFP scope (less than half the weight).

ALG handguard with no rails and fixed stock also helps a bit.

Sorry to take the thread off topic, but I guess TTT is always a good thing.

Expect to get a chance to fire the APC Basic Pistol Qualification as listed in this post on the APC HTF.

Stage.....Distance.........# Rnds........Time.....................Description
1................25y.................2............6 sec..............Standing from the holster on whistle.

2...............15y..................6............10 sec.............Standing from holster, on whistle.

3................7y..................12...........14 sec.............Standing from holster, on whistle engage w/6 rounds, combat reload, 6 more rounds.

4................3y...................7..............4 sec.............Standing from holster, on whistle draw and engage w/7 rounds.

5................3y...................6..............2 sec.............Standing from holster, on whistle draw and fire two rounds. Repeat for a total of 3x.

6................3y...................7..............4 sec.............Standing from holster, on whistle draw and fire 7 rounds one handed. Non-firing hand to be behind back, against chest, or in pocket.

Hits in the eight ring or above are scored as a 5, on the silhouette outside the eight ring is a 4. Minimum passing score is 160/200.

Here's a B-27 target.

I used my carry pistol (M&P Shield 9mm) to shoot the pistol qual yesterday.

They don't count for official score but I used USPSA metric (silhouette) targets since that's what I had on hand.  
The "C" zone is the same width as a B27 8 ring (300 mm wide) and just 20mm taller than a B27 8 ring so it gives a pretty accurate score equivalent.

This was fired cold (no warmup) and my first rounds fired in about 2 months.  I'm a USPSA shooter so fired as quickly as I could acquire a decent
(mostly decent anyway ) sight picture.  That translated into using about 50% of the allowed time or a little less.  
If I could beat slow down into my head the target would be a little prettier.  

The 25 yard hits were just outside of the A zone.  I got sloppy on the 15 yard shots and am pretty sure that's where my miss happened.

Attached File


Here's the pistol hits by zone and score.  A and C zones are 5 points and D zone or head shots are 4 points.

20 A, 15 C, 4 D, 1 M
A=100
C=75
D=16
Total - 191

If you move anything in the outer 50% of the C zone from a 5 point hit to a 4 point hit to more than account for the extra 20 millimeters of scoring zone height here's the reduced score.

20 A, 9 C, 10 D, 1 M
A=100
C=45
D=40
Total - 185

Max possible score is 200 and minimum passing score is 160.  

Including scoring the entire pistol qualification process for a group will eat up at least 20 minutes.

Here's the approximate timeline of our short pistol "class".  Because of the limited time available everyone needs to be on the ball and hustling.

1030 - Safety brief & procedures
1040 - Dryfire/empty gun practice runs
1100 - Livefire practice/drills
1130 - Qualification
1200 - Teardown/lunch
1300 - Rifle class begins

Looks good!  I'll be there for sure and may have a few guests!

Normally I'd say bring the wife but that may not be her idea of a good time with a bun in the oven!

I am going to be (further) out of state so I will be missing this unfortunately. Was pretty stoked for the clinics. But that is a 2021 objective so I'll keep an eye out for more opportunities!

Bummer.

There’s always the April 17-18 2 day Project Appleseed at Bone Creek.

We’ll have one in June as well at Mill Creek hopefully and near Wichita in October.

It may be a little while but we’ll get another chance at firearms quals too.

If you're planning to attend please register online for the Appleseed rifle class.  It makes my job much easier when payment and registration is handled online.

If your schedule won't allow that walk ons are completely fine.  I'm just lazy at heart and hate paperwork.

See you there!

If anyone is interested in staying for Sunday we could do the APC rifle qual Sunday morning with the Appleseed class (which is a repeat of Saturday’s class) beginning at 1 PM.  If a shooter has attended the Saturday Appleseed class and wants to repeat it Sunday I’ll waive the second day’s fee as long as there are empty spots on the line (which is likely).

Looks like I will be able to make it, but would not be available on Sunday.

Saturday will be good!

Just got the APC official B27 firearms qualification targets in.  The things are yuge!!!

Attached File

There's a very good chance we'll be rained on all day Saturday.

My plan is to bring an entire change of clothes to the range and change after the hike so I can at least put on clean, dry clothes after the hike and give my feet a break before beginning the shoot.  I'll have dry boots too.

My hiking pants will be lightweight synthetic pants that won't weigh a ton when wet and I'll be wearing a synthetic, wicking top with a water resistant shell.

The firing line has a roof over it but it's not big enough to keep you dry in steady rain.  We'll be in the rain for most of the pistol class & qualification and laying on the concrete firing line for the rifle class.

Here's what the firing line looks like in the rain.
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If you have pop up tents (and stakes) bring them.  We'll set tents in front of the firing line to extend the roof forward so you don't get as wet like below.

Attached File


If you have two tents bring them both so you can put one over your shooting position and one behind your shooting position to give you a semi-dry spot to hang out in when not shooting.

Before you look at the weather and decide you don't want to get wet keep in mind these kids and ladies went through an entire two day Appleseed (8 hours a day) in the rain.

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Kind of hard to be the hero of your community if some rain might scare you off, right!

If you're getting a hotel Saturday night I'd recommend bringing a tiltable floor fan so you can have the fan blowing on all your wet gear overnight to dry it.

Away from the firing line we have a covered patio we can use for non-shooting lessons and lunch.  Bring camp chairs and a cover to keep them dry.

@bowmanch
@bsshooter
@cazbass

Better Nate than lever to do some @ing in case anyone hasn't been looking in the HTF!

@DCLXVI
@derek1387
@Domnior

@Dragracer
@floater33
@jb31

@KC215
@Kevv
@KingAirDriver

@LIVIDDEVIL
@mr_o
@Norinco982lover

@onthebreeze
@Red-Stater
@Ripley7t

(Just realized onthebreeze already replied.  Sorry!)

@Shootindave
@Triskaidekamaniac
@watsamatau

@CPTCARL

As much as I would like to, I'm out.

Bummer!  Hope we get to see you at the April Appleseed or some future events!

Alright you sons of bitches i'm in.  Since this is my first hike will i be able to participate in the handgun/rifle courses?

Yes you can!

Be happy to have you with us.  

Appreciate the invite!

Unfortunately I can’t make this one.

Hope to see y’all at number four!

Do you mind if I ask where you are located?

I think he said Leavenworth area in a previous discussion (Not stalking I promise!).

Woohoo!  The more the merrier!

Near Leavenworth.

I’d hit this event but it’s a haul for me to get there from here in time to make the ruck.

Plus I promised my wife id take her to look at lawn mowers ??

Got it.  I think we have a few up near KC so we can get something going nearby.  

I'm leaning toward a poncho over the pack and me to give me better ventilation than a jacket but more protection than nothing.  

Anyone have a lot of experience hiking in 45 degree rain?  

Alright I'll get registered for the shoot this afternoon, and I need to make sure I bring a 20lb pack for the hike, correct?

If I have a weight vest, and camelbak that weigh 20 lbs will that work, or are you guys looking for a pack specifically?

@Notcalifornialegal
@lomshek

Its 35 less water weight if you bring a rifle and 45 lbs without.

I was actually thinking about that as well with plate carriers.

@ben can you confirm this will work?

Weird.  I did not get the mention notice.  I wonder if the upper case first letter affects that?

@Kevv

Here are all the options.

Option 1 - Come with an underweight pack, just a Camelback or no pack and do the hike for the experience.  A number of guys have done this at the first couple if they're unsure about their ability to carry the full weight.  No shame whatsoever in doing that.  Better to work up to full weight as you learn your limits than to blow yourself out and end up injured.

Option 2 - 35 pound pack and do 3 miles in less than one hour.  That earns you a Provisional Candidate rating.  Whether you did 3 miles or the entire 6 miles the 35 pound pack limits you to a Provisional rating.  In order to do just 3 miles we need at least 2 others to turn back with you to serve as witnesses.  We can't have a single guy going alone in case of injury.  If this is a possibility we could do two laps of a 3 mile course so any 3 milers would meet the witness requirement.

Option 3 - 45 pound pack and do 6 miles in less than 2 hours.  That is your first step toward a 3rd Class rating.  Like Option 2 we need at least 2 people unrelated to you to serve as witnesses for it to be official.

If you carry a rifle you can subtract 10 pounds from the required pack weight.

Like Ben says the only thing that counts is non-water weight in the pack.  I've just been loading my pack with dumb bells and kettle bells wrapped in blankets.  If you put your weight vest in the pack it can count toward the weight limit.  Some guys have put loaded plate carriers in the pack to meet weight.  Others actually pack the backpack like they're going to be living out of them.  Unless you're really loading heavy it's a challenge to get a pack to hit 45 pounds when packing it with clothes and lightweight hiking/camping gear.  Military packs get over that easily because of the weight of MRE's and all the associated gear they need to carry out a mission (and water).

We'll determine weight by weighing you with and without a pack and doing the math.  You can add your water bladder or water bottles to the pack after the weigh in.

Scroll a little way down the APC About Us web page and you can read the specific requirements for each rating.

This is what I want to make sure I'm able to do, aside from meeting all you wonderful people.  My pistol skills are lacking , but so are my rifle skills

So some weight on my back, a rifle, and a brisk walk is in order, from what it looks like.

I guess another question I have now, is I don't have a "pack", does any backpack work?

Yes any backpack is fine that can handle the weight.