Barista
Marksman
Really upset I missed this one. I have been wanting to do Appleseed for a couple years. I have the equipment, and never get to use it. Most of the Appleseeds start too early in the morning for me though, and that is my one complaint.
But it is so worth getting up for. My husband and I got up at 4:30 am to make it to Richmond in time. Unless you are working third shift.
I woke up Sunday morning around 03:30 and was out the door a little past 04:00. After a 4 hour drive (it took me a while to actually finding the place) it was well worth the 8-9 hrs of lessons and shooting.
I had never attended an Appleseed before this event but I have heard great things about these weekend events. I don't recommend just showing up the 2nd day of an Appleseed if you had never attended a full weekend event before. I had other life events to attend Saturday that I had not expected when I signed up for this event; however, I was expecting no changes to my plans since it was a holiday weekend but school events trump. I can tell you that Sunday was a very fast paced day and I had to learn quickly. I think the one saving grace portion of this one day (Sunday) event for me was that there were plenty of hats (Green, Red, Blue, Orange, etc.) to provide some one-on-one training. The margin of error was very small for me and I had to jump right in and learn efficiently, effectively and fast. I believe if I had shot both days I could have shot Rifleman "Expert" but I was rather happy with my best shoot being 195 considering: short amount of time to pick-up the training skills, using a bolt action rifle, and only have 7 round magazines (I had to do magazine changes on strings 1 & 2 when this would not have been required with a higher magazine capacity).
All-in-all I'm very happy with this event, the lessons learned (history), and the shooting drills (AQT). I will be attending another event for both days in the very near future (hopefully with my son).