If you attend a one-day Appleseed or if you go to a two-day Appleseed for only Saturday, you will have a very similar experience. There are some differences, in that the instructors fit some things in on Saturday when they have only one day. For example, we fit in the instruction for shooting at "known distance" and the final history lecture, DOM or "Dangerous Old(er) Men," this past weekend when we did the one-day only Appleseed at East Providence, RI. Both of these have occurred on Sunday for all of the other Appleseeds to which I have been. Saturday is the day on which almost all of the "instruction" is provided. If it is a one-day event, then it all occurs on that one day.
Sundays, at two-day Appleseeds, include some repeating of what we spoken of the day before, but it is more practice by the shooters of what they have been taught and individual coaching by the instructors and IITs, who will be doing everything they can to get the shooters up to a level of proficiency that allows them to shoot rifleman's (that is expert's) scores. The practice on Sundays is going to be testing as well, as most of the courses of fire will be tests. The test is the AQT, adapted from the old Army Qualification Test, and a score of 210 or more earns the shooter a Rifleman's patch. If you score a 210 exactly, you mght find yourself getting an impromptu shower, preferably with water taken from the Concord River beneath the North Bridge. Any water may do in a pinch. Sunday's have what we often call the AQT grind, simply because the shooters will shoot one AQT after another. Score a 210 or more on anyone of them, and you have become a Rifleman.
Instructors like, really, really, really like, handing out Rifleman's patches. But they are not simply given away. The shooter needs to earn the patch. The time and number of Appleseeds that it takes a shooter to earn a patch varies greatly. Some can earn it in a day. Most take more than one Appleseed. Some I do not think will ever get there, but we hope they keep trying. A Rifleman PERSISTS! It took me 5 Appleseeds, and I shot a lot of scores in between 200 and 209, including a few 209s, before I finally shot over 210.
Check out the Rifleman Opportunity Card on appleseedinfo.org. If you go and have fun, which you will, you will want to keep coming back until you earn the patch. Once you eanr the patch, you may want to join us, because helping others to become Riflemen is more fun than becoming one yourself.
