Yesterday I took my 3 week old MVP to a full distance Appleseed as a shooter. I have been an instructor for the http://www.appleseedinfo.org Appleseed Project for 5 years and this was my first chance to shoot a full distance shoot from start to finish. I had run them and work at them but never shot the event. I was pretty excited about shooting it and even more so about shooting the MVP. The Shoot is all shot at field positions at a standard "D" target which is 24" wide and 20" tall with a black silhouette. No bi-pods sand bags or rests allowed. Just you the rifle and the sling. The MVP is really perfect for this type of shooting at least the predator is, nice compact rifle with detachable magazine makes it a breeze for the timed sections as far as a bolt action goes. We first sighted out rifles in at 25m and I was putting 5 rounds in about 1/2" which is 2 moa we did the box drill to find out how many moa our scopes would move per click. I was using the Nikon P223 3x9 and it moved 20 moa exactly at 80 clicks both for elevation and windage. Not bad for a sub $200 piece of glass. Then we went to the 100 yard line and did prone sighters. My sighters were within the 4" "V" so I did no adjustment. Then we took 10 shots standing at 100 yards in 2 minutes off hand.This is a picture of the firing line at 100 yards. There are 2 targets to each pink backer. I have caught them at various stages of coming up and down in the pics.
Then we packed up our gear and hoofed it back to the 200 yard line. Again we did prone sighters which I was still in the "V" so no adjustment for me and the MVP. The stage 2 course of fire is 2 magazines one with 2 rounds and one with 8 rounds. You start standing and at the fire command you drop to the seated position load the 2 round magazine and engage the target 2 times then switch magazines and finish with 8 more rounds. Not too bad but you only get 55 seconds from the fire command until cease fire. I took a little too much time and did not get 1 round off in the 55 seconds. Oh well better to get good shots off than rush and get misses. Here is a pic of the 200 yard line.
Then we picked up our gear again and hoofed it back to the 300 yard line. Again we got prone sighters where I had to come up 3.5moa to get back to the top of the "V" circle. We had also picked up a 9 oclock 10mph wind at 300 as we were no longer blocked by the tree line no need to adjust yet but took a note of it for the later stages. We had workers in the pits that would place markers for us to see where we were making our hits on the spotters. They were also keeping our score for the AQT (Army Qualification Test) as they were pulling the targets down after every string marking and pasting our holes. Stage 3 is the rapid fire prone position. same 2 mags at 2 and 8 start standing and drop to prone position 2 rounder change magazines and 8 more but in 65 seconds.I got them all off with time to spare and called all good shots. Here is the pic from the 300 yard line.
Once again we picked up our gear and hoofed another 100 yards back to the 400 yard line for stage 4. This is slow fire prone 1 magazine 10 rounds and 5 minutes to fire them from prone position. We got sighters from prone again and I came up another 3 moa and chose not to dial and windage for the 100 yards of wind because it had shifted around behind us a little. No problem making the time and felt real good about my shots all fired in Riflemans cadence, I just hoped I had made the right decision on the wind. Here is the 400 yard line.
One last time we picked up our gear and hoofed it to the 500 yard line. There is no 500 yard stage on the AQT but it was a chance to shoot 500 yards with a pit crew giving feed back. We fired sighters from prone again. I dialed 4 moa into elevation before even firing spotters. When the targets raised and I looked through the spotting scope I was right on the edge of the target with 1 round in the "V". Oh crap I had forgot about the wind. Next set I dialed 2 moa of windage and got 3 good rounds off. When the targets rose I had 3 shots within 8" less 2 moa just to right of the "V". Woohoo. Pretty cool for nothing but a man his rifle, sling and ammo. We had a blast! Here is the line at 500 yards.
Then we got to shoot steel at all distances. just playing around and dialing our elevation. At the end of the day out of 20 shooters all great shooters most all previous Appleseeders and many Riflemen there were 3 that had made Rifleman at full distance. 1 was a perfect score which was my son shooting his 14" AR with a 3 power scope. Then me I had missed 1 yep you guessed it the 1 round I didn't get off in stage 2 but still got a 39 or 192 out of 200. One other guy had a 36 with an AR and an AGOC. I would say the MVP held its own yesterday.
But everyone did an awesome job from the shoot boss to the instructors on the line the pit crew, and the Apple Core. We got to hear some cool history that has been nearly forgotten and celebrated or freedoms of being Americans. This old shoot boss got a lot of data for a new rifle, had a great time and learned a few things.
Then we packed up our gear and hoofed it back to the 200 yard line. Again we did prone sighters which I was still in the "V" so no adjustment for me and the MVP. The stage 2 course of fire is 2 magazines one with 2 rounds and one with 8 rounds. You start standing and at the fire command you drop to the seated position load the 2 round magazine and engage the target 2 times then switch magazines and finish with 8 more rounds. Not too bad but you only get 55 seconds from the fire command until cease fire. I took a little too much time and did not get 1 round off in the 55 seconds. Oh well better to get good shots off than rush and get misses. Here is a pic of the 200 yard line.
Then we picked up our gear again and hoofed it back to the 300 yard line. Again we got prone sighters where I had to come up 3.5moa to get back to the top of the "V" circle. We had also picked up a 9 oclock 10mph wind at 300 as we were no longer blocked by the tree line no need to adjust yet but took a note of it for the later stages. We had workers in the pits that would place markers for us to see where we were making our hits on the spotters. They were also keeping our score for the AQT (Army Qualification Test) as they were pulling the targets down after every string marking and pasting our holes. Stage 3 is the rapid fire prone position. same 2 mags at 2 and 8 start standing and drop to prone position 2 rounder change magazines and 8 more but in 65 seconds.I got them all off with time to spare and called all good shots. Here is the pic from the 300 yard line.
Once again we picked up our gear and hoofed another 100 yards back to the 400 yard line for stage 4. This is slow fire prone 1 magazine 10 rounds and 5 minutes to fire them from prone position. We got sighters from prone again and I came up another 3 moa and chose not to dial and windage for the 100 yards of wind because it had shifted around behind us a little. No problem making the time and felt real good about my shots all fired in Riflemans cadence, I just hoped I had made the right decision on the wind. Here is the 400 yard line.
One last time we picked up our gear and hoofed it to the 500 yard line. There is no 500 yard stage on the AQT but it was a chance to shoot 500 yards with a pit crew giving feed back. We fired sighters from prone again. I dialed 4 moa into elevation before even firing spotters. When the targets raised and I looked through the spotting scope I was right on the edge of the target with 1 round in the "V". Oh crap I had forgot about the wind. Next set I dialed 2 moa of windage and got 3 good rounds off. When the targets rose I had 3 shots within 8" less 2 moa just to right of the "V". Woohoo. Pretty cool for nothing but a man his rifle, sling and ammo. We had a blast! Here is the line at 500 yards.
Then we got to shoot steel at all distances. just playing around and dialing our elevation. At the end of the day out of 20 shooters all great shooters most all previous Appleseeders and many Riflemen there were 3 that had made Rifleman at full distance. 1 was a perfect score which was my son shooting his 14" AR with a 3 power scope. Then me I had missed 1 yep you guessed it the 1 round I didn't get off in stage 2 but still got a 39 or 192 out of 200. One other guy had a 36 with an AR and an AGOC. I would say the MVP held its own yesterday.
But everyone did an awesome job from the shoot boss to the instructors on the line the pit crew, and the Apple Core. We got to hear some cool history that has been nearly forgotten and celebrated or freedoms of being Americans. This old shoot boss got a lot of data for a new rifle, had a great time and learned a few things.
