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Rifle Merit Badge - Qualifying


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We now have 2 NRA rifle instructors/Range Safety officers in the Troop (I am one). We actually have added 3 more Range Safety Officers since.

 

So, we just did 1 Troop .22 rifle shoot last week at our Camp Range.

 

30 Scouts switched in/out of 9 lanes all day to go thru ~3000 rounds. We qualified 2 older Scouts, and 4-6 are close.

 

The majority of the Scouts shot at paper plates with "black dots" marked with a sharpie. If they got the sighting rounds to get close, I switched them over to NRA-A-17 or NRA-TQ-1 targets I found online and printed out.

 

We still used the "quarter" as I believe my PDF's were a bit off to rely on just the score value for all shots. I just ordered several hundred official targets for the next time so we will be better prepared.

 

What do you use at the range?

 

I know during summer camp, Scouts shoot at whatever has not gotten chewed up by mice from the shooting building. The Shooting Sports director uses the "quarter method" on those targets.

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Savage Mark 1 FVT. Troop owns 6 purchased through CMP. We qualifed 25 boys this past weekend.

Two nights of safety and instruction to be allowed on the trip. Day and a half of shooting and cleaning. And finished tonight with hunting regs.

 

I was really impressed with how well the boys shot using sandbags and the aperture sights on the Savage rifles. By the end of the day we had 5th graders putting 3 rounds in the same hole at 50 feet.

 

Email me and I'll send you a link for pictures.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Our summer camp uses the Quarter method.

 

My son got his rifle merit badge last year (13) at camp. All I can say for anyone whose scouts are planning on signing up for it at camp, be prepared for extra money for ammo and brief your scout to take advantage of every open shoot to qualify. My son took until Thursday to get his last target to qualify. It took him a lot of work and dedication all week. He had to hustle every day to get to the range and keep going. I think I was just as proud as he was.

 

Out of about 36 scouts who signed up, only 11 made it at weeks end.

 

It is a tough one to get in a week.

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My son had same experience. He then conveniently "lost" his blue card for another two summers so that he could take the badge again at future camps, it was so much fun. I think he has now earned it and re-earned it 3 or 4 times & will be staffing the rifle range at an upcoming regional event. (never bothered to finish shotgun, though - didn't like it enough to tear him away from the rifle range)

 

 

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For summer camp, I would recommend AGAINST trying for both shotgun and rifle in the same session.

 

A .22 rifle has virtually no recoil, and boys shooting just the rifle don't flinch or jerk the trigger. They can shoot accurately.

 

A 12 gauge shotgun kicks, even with light target loads, and small framed boys learn to fear that kick, which negatively affects their trigger pull, even when it's just a .22 rifle that they are shooting.

 

 

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JoeBob- I'm on my school's shooting team and agree that switching between shooting methods is difficult. However, at most camps you can rest your rifle on a sandbag AND use peep sights, which makes qualifying relatively easy.

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