Project Appleseed - History

History

Project Appleseed started from a series of ads that became ads with monthly columns appearing in Shotgun News, a monthly gun trade newspaper publication. These ads were written under a pseudonym by a fellow who simply called himself "Fred". "Fred," the founder of Project Appleseed, whose real name is Jack Dailey, has been writing a column—actually a portion of ad space for Fred's M14 Stocks—since 1999. A common theme in these columns is "Are you a cook or a rifleman?", a "cook" being Fred's term for an unqualified rifleman. The name of the project was in deference to Johnny Appleseed, an American pioneer nurseryman and grass roots missionary who traveled the American frontier planting apple trees across the land with the goal of spreading the number of apple trees in America; Fred's goal was to accomplish the same with civic-minded Riflemen in America. Project Appleseed itself began in April 2006 in Ramseur, North Carolina.

In 2006, Appleseed instructors began a national tour to attract new instructors who could maintain and develop local programs. In 2008, Appleseed had nearly 4,000 attendees. In 2009, there were more than 450 scheduled Appleseed events that taught 10,000 shooters. In 2010, 32,000 had been taught to shoot by the end of the year. In 2012, there were over 1,000 Appleseeds held, by which time over 40,000 shooters had been taught. In addition, a select cadre of Appleseed instructors from across the nation gathered at Fort Stewart, GA and taught a deploying Army unit in marksmanship skills in 2012.