Proud of my son Nathan

[The PIG Smith]

A few of you may have met my son Nathan at one of Zach's Meet & Greets, or seen pics of him when he and I go on crazy adventures...
...and I am always proud of him for he and I share a lot of interests in common.
Sadly, he likes Coyote powered Ford Mustangs more than an AMC 401 powered street machines, but other than that, we on on the same page on most everything else.

Today, Nathan returned from Scout Camp having earned his Rifle and Archery Merit Badges.
What makes this extremely exciting news, was than Nathan was the very first Scout at our Scout Camp to ever qualify for the Rifle Merit using a .50 caliber black power, muzzle loading rifle.
The tradition since the beginning of time, was for Scouts to use a .22 caliber rifle, typical a single shot, bolt action style rifle to earn the Rifle Merit Badge.
Recently, the BSA has permitted the use of modern Thomas Center brand muzzle loading rifles at BSA ranges.
This year at Camp Chief Little Turtle, Nathan was "THE" Scout to score 35 points or higher on each of 5 target to qualify.
His targets all had a really great grouping.
Nathan commented that he thought shooting the muzzle loader was easy and more enjoyable than the .22
(maybe all those hours of playing the XBox and Black Ops/Modern Warfare 3 is paying off?)


Additional, he had the highest overall score in Archery of the entire Camp.
He put the arrow dead center of the bullseye a few times with most of the other arrows close to the center.
While he did not get an award or anything, he was recognized at the closing campfire.

Krista, we are ready to defend from attacks in The Great Zombie Apocalypse.
I will need someone to cover for me as I am working on networking to other Zombie Survivor Camps.

[Stuka]

Congrats!

Black Powder certainly requires a different skill set compared to a standard cartridge rifle. And being inaccurate as they are, makes being first that much more impressive.

[Tad]

Congratulations Bryan!

[JAWs7227]

Krista, we are ready to defend from attacks in The Great Zombie Apocalypse.
I will need someone to cover for me as I am working on networking to other Zombie Survivor Camps.

And when you're underneath and/or underneath the hood of your FSJ.

[ScottsMojo]

Most awesome and congratulations to you and your son!

My son Luke was at scout camp all this week and had a great time while earning a couple merit badges. He was nominated to participate in the "Order of the Arrow" camp, completed the mile swim, emergency first aid, wood carving and a few others. The boys endured 100 plus temps over the weekend as well as some pretty nasty thunderstorms earlier this week.

Luke was just promoted to BS First Class so I don't think they have participated in the marksmanship challenges yet, at least with the rifle.

[bigun]

Congrats! I've only shot a black powder rifle a couple of times it is deffenatly(sp) a different experience over smokeless. To me it feels more like a push instead of the kick from a smokeless.

[The PIG Smith]

My son Luke was at scout camp all this week and had a great time while earning a couple merit badges. He was nominated to participate in the "Order of the Arrow" camp, completed the mile swim, emergency first aid, wood carving and a few others. The boys endured 100 plus temps over the weekend as well as some pretty nasty thunderstorms earlier this week.

Luke was just promoted to BS First Class so I don't think they have participated in the marksmanship challenges yet, at least with the rifle.

Nathan has been a Life Scout for about 18 months now.
He has been working getting his required Merit Badges knocked for Eagle, before he starts his Eagle Project.

Nathan has been a member of the "Order of the Arrow" for some time now, but at this Summer Camp, he completed the requirements to become part of the 'Brotherhood'
Now, his OA sash will have a the tradional red arrow, but now will have a red line on top and bottom of the arrow.



Just another rank in the OA.
All I know is more $$$ for more uniform stuff.

[jaber]

Congrats to both of you. Tell him "nice work, keep it up" from us... \:D/

[fulsizjeep]

Indeed Bryan! Congrats to both you and Nathan!

[Gumby]

Congratulations to you both... he must be one heck of a shot to qualify with black powder. I guess that we have to keep an eye on him as a future "sure shot".

[Dumpy]

Awesome!!! I wanted to be an eagle scout but our local small town troop sucked, so I quit ( looking back, I wish I would have gone to the next town down the hill to finish. I've never shot a black powder rifle but I've heard it's quite a bit harder. Keep him at it!

[lindel]

Outstanding! Awesome achievements all the way around!

[ScottsMojo]

My son Luke was at scout camp all this week and had a great time while earning a couple merit badges. He was nominated to participate in the "Order of the Arrow" camp, completed the mile swim, emergency first aid, wood carving and a few others. The boys endured 100 plus temps over the weekend as well as some pretty nasty thunderstorms earlier this week.

Luke was just promoted to BS First Class so I don't think they have participated in the marksmanship challenges yet, at least with the rifle.

Nathan has been a Life Scout for about 18 months now.
He has been working getting his required Merit Badges knocked for Eagle, before he starts his Eagle Project.

Nathan has been a member of the "Order of the Arrow" for some time now, but at this Summer Camp, he completed the requirements to become part of the 'Brotherhood'
Now, his OA sash will have a the tradional red arrow, but now will have a red line on top and bottom of the arrow.



Just another rank in the OA.
All I know is more $$$ for more uniform stuff.

My Luke is but 13 so he is just cutting teeth in Boy Scouts. He has been scouting since Cubs, and unfortunately he had been relocated about 70 miles away from me by his mother. So, my time with my son doing Scout stuff has been limited to this point.

But, the good news here is that my Luke and his mother are moving about 10 miles from my place!

Luke and I attended his first meeting with his new troop tonight, and it went ok, being the new peeps and such. Looking forward to many memories with my son doing scout stuff in the near future!!!

[ScottsMojo]

Awesome!!! I wanted to be an eagle scout but our local small town troop sucked, so I quit ( looking back, I wish I would have gone to the next town down the hill to finish. I've never shot a black powder rifle but I've heard it's quite a bit harder. Keep him at it!

I as a youth suffered the same problem. Completed Cubs but moved to an area (BFE) that didn't have a troop close. So, by default I stopped. Black powder is easy, same principles as modern cartridge. The main difference is in lock time - trigger pull to ignition. Depending on the rifle you are shooting, that can be next to unnoticeable.

[RockSteady]

Very impressive achievements! Brings back so many great memories. I was in the BSA and OA until I was 18, and continued with an Explorer post until 21. I have to say, having my dad be an active volunteer and counselor made the experience amazing. We spent so much time together camping and hiking and working on scouting projects; it made everything fun and never felt like work.

You can tell Nathan an Eagle scout encourages him to continue all the way to Eagle. Without tooting my own horn, the Eagle achievement came up several times in very positive ways during interviews, and is pretty highly respected in the law enforcement field, if he's ever thought about that route before.

My favorite old scoutmaster used to offer this bit of advice: Get your Eagle before the two liquids combine...perfume and gasoline!

[ScottsMojo]

Get your Eagle before the two liquids combine...perfume and gasoline!

Sage advice, that is!