Makin Meat My experience with blackpowder started back in the mid to late 70’s with a CVA Mountain Rifle in .50 calibre. I bought the rifle from a pawnshop when I was ~14 years old. The gun had a very plain maple stock and looked to be a kit gun, that the builder didn’t quite know what they were doing when they did the initial assembly. I reworked the gun and used this fine weapon for years to punch paper, and hunt small game. I took countless rabbits and prairie dogs with that old rifle. This old rifle even proved quite effective in taking many squirrels in the autum woods.
During this time my dad became interested in blackpowder as well. One evening, he brought home a 12 gauge muzzleloader that was made sometime in the mid 1800’s in Belgium. To this day, that gun is one of the most beautiful firearms that I have ever held and had the pleasure of taking afield. It possesses such fine graceful lines, and patterned very nicely. I would take this shotgun and my sister out into the fields behind our country home and have her go through the heavy brush and flush pheasants and rabbits for me. She’d tramp around in the thickets and tall weeds, and when the pheasants took wing she’d hit the ground and I’d start blasting. She was a great bird dog…best I ever had. That old shotgun proved to be very versatile, I took several ducks and dove season was a true challenge…I cannot tell you how hard it was to hit those little morning doves when they juked and whirled as my shot patterns whizzed by them. But those old hunts were the best.
By the time I was 16, I convinced my dad that we needed to start hunting big game with muzzleloaders during the blackpowder season, instead of during the regular rifle season. Since I was 12 our
family hunts had been during the 3rd combined season, and I hunted with a Ruger Model 77 in .270 calibre. This switch to the blackpowder season dramatically changed the family hunts from the cold frozen season of late October to the very nice mild weather to be had in mid September. For many years after, I hunted deer and elk in both Colorado and Montana with blackpowder. These hunts were meat hunts, intended to put high quality game in the freezer for the family; and it was expected that all the kids hunt as they reached age, and could buy a license.
After I got married, I built a Big Bore Mountain Rifle in .54 calibre from a kit. I took my first sizable bull elk with that rifle, which I actually wrote about and posted in this forum. Sadly, my Big Bore .54 rifle had issues…It shot beautifully and was one of the most accurate front stuffers that I have ever owned. But this amazing accuracy and ignition was only possible while at the range or on a shooting line; I took many shooting trophies with that rifle. But take that dang .54 rifle for a short walk in the woods and the ignition became iffy at best. Over the years that rifle cost me several bull elk that were in the 8x9 & 9x9 class. These days my CVA Big Bore .54 is a wall hanger…I came very close on several occasions to wrapping that gun around a tree. So it being a
wall hanger...not such a bad deal.
My next find occured in another pawn shop when I came across a Pedersoli Alamo Rifle in .50 calibre. I took that rifle to the range all summer, and by fall I knew where that gun was hitting from 5 yards to 100 yards. It produced 3 inch groups at 100 yards with Maxi-Balls a top 95 grains of 2fg and while using .490 Round Balls backed with 100 grains of 2fg this gun grouped shots nicely into 6 inches again at 100 yards. This became my deer/elk rifle for the next 10 years and accounted for my largest bull and many many cow elk. My primary quarry in the fall became the elk. This is when I learned to call elk; I learned their habits; I learned their body language...I learned how to hunt them. My harvest distances went from taking elk at 100 or more yards; to shooting elk at an average distance of 20 yards or less.
In the few years that I didn’t draw for a blackpowder license, I’d hunt with a home-made long bow or a compound. Let me say up front; I am no archer…I can hit the target well; small game are a breeze and I've feathered many deer. But I get way to excited when the elk come slinking in close and I can smell them. I have trouble hitting anything with a bow when the elk are tramping all around me. Give me a rifle and I’m solid, give me a bow with an elk at 10 yards….well it ain’t pretty at all....I have issues.
Somewhere in the early to mid 90’s, my dad and I made our first pilgrimage to Sidney Nebraska and the Cabelas store in that town. We had never been there, but it was a place that we both wanted to visit and see for ourselves. So we made the 2 hour drive early on a Saturday morning. It was an amazing store; this was back in the day when there were only 4 or 5 Cabelas stores and the Bargain Cave really contained bargains. My dad found a .32 calibre Blue Ridge Rifle with a flintlock ignition…we argued about my getting a Blue Ridge .32 in percussion. He thought I should broaden my horizons and get a flinter. I chose to stick with the tried and true so it was a percussion .32 that I took home.
The .32 calibre muzzleloader proved to be a fascinating, frustrating, awesome, and infuriating muzzleloading calibre for me to master. It seemed to be possessed by demons at one moment and then just as suddenly it would shoot quarter sized groups the next. That tiny drop of lead seemed to be impacted by every bit of fouling in the bore and the tiniest change in seating pressure sent the ball on a new path when the trigger was pulled. Over time I learned that consistancy is the best way to treat the tiny .32; if my patches were well lubed, and my pressure was consistent when seating that little lead pill…the gun would shoot smoothley and accurately all day on a diet of 32 grains of 3fg. Otherwise I had to swab the bore after almost every shot. For me the .32 was finicky and frustrating more than it was pleasant and wonderful. There was a learning curve when it came to mastering this pip-squeak, more so than any caliber that I had ever shot, and because of those trials and tribulations I developed a soft spot for this little 8mm pea shooter. I developed very accurate loads for my rifle with both round balls and surprisingly a Maxi-Ball conical bullet. It’s consumption of powder was a mere trickle compared to any other front stuffer that I owned up to that point. Was the .32 calibre accurate? It became my “goto gun” for small game. Taking cottontails and squirrels was a dream with the .32, but it really came into its own when I discovered spot & stalk hunting of Jack Rabbits. Maneuvering and stalking within shooting distance of Jack Rabbits at between 50 and 100 yards with a .32 calibre conical bullet was like taking a big game animal. These weren't just larger versions of the little cottontail, these animals were trophies that had to be earned when taken on open ground. Once my quarry was located I had to use many of the same stalking techniques that I used routinely to take larger game such as antelope, deer, and elk. Unfortunately, try as I might, I could never find a recipe that made the Jack Rabbit a palatable dish…Jack Rabbits are tough, stringy and just plain not fun to have as part of a meal. It’s been many years since I last stalked Jacks with smoke pole, but it taught me so much about spot & stalk hunting.
About this time in my life I missed hunting with the old Belgium 12 gauge, so I acquired a Pedersoli 12 gauge and a Pietta 10 gauge. The Pedersoli-12 was a light upland game gun that I used to take rabbits, squirrels in the early fall, doves on the eastern plains and a great quail hunt to eastern Kansas. The gun is slightly under bored, so I use 13 gauge wads and cards. It is such a sweet shooting little gun.
The Pietta-10 was an awesome goose gun. My goose load in the Pietta is 95 grains of 2fg under a shot-cup of 98 steel “T” shot. We had such huge flocks of geese in my area that I’d take anywhere from 40 to 65 geese between Thanksgiving and Christmas Break each year. And the best hunting didn't start until the week between Christmas and New Years when the big flocks would migrate into our area. There would be days that I'd set up the deeks and an hour later I'd be picking up with a full limit and heading home to have breakfast with my wife and cleaning my harvest. The skies literally filled with thousands of Sky-Carp right after Christmas. The reason for the huge flocks was that Coors Brewery had a starch factory here on the edge of town with large cooling ponds that acted like warm water slews to draw in and hold the huge flocks of migrating geese. According to our local game warden, we would have about 17,000 geese that would over-winter in my virtual backyard. Hunting geese with a smoke pole is one of life's simple pleasures, you need to do it....make it part of your bucket list.
I also started hunting alot with a Brown Bess Carbine that I bought as a kit from Dixie Gun Works. Hunting geese with a flintlock had a steep learning curve and the experience was just awesome. I learned to hold my shots until the landing gear was well established and the geese were committed. I never took a day’s limit while hunting with the Bess, but those hunts are some of my most memorable hunts. There was one day I was out hunting geese with the Bess and the local game warden had been watching me through his binoculars. He came out to my blind to see what heck I was using to hunt geese. He then wrapped up in a camo sheet that I had brought along and hung-out with me for about an hour or so. He wanted to say that he had seen a guy “
Make Meat” on geese with an old flintlock musket. The starch factory closed lond ago due to changes in the world market, but I still get a few geese each year, though the glory days with the heavens filled with Sky-Carp are now a thing of the past.
I took the Bess Carbine on one Elk trip. She shot low about 5 o’clock at 50 yards, with an 85 grain load. I took a nice fat cow elk at 10 yards with that gun on the 3
rd day of my hunt. I’d never seen an animal drop so soundly to a primitive firearm.
For the last 10 years or so I've used primarily flintlocks. Lately, I hunt mostly with a .45 calibre flintlock TVM Southern Kentucky Poorboy and my Brown Bess Carbine. My quarry is mostly small game with the smokepoles. I haven’t had a chance to “
Make Meat” this year, but I’m hoping to get out and spend a few days afield before the seasons close. Medical issues have brought my outdoors activities to a complete standstill...and it just sucks. Anymore, when I'm out hunting, I don’t really care if I’m successful in harvetsing game, I just enjoy being
out of doors and blending in with the natural surroundings for an afternoon or two.
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aim small miss small-
