My first muzzleloader was a TC “Hawken” in .50 caliber because almost no one was shooting muzzleloaders in my part of Iowa back then and the TC was available to buy. I bought it while on Boot Camp leave in January 1972.
Then my best friend in life took me to the Primitive Range for the Spring National Shoot at Friendship in 1974. I could not shoot the TC there because it wasn’t authentic, but I really got hooked on the “Buckskinning Thing” and was introduced to Flintlocks. Grin.
The “funny thing” for me was my first Flinter was a Brown Bess Carbine and not a rifle. I bought it because it was the closest thing available to a “Sergeant’s Fusil” then and I was attempting to put together a Continental Marine Sergeant’s Impression. It was also a LOT cheaper than an authentic flint rifle and money was very tight in those days. Besides, my best friend in life loaned me a flint rifle when I wanted to shoot in matches.
I could shoot that Bess Carbine in Northwest Trade Gun matches, so that’s the gun I competed with most often at the Spring and Fall Nationals at Friendship throughout the 70’s. No, I never placed well in any national shoot, but had a GREAT time shooting and being with the folks on the Primitive Range in those days.
After I was transferred back to Virginia in 1980 and once again worked “Trigger Jobs” and other gun work at the Spring and Fall National Shoots of the NSSA, I finally worked my Brown Bess Carbine lock down to a decent trigger pull and not the 9 or 10 lb trigger pull it came with. WOW, BIG difference on how much easier it was to shoot a good target, even though I had gotten to the point I could regularly split a musket ball on a double bladed axe at 25 yards even with the heavier trigger pull.
I also shot some clay pigeons “on the fly” with shot in that Brown Bess Carbine using 11 Gauge Wads and Cards in some Northwest Gun Matches. I didn’t hit many of them, but that heavy trigger pull was often the cause. ( I had grown up hunting rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, quail, duck, and geese with a modern shotgun and was a pretty fair wing shot as well as one summer season of amateur Trap Shooting League at our Local Isaac Walton Club. So it wasn’t that I did not know how to shoot something “on the fly.” Grin.)
Bottom line a smoothbore can open up new challenges and even different types of shooting as in clay pigeons or wing shooting. So perhaps if one is interested, it is something enjoyable to augment other shooting, rather than replacing it. Heck, it gives you a new/different gun to shoot in different ways and that can be a blast.
Gus
