I had a blast this past Saturday! I'm lucky enough to build with a great bunch of guys from our local muzzleloading club, around 10 of us, we meet every Wednesday night to work on longrifiles and assorted accoutrements, BS, and give each other a hard time. We go to our monthly club shoots, of course, but to give something back to the group as a way of showing my appreciation for the help, knowledge and fellowship I held a shoot for our group at my place, what I hope will become our Annual Gumakers Shoot. Rules were you had to shoot flintlock, open hunting sights and it had to be a gun you made (we have one 12 year old, little buddy that used to be my neighbor, who got to shoot caplock, but he built it last year
).
Fellas all had a blast, as I had some different targets for them to shoot at. One was a goose decoy in the tidal cove, 65 yd shot, had to be shot while sitting on a stump. You wouldnt' think an 18" long X 8" high foam decoy would be hard to hit, but the only guy that touched it was shooting a smoothy with shot! One statiion was a tee shot, golf balls on tees at 20 paces. One point for knocking it off, farthest hit ball got one extra point (longest hit went 35 yards). Bunch of gongs, some clay targets, milk jugs filled with water for stations. One was a target I got off Targetz.com, called splitting hares. Small bullseye between two rabbit ears, bull got a point, but hitting the ear was minus one - which got me rightfully accused of being a sadist.
Had 9 shooters total, from 12 to mid-70's in age. The kid built a good Hawkens, too, cause he outshot plenty of the men and tied for 4th (next year we may deduct points for those young eyes). Everyone made or brought prizes, which ranged from a war club and tanned sika hide I did, to some artwork, knives, ball bags, bushel of oysters (the kid gathered them before the shoot as an extra prize, I don't think he's ever been down here without getting wet and muddy along the shoreline) to cans of powder.
Heck of a way to spend a Saturday, and it was even sunny and nearly 70, not a week after we had 8+ inches of snow. Best of all, I now get to start planning future evil for next year's targets.
