Well, here we are again- in the snow, but the level is dropping with the exceptionally warm weather- up over freezing every day for almost a week. We're standing on a trail of packed snow that we've kept packed all winter. We even extended our trail to include 4 more targets - a grueling 50 yards of crotch deep snow- good thing it was packing enough to hold us up the last couple feet as we trudged on. It took 3 of us old !@#$% working in relays to get that part done.
Below you see 6 of us, 8 finally showed - some had to sleep in, I guess. How could anyone sleep in on such a beautiful day? I apologise for the last picture, Roger, the devil made me do it. That is LB doing "the nasty" to his little .40.
In the top picture on the left, you see Clarence a new shooter in our midst. He's an accomplished IPSC shooter - champion, actually, and now he's got the BP bug. The (Chambers') English Sporting Gun he's packing is one recently purchased from Track - an exceptional deal, complete with 2 barrels, a .54 rifled barrel and the smooth 24 gauge that's on it today. Once he found how to hold it, he did very well indeed, even the 92 yard fox was not secure from being hit. This is the third muzzleloading gun Clarence has purchased in this, his first year of shooting. A friend of his, Brad, showed up later and borrowed Clarence's first gun, a short .50 cap gun on mixed heritage.
We all had a great time, shot for 4 hours, about 70 rounds worth, each - no one having to wipe their bores at any time and no one having difficulty loading, either. About everyone here shooting rifles was using a ball .005" under, except Taylor, who was using up some .490's in his .50 Virginia rifle. They certainly didn't hurt his accuracy, but as usual, when crowing "I haven't missed a target yet, he missed the next one. We both finished up with having to take 2- re-entries for missed targets. Now I'm going to crow - second Sunday in a row, 3 cards with 3 shots. Yehawwwwww!
OOPS, my face is red because I was using a really small ball in the Musketoon this time - not a .575" ball in it's .574" bore, but a Lee mould .562" that casts .564" pure lead balls at 270gr., so I was using a ball .010" under, just like my Bro, and just like him was using a .022" patch. The rifling at the muzzle of my rifle is only .003" deep and it loads easily with it's polished and radiused crown. Shoots fairly well, too. Taylor says I'm on the slippery slope towards the 'dark side'(caps). Tomorrow, I'll shoot with Hatchet Jack and use one of the flinters - probably the .40 Squirrel rifle - new trigger, pivoted high - whould be great.
