traditional black powder

Southern

Well-Known Member
I know this has probably been discussed before, but so has everything else, so.... :)

Are there any here who hunt with traditional muzzle loading, patch and ball rifles, in percussion or flintlock?

I owned, for a very short time, a beautiful Browning Mountain Rifle, which I let some black powder fiend talk me out of. And I wanted to take a course on building one from scratch, from a fifth generation long rifle smith, who worked in a restored settlement at Conner Prairie, Indiana. I watched them a few nights, working at an outside forge in deep snow, and sub-zero night. Very cool!

In researching the history of various rifle smiths of the colonial era, I have become interested again. I was handling some pieces from the 1770s, and had a look at Davy Crockett's first rifle, all whetting my interest.

Last week, I ran across a David Pedersoli Rocky Mountain Hawken, in very nicely figured wood.
pedersoli-rocky-mtn-hawken-rec.jpg
 
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Patch and ball wouldn't be legal for deer here. The legality of hunting with cast bullets is debated. Hitting the required velocity would be a problem in Scotland.

However, sabots with pistol bullets would be legal. Personally I think cast bullets (like a paper patched soft) are fine for hunting and within the law but that's not worth getting in to now. If I were to do it is want a written ok from the local constabulary.

I think the number of people using a muzzleloader to take deer in the UK is probably 1 at the high end, I suspect for the above reasons. Personally I'd love one but, for now, I won't be going down that route.

As King George V said "a gun without hammers is like a spaniel without ears"
 
There's well enough that shoot original muzzleloading shot guns on live feathered game to get the usual once a year picture in our shooting press. Some especially on the annual 26 December driven day in their syndicate.As already said, although it's soft lead, and so expanding patched round ball is unheard of. A conical bullet with a cast-in, or drilled, hollow point is possible.Now lots, of course, once did shoot deer with percussion rifles. But since 1890s I'd doubt it...for unlike the USA we have no "muzzle loading only" extension (or early opening) on our deer season.Nor are smoothbore guns of any system, muzzleloading or breechloading, permitted on deer except under the 'farmers' exception'.However a 40" barrel maple stocked .36" squirrel rifle would be perfectly legal on rabbits. And our grey coated bushy tailed imported vandals from the USA!
 
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I got to shoot a small bore (that's .32 to .36 for blackpowder ) long rifle some years ago, a flintlock, made by the owner. He did the loading, and I suppose that is what impresses me most: getting the velocity so close by pouring in black powder and tamping down a bullet into the rifling. I surprised myself by putting putting two shots within a half inch of each other, and to a penny-sized target at 50 yards. You really have to follow through, as there is a delay between the trigger snapping, the pan igniting, and the ball leaving the barrel. It is as much fun as firecrackers are to a small boy. Must be the aroma!

Could you use these for foxes?
 
Yeah the stipulation on energy and bullet type is only there for deer. Technically there is nothing for Boar either, just a recommended minimum of 270.

You'd have to convince your local police mind, and that's the main hurdle.
 
Yeah the stipulation on energy and bullet type is only there for deer. Technically there is nothing for Boar either, just a recommended minimum of 270.

You'd have to convince your local police mind, and that's the main hurdle.


get it for vermin and AOLQ which includes Boar ;)
 
Greener Jim brings up the main discouragement in UK. Any firearm, not an air gun, that we shoot must be licenced. If it's a 1770s squirrel rifle and you don'tvshoot it needs no licence. Yet if I want to shoot it it has, then, to be on a licence.

Therecs more! For a rifled arm that licence has 'conditions' as to what it may be used for. If that is ONLY for targets then it can't be used on squirrels! So as GJ said ig you had a .58 Hawken and wanted to use it on wild boar it would have to be both licensed AND that licemce 'conditioned' to allow that use on boar.

So here in UK we can't just take great,great grandad's antique, original, .451 Rigby off the wall and go onto our shooting lease and "bag" a deer with it!
 
Plenty, the rifle just has to conditioned on your license accordingly. If you have a rifle for target use you can't take it in to the feild after deer unless your license also says deer on it.
 
I know this has probably been discussed before, but so has everything else, so.... :)

Are there any here who hunt with traditional muzzle loading, patch and ball rifles, in percussion or flintlock?

I owned, for a very short time, a beautiful Browning Mountain Rifle, which I let some black powder fiend talk me out of. And I wanted to take a course on building one from scratch, from a fifth generation long rifle smith, who worked in a restored settlement at Conner Prairie, Indiana. I watched them a few nights, working at an outside forge in deep snow, and sub-zero night. Very cool!

In researching the history of various rifle smiths of the colonial era, I have become interested again. I was handling some pieces from the 1770s, and had a look at Davy Crockett's first rifle, all whetting my interest.

Last week, I ran across a David Pedersoli Rocky Mountain Hawken, in very nicely figured wood.
View attachment 67235
love it southern moving to the U.S. And getting into hunting over here has really opened my eyes if you told me 2 years ago I would go black bear hunting with a crossbow I would have thought you were made but it's all about knowing the capabilities of yourself and your equipment. I'm now thinking about black powder especially after watching the revenant where did you see the pedersoli?
 
Yes, I have a whitworth percussion replica, that I am quite partial too. But I also have a lancaster county pattern flintlock, I built the kit on track of the wolf, and an old rifle builder put it together for me. He did it the old way, fitting with files, and scrapers. The whitworth is the 451 hexagon bore, and my flint is a patched round ball gun, rifle.
 
One of my favorite things: Traditional black powder rifles. I don't like flints too much but I have a number of percussion rifles and handguns in calibers from .31 to .45 in revolvers, and .32 to 58 in rifles. My favorite rifle with regard to elegance and accuracy combined it my Parker Hale Whitworth. The rifle has a three digit Serial number and was made in England, not Spain or Italy as the most recent ones are. It has the true hexagonal bore barrel with a 1-20" twist. It is so accurate that it puts many cartridge guns to shame. ~Muir
 
Glad to see you join in, Muir, as this is your wheelhouse.

I just know I have an itch to scratch. I am going soon to visit some other researchers like myself, and three rifle makers who are 5th and 6th generation, unbroken, of traditional black powder builders. Watching those fellows pouring molten brass and rifling barrels in subzero weather twenty years ago has just stuck with me.

A really good gun dealer I have known for a long time is a Pedersoli and Uberti dealer, with a good inventory, so I need to go visit him again. The Pedersoli I saw last week is at Cabela's in Fort Mill, SC, south of Charlotte, right off I-77, so you can look it up online.

Here is Davy Crockett's first rifle, still in the family to whom he sold it, "in order to buy a courtin' horse". Photos are not great, because of the glare off the glass in the background. I will go back and make a bunch of really good ones.
davy-crocketts-1st-rifle-sm.jpgdavy-crocketts-1st-rifle-muzzle-sm.jpg
 
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History in your lens, my friend. Awesome.
Have you ever read "The Muzzleloading Caplock Rifle" by Ned Roberts? In that book he references a book called "The Kentucky Rifle" by Dillon. I have read them both cover to cover, twice. Colonial gun building was an amazing and time consuming task.~Muir
 
No, I have not read those, but I will chase them down. I now have a reading list on this subject of some 22 books, a bunch of them just this week, from a gunsmith.

I have a few classics which are out of print, found two years ago in an estate sale. This mother lode also contained some rare books on Indians and Africa, like "African Hunter" by John Mellon. Right now, the book which interests me is by Whisker, on the small gunsmiths who were building long rifles and Jager rifles for the newly arrived immigrants from Ireland and Scotland, who often had no firearms when they landed in the early 1770s. I found some records which show the cost of components like barrels and locks, and the selling prices. It was a lot like the industry of putting together AR-15s today. I will post some photos of these old rifles I have found or PM them to you, if interested.

A lot of black powder rifles in The South were used up and lost in the War Between the States. I used to know a fellow whose ancestors fought with mine at Kings Mountain; he had his ancestor's Brown Bess, picked up there, and an English trade smoothbore, which had been rebarreled with a rifled octagon barrel by one of these local gunsmiths.

Last year, I got to handle a rifle built in Tennessee as a reproduction of one of Davy Crockett's. It is a heavy piece, but well balanced.
 
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Scout out Ned Robert's book. His life transitioned the age of blackpowder to smokeless and while his personal story is interesting, the stories of the gunsmiths and their competitions are really great. The book is available in reprint, I'm sure. !'m not certain about "The Kentucky Rifle". I stumbled on a 1st edition a decade back and have seen no other. Written in the 1920's, some of the 'degrees of separation' are interesting. For example, the author chronicles a conversation he had with an old man who, in his youth, hunted with Daniel Boon in his later years. Really good reading.~Muir
 
Will go after those books right away, and post a list of some books when I get back to my library. I just purchased an original edition of a book written by the brother of my g-g-g-grandfather, who went to Texas in 1835, fought with Sam Houston, then on to New Mexico, then spent ten years up in the West, with the mountain men and trappers. It set me back a few $$$. :confused: I guess his father, being an Indian fighter with John Christian in Virginia, had left him with the bug to not be a farmer, but I await the arrival of my book to find out.

I think I posted here before about Daniel Boone's party camping on an ancestral farm, on the way to find Cumberland Gap, and later, Lewis and Clark camped in the same field beside the house, on their way West. They were friends with Thomas Jefferson, and sent him Ice Age fossils, so I can see the thread in Jefferson's mind.
 
I shoot black powder muzzle loading flintlocks, a .45 Pedersoli Kentucky rifle, a .54 Lyman Trade Rifle,a .62 cal Pedersoli Trade Gun and a .75 Brown Bess repro. The rifles are allowed for "all legal quarry" but as I only shoot patched round ball they would never reach required velocity to comply with The Deer Act. I think if I was to load Lee bullets they could meet the requirement possible for roe deer.
I read with envy the posts on the Traditional Muzzleloaders forum especially shooting moose, oh well will just have to get over to the land of the free one day !
See you through the smoke !
reiver xxv
 
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