hanshi
Cannon
I have to go back a long way for this one but it was an event I'll never forget. Georgia has long been a deer Mecca but in the mid 1960s deer hunting in the Piedmont was not nearly as good or as widespread as it was later to become. Still there was deer to be hunted and that was my main goal.
About this same time I saved up for a muzzleloading rifle hoping to satisfy a longtime urge fueled by Davy Crockett on TV. The gun I finally chose was an H&A Heritage model .45 from Numrich Arms. It was a well made and handsome piece and it came with a leather rifle case, bag mold, powder flask and black powder solvent. All this for under $80. The rifle's lock was a simple underhammer percussion mechanism. Time to start shooting.
The manual recommended 60 grains of powder; no mention of 2f or 3f. I bought 3f. With spit patches from a cut up t-shirt it shot very well, indeed. I would later find the accuracy to be astonishing.
There was a tract of National Forest land in an adjacent county and that's where I scouted. Finding a large forked tree I built a pretty nice stand maybe ten feet off the ground and some 100 yards from the bank of a river. I hunted there a couple of times and saw doe, but no bucks; It was buck only back in those days.
One balmy fall morning I sat in the stand with my back resting one of the large tree trunks and my rifle laid across my lap. The other trunk, which made up the other half of the massive fork, was directly in front of me but my position still commanded an excellent view of the mostly open woods. I love the autumn woods in the morning and on this particular morning I couldn't help myself; I dozed off.
Now I have always hunted as much with my ears as with my eyes so it was not unusual when an "out of sequence" sound snapped me to instant alert. In front of my stand at about 11:00 0'clock was something I never ever expected to see; a large bobcat was walking straight away from me and about to hoist itself over a rotting log lying on the forest floor. All I could see of it was the huge rear end as it hopped up on the log. without even thinking I raised the rifle, cocked it and fired all in one smooth motion that probably didn't take more than a second. The thick cloud of smoke obscured the view but not the rustling sound of an injured cat.
By some miracle I made it down to the leafy ground without falling. Though I was shaking like a palsied octagenarian, I somehow managed to actually get most of the powder in the rifle bore when I reloaded. This only took a few moments in reality but it seemed like hours. I ran to where the cat was when I fired that first shot and saw the feline several yards away trying to escape into the brush. Though it was moving much more quickly than it should have been, I could see that it's hind quarters were out of commission. The cat's front half, however, was working just fine. The ball had hit the cat's spine as it was facing in the opposite direction when the rifle fired.
Expecting to simply get up close and administer the coup de grace, I was horrified when it instantly reversed direction and came snarling at me with way too much speed and ferocity. Two things happened is rapid succession; my rifle fired into the ground inches from my feet - to this day I still can't figure out how that could have happened - without ME firing in the opposite direction and I thankfully did a quick backpedal without falling on my butt.
The most amazing thing, to me, is that somehow during the backpedal race the gun became loaded again. I don't remember doing it (I can't, actually, not even moving forward,), but incredibly it was loaded when the furious cat decided it wasn't going to catch me after all and turned once again in an attempt to escape. Ducking into a nearby brush pile the cat did it's best to disappear. I walked around part of it trying to decide my next move. Going for broke I kicked a large limb which sent the kick rattling through the pile. The desired effect was to cause the cat to emerge, which it did. And out it came in a snarling rage; but this time I was ready. From just a few feet away I fired the final shot. The whole affair couldn't have taken more than four or five minutes at most, but it seemed longer, much longer.
This was my very first muzzleloading kill. I still have the skin but it's not in good shape any longer. On a bathroom scale the big female weighed nearly 25 pounds. As a footnote just a week later I took a second cat from the same stand.
About this same time I saved up for a muzzleloading rifle hoping to satisfy a longtime urge fueled by Davy Crockett on TV. The gun I finally chose was an H&A Heritage model .45 from Numrich Arms. It was a well made and handsome piece and it came with a leather rifle case, bag mold, powder flask and black powder solvent. All this for under $80. The rifle's lock was a simple underhammer percussion mechanism. Time to start shooting.
The manual recommended 60 grains of powder; no mention of 2f or 3f. I bought 3f. With spit patches from a cut up t-shirt it shot very well, indeed. I would later find the accuracy to be astonishing.
There was a tract of National Forest land in an adjacent county and that's where I scouted. Finding a large forked tree I built a pretty nice stand maybe ten feet off the ground and some 100 yards from the bank of a river. I hunted there a couple of times and saw doe, but no bucks; It was buck only back in those days.
One balmy fall morning I sat in the stand with my back resting one of the large tree trunks and my rifle laid across my lap. The other trunk, which made up the other half of the massive fork, was directly in front of me but my position still commanded an excellent view of the mostly open woods. I love the autumn woods in the morning and on this particular morning I couldn't help myself; I dozed off.
Now I have always hunted as much with my ears as with my eyes so it was not unusual when an "out of sequence" sound snapped me to instant alert. In front of my stand at about 11:00 0'clock was something I never ever expected to see; a large bobcat was walking straight away from me and about to hoist itself over a rotting log lying on the forest floor. All I could see of it was the huge rear end as it hopped up on the log. without even thinking I raised the rifle, cocked it and fired all in one smooth motion that probably didn't take more than a second. The thick cloud of smoke obscured the view but not the rustling sound of an injured cat.
By some miracle I made it down to the leafy ground without falling. Though I was shaking like a palsied octagenarian, I somehow managed to actually get most of the powder in the rifle bore when I reloaded. This only took a few moments in reality but it seemed like hours. I ran to where the cat was when I fired that first shot and saw the feline several yards away trying to escape into the brush. Though it was moving much more quickly than it should have been, I could see that it's hind quarters were out of commission. The cat's front half, however, was working just fine. The ball had hit the cat's spine as it was facing in the opposite direction when the rifle fired.
Expecting to simply get up close and administer the coup de grace, I was horrified when it instantly reversed direction and came snarling at me with way too much speed and ferocity. Two things happened is rapid succession; my rifle fired into the ground inches from my feet - to this day I still can't figure out how that could have happened - without ME firing in the opposite direction and I thankfully did a quick backpedal without falling on my butt.
The most amazing thing, to me, is that somehow during the backpedal race the gun became loaded again. I don't remember doing it (I can't, actually, not even moving forward,), but incredibly it was loaded when the furious cat decided it wasn't going to catch me after all and turned once again in an attempt to escape. Ducking into a nearby brush pile the cat did it's best to disappear. I walked around part of it trying to decide my next move. Going for broke I kicked a large limb which sent the kick rattling through the pile. The desired effect was to cause the cat to emerge, which it did. And out it came in a snarling rage; but this time I was ready. From just a few feet away I fired the final shot. The whole affair couldn't have taken more than four or five minutes at most, but it seemed longer, much longer.
This was my very first muzzleloading kill. I still have the skin but it's not in good shape any longer. On a bathroom scale the big female weighed nearly 25 pounds. As a footnote just a week later I took a second cat from the same stand.
