How & When did you start in Muzzlelaoding, or Shooting Muzzloaders

[David Teague]

Like most of the shooters here that are getting long in the tooth, I too grew up watching Davy Crocket, The Alamo, and all those odd yet delightful Italian westerns....

When I was 8 or 9 I got to see a muzzleloader shot up close when I was visiting my Grandmother in Canyon City, OR.

It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen up to date in my life and I had to have one. When I was 13 in 1973 I got my mother to order a (cough, cough) Indian made Enfield cavary carbine, smoothbore in .69 cal for a whoping $50.00... what a POS... :haha: but it got me started in a life long love of black powder firearms... (BTY, the Indian made guns have come a long ways in the last 33 years for quality, a long ways... :hmm: )

Almost everything I have is either a muzzleloader or a cartridge gun that I load as a BP cartridge. :youcrazy:

Cheers,

DT

 

[2172]

I'd been a shooter of cartridge guns since age 12 (1944)...got pretty far into competition in the '60's, met Jac Weller through business in the late 60's...he was then the honorary curator of both the West Point and the Sandhurst weapons collections..I'd read his stuff in The American Rifleman, and found he was as knowledgable as you'd expect..had a huge M-L collection..all antiques, valued at + $2.5 million in the '60's..I got interested...had always had a minor interest via history...bought a kit from Dixie...an old 28 ga. bbl , butt plate, trigger guard found in a warehouse someplace, plus new wood, perc lock (hammer new, rest "found in whse")
Cost me $14.95....that was it...Hank

 

[hornetk4]

Like a lot of us here I was born in the 50s , got my start at about 12 shooting smokeless 22s an such .When I got to be 18 I started buying a gun or 2 or 3 and shot them when I got a chance . Then in the 80s I relocated to the country and commuted to work then got the bug to shoot bp , I saw the hawken kits and wined until the wifey got me one for Christmas . That started what I hope to be a life long habbit , I'm up to 7 muzzeloaders now looking for at least 2 more maybe 3 . As I said I'm fortunite to live out in the country so I only have to step outside hunt rabbits birds or varmints life is good in fact I think I'l grab my bag and 12 ga sxs and go for a walk have a good day folks.

 

[thehorn]

I started shooting muzzleloading guns in 1967 when I was 11. My father was a p-t gunsmith (in addition to his f-t job) and had a personal preference for American antique guns. I always was around guns since I can remember, but it wasn't until I came upon the 1967 issue of Dixie Gun Works' catalog. By cutting lawns and baby sitting I saved enough for a Centennial Arms '51 Navy. We shot that gun together in the backyard quite a bit. That's when the bug truly bit. Many good people took me under their wing and helped to further cultivate my interest in bp guns. Val Forgett was one of them as he was local to us, and Turner Kirkland and Ernest Tidwell were good to me too and we'd always make a point of seeing them at DGW when we visited my dad's family in TN. I love the hobby and it's provided many, many hours of quality time since. It's largely the reason I'm a history teacher today.

 

[RedFeather]

July of 1973. That spring before I got out of the navy I bought an 1858 Remington and ordered a Zouave from Navy Arms, along with mold, pot and dipper. When I got home my mom said "Your two rifles arrived in the mail". Well, NA not only shipped the musket, but threw in an 1895 Steyr straight-pull mannlicher! Of course, back then there was no ammo for those. Sold it off years later for almost what I paid for the musket.

RedFeather

 

[Charly_the_rebel]

I always was fascinated by weapons since my youngest days.
Because arms were not allowed in private hands after WW II and the following decades, so Arms and owner of Arms had the Nimbus of being something special.
I am born in 1960 and my first contact was a bad expirience with an 9mm Luger 08...
My uncle hide his Luger 08 during his last front-vacation ( in 1945 ) in ihs fathers rabbit-stable...and forgot about it at all.
In 1966, I went to Grandpa#s house and played around his yard - and in the old Rabbit-stable, wich was quite to fall down now.
Dont ask me how , but somehow I found the old Luger 08 - wrapped in Oilpaper, with two magazines full of 9mm cartridges...
Young Dump Charly was happy!
Somehow I figured out how the thing will work - an put a magazine in it....
The next thing I remeber, was a terrible >BANG< ,
the ol' Luger laying somewhere on the ground and my wrist was broken.
O lord - whata hell of a party then !
Grandpa ,Granny ,Mom and Dad came runnig to the old stable, Grandpa just took one look around, reached for me and gave me the worst set of >Buttfeed< I'd ever get !
The he took the 08 - and I never saw it again...
Thats how it started.
Grandpa almost beat the ** out of me , but he could not stop me from being fascinated by arms.
In 1975, as I was 15, I joined a Schützenclub and begun - inofficial - ML-shooting.
And Fascination of arms and ML-shooting never released me until today.

 

[tnlonghunter]

I'm not real sure when I started. It was either as a kid because I idolized Davy Crockett to the point that I had my mom and grandmother make me a set of "buckskins" out of faux leather upholstery, and played with those toy longrifle cap guns from Paris, TN for years. If I could have gotten into shooting real muzzleloaders, I would, but I was too young to have my own, and my dad didn't know anyone that did.

I finally got started in college, when my dad picked up a used Charles Daly 1/2 stock hawken thing used from some guy at a church he was preaching for. He told me he got it for me to hunt with, and I was really excited, but the previous owner never took care of it, so the barrel was rusted almost to the point you couldn't even get the PRB down. My folks at this point had bought a farm from a gun builder named Steve Davis who still builds flintlocks from around the Rev. war period. He helped me check out this gun. It never worked well at all, and after a couple of shots the sear broke, so it's basically a crappy wall hanger. HOWEVER, my dad had bought a flintlock TN longrifle a few years earlier, which I thought was just a wall hanger. Well, Steve and I checked it over, and it was in great shape and ready to go. So I started shooting my Dad's gun, which is a Jack Garner .50. My dad gave it to me for Christmas later that year. :grin:

 

[akapennypincher]

Lots of intresting replies...

 

[RangerThacher]

I was a big fan of Davy Crockett and the Swampfox on tv when I was a kid. Except I was watching them as rebroadcasts in the mid 80s, not the 50s. When Ken Burns' "The Civil War" came out I was 9 or 10 years old and was instantly hooked on history. I was a huge Civil War buff for years after that. When I was 12 or 13 I saved up my money and bought a reproduction 1861 Springfield at a local reenactment. My dad and I would go to the range every once in awhile and shoot it. In high school I stumbled across Allan Eckert's books, the first one I read was "The Frontiersmen." After that I was hooked on the 18th century. I used my pay from a summer job when I was 17 and bought a Jim Chambers "Christian Springs/Marshall" flintlock rifle kit in .58. I started trekking that year and got my dad to come along too, now he's hooked on trekking. About a year later I bought an Early English trade gun (.58) from North Star West. My dad and I would take the rifle and trade gun to the range to target shoot occaisionally, which was all the shooting we did outside of a couple treks each summer. We also started going to rendezvous and some reenactments. After that I took off halfway across the country for college, life happened, got married, etc. Now it's been about 5 years since I've done any shooting or trekking/reenacting, but I still have all my gear, and have had every intention to start again. Recently my wife decided she wanted to start reenacting and trekking with me, so we're gonna try to get out to some events this summer. :grin:

 

[Gemoke]

it was the summer 1990, my brother took me out showed me how to load and cap the darn thing. it went bang, lots of smook and the most wonderfull smell.Got me a[url] T.C.Renegade[/url] and never went back to modern guns agin,now I`m into flint lock smooth bores. and to think my brother was doing this for 20 years before he let me in on all the fun. I think that was just plain mean.
cut finger

 

[merdean]

It was 1976. I was in Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain courtesy of Uncle Sam's Air Force. (Just outside Madrid) I was running around with some of the local Spanish Nationial Police Officers and they invited me to go to their shooting range and run some ammo thru their carry weapons. When we got there a bunch of guys were just finishing up a competition with black powder rifles. Being an American, I was invited to try a round. One thing led to another and I discovered that while cartridge arms were tightly regulated in Spain, muzzleloading weapons were not. I already had my max of cartridge guns. So I ordered a kit from Markwell Arms. They were the only kits I could get shipped to my APO address. It was a .50 cal and I bought some powder from the local fishing shop. Caps I snuck in from Germany. I built it in a couple of weekends and took it out to the Rod and Gun Club Rifle range. It took several "clicks" before I got a "boom". First shot missed the target completely. But after that I was shooting 8" groups! That first gun was a pain to learn on but I did learn. Currently I own 9 firearms. 1 of them uses cartridges. My accuracy has increased somewhat.

 

[Walks Alone]

Late 60's with a reenactment group in the Rocky Mountains.

 

[MikeChapin]

I was always interested in black powder from Fess Parker's Davy Crocket and Danial Boone. When I graduated college my grandmother got me a CVA Colonial pistol kit. I was hooked from then on.

When I went to grad school in Laramie, WY I got into it in a big way. Bought my first rifle and went to my first shoot and shot my first game with a muzzleloader.

Been ruint ever since.

 

[john12865]

My Great Grand Father, who lived to be ninety nine years old, shot a muzzleloader and I can still remember that as a little kid, at about four years old. My Great Grand mother died at an early age and he became quite reclusive.
He lived in a small cabin with no electricity or running water and trapped and hunted his food. He also had a small garden where he grew vegs and tobacco, he hand rolled his own cigarettes. He had a small wood stove for heat and took a bath in the nearby creek.
He didn't have a license or even know how to drive a car. He never wanted anything and the only thing my father could ever give him was kerosine and blackpowder. :thumbsup:

The coroner said he died in his sleep from old age. I hope, I'm only so lucky.

My Great Grand Father made me become a muzzleloader and he doesn't even know it. :grin:

 

[CrackStock]

In 1975, my father picked up a T/C Hawken kit and it was stored in my room. I used to open the box and study the parts and in time I was hooked. I finally put it together and gave it to him, but he had nobody to hunt with and neither of us knew much about shooting them, so it sat around for a while until I built another kit.

About this time, I wound up moving to Indiana, so I gave the second gun to my brother to hunt with our dad. When I got to Indiana, I missed the ML guns, so I bought another T/C kit and built it.

I moved back to Louisiana, joined the NMLRA; found a local club and then I started shooting more. I learned that I wanted more from my guns than the T/Cs could provide, so I built a Tennessee Classic smallbore. Been seriously hooked ever since. Even devolved into owning and shooting a couple of smoothbores. I even wear funny clothes now too. Fortunately, I married a woman with a sense of humor who laughs at all of this foolishness and I am somewhat indulged in my ML hobby.

CS

 

[Brokenlaig]

I'm surprised nobody else has said this, so I'm first.
My first real look at muzzleloading was thru the movie "Jeremiah Johnson". I became interested in the history of the Mountain Men, and from then on it's been an interest of mine (I was all of 8 or 9 when I saw this movie). I first saw a muzzleloader fired when I was fourteen, and actually shot one in high school (an old H&A underhammer a friends dad owned). After finishing my time in the service in 1986, I went to the local gunshop and they had some old CVA mountain flint rifle kits for cheap. While I was looking at it, I was told there was a buckskinner group local.
I've since sold that rifle (I did a pretty crappy job of assembling it, but it shot like house afire as it was a REALLY old kit with the douglas barrel) But I've never lost the interest.

 

[Mad Irish Jack]

In 1978 here in PA, I (Ditto PvtC). Yeh, it was just that way!

 

[jderrick]

Well, I've always been interested in old weapons... always kicked around the idea of a kit... wound up working in a job/town where I've got odd spare moments of time... and it just kinda went from there.

 

[DVanVorous]

Started because of a hunting trip I went on in the '70s (right around when they started the CO ML deer season). Met a gent on the hill and asked how he was doing whereupon he quipped he hadnt seen anything but got off a couple "noise shots". :shocked2:

Thats when I hung up my 7mm Mauser and got a T/C .50 and started hunting in the ML season, havent looked back since. Got into buckskinnin' while livin' in CA in the '90s as a protest of todays tech age...

Keep yer powder dry,
D.

 

[Tom Word]

I'm one of the new guys to ML.

I went to my first Rendezvous in Oct 2001.

But, the story starts long before then.

I was one of those 6 year olds who pestered my Mom about getting one of Fess Parker's coon skin caps at the grocery store. (Unfortunately, I could never persuade her to get it!)

My Dad was raised in SW Arkansas and liked to hunt and fish. I couldn't wait till the hunting season would come around. One of my joys when I was old enough to drive was to go out plinking with Dad's 22.

Some time during my teens (60's) I picked up and read a "mountain man" book whose name I've long forgotten. I just remember thinking I was born 140 years too late!

After 4 years in the Corps and knowing 3 friends names on 'The Wall', I landed in San Diego where I didn't seek out the hunting and gun culture that isn't main stream.

By chance in Oct 2001, I found a flyer for a Rendezvous, called the Booshway and was heartly invited to come and see what was going on.
When I got to the Rendezvous I knew I was "HOME".
I easily made several new friends. One of them asked me,
"Do you want to shoot my Hawkens?"
It was a HOOOT!
That experience was only second to same friend's other question at the end of the shooting day,
"Would you like a beer?"

Because of work, it took me another year to become familiar with ML and finally buy my CVA 54 St Louis Hawken which I shot the living daylights out of. A 54 Lyman Plains Pistol kit wasn't too far behind.

All was good until I broke my golden rule of "Don't pick something up unless you can afford to buy it!!!!"
At one rendezvous, I picked up a Lyman GPR and was instantly in love. Now, I have a new GPR that I am breaking in. And the CVA is looking for a new home.

I try to shoot as much as possible with the San Diego County Muzzleloaders. But, there is nothing like going to a Rendezvous to see friends and shoot the walk through. There is nothing like hearing your round ball hit that metal bell out at 100 yards using the same style of gun your many times great grand parents (male and possibly female) used back in their day!!

I know ML and rendezvous has spoiled me because I can't keep my head out of the mountains, and 'the city' is boring.

But, Gosh!, I do come home with a smile on my face!