Ok, what is the best shot/shots you have seen or accomplished?

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Not bad for a $100 rifle
 

Attachments

  • 60A18A53-4E78-4656-8020-7796A4600333.png
    60A18A53-4E78-4656-8020-7796A4600333.png
    235.5 KB
Second Southwestern Regional Rendezvous, Johnson City Texas. White Bear was the booshway and the model for the picture. Distance was somewhere north of 100y with a 20 mph crosswind gusting to 30 or more. Kids were being sent back to camp for more powder, caps and ball. Nobody could hit the target in a fatal area to end the shoot. We teamed up and helped each other walk in the shots. Aim point on this one was probably a foot and a half high and a foot and a half left. The target was attached to a flat piece of steel hence the splatter.
 

Attachments

  • scan0011a - Compressed copy.jpg
    scan0011a - Compressed copy.jpg
    27.3 KB
APOCRYPHAL STORY...,

So the story goes, Clint Eastwood made a trip to Japan to promote High Plains Drifter, in 1973. He was very popular over there ever since one of his Italian made Westerns, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, debuted in December of '67. So when he arrives, Mr. Eastwood is ushered to a waiting car, and a caravan of cars takes him to a reproduction of the town that was the setting for the film. Mr. Eastwood doesn't speak much if any Japanese, but they give him a loaded cap-n-ball revolver, and ask for him to shoot it. They gesture toward the town, so Mr. Eastwood point's it downrange, and squeezes off a shot. BAM!

Except for some reason the thing is loaded live (NO idea how the Japanese managed to convince officials this was OK, but maybe because it was just for the opening of the western town ???) ANYWAY, about 30 yards away from Mr. Eastwood is a sign hanging from a beam projecting from the roof of one of the buildings. So he HITS one of a pair of ropes holding up one end of the sign, and cuts that end free.

Well the Japanese are VERY impressed..., Mr. Eastwood returned the revolver to the fellow who had handed it to him and Mr. Eastwood then returned to the car that brought him..., all the while being showered with "thank you" many dozens of times from the crowd.

Except later Mr. Eastwood told somebody that he had thought it a prop gun with a blank.... , and merely squeezed off a round to make the folks happy, and hadn't even aimed it let alone meant to hit the sign.... 😳

LD
 
Using a muzzle loader I hit a cotton tail at 90 steps. I had been shooting a closer target when the rabbit stepped out of the brush. Someone dared me to hit it. Mom fried it for supper. I blew a finch to puffs of feathers at 20 odd yards. A smart ass kept telling me and my dad "you can't hit anything with those things".
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My ex-wife’s nephew, he was 14 at the time shooting a .32 Cherokee. Well, you all know that a .32 isn’t a lot bigger than a common house fly, right ?

Well we having our weekly Thursday evening practice shoots when a house fly landed on a target at 25yds.

Kevin said “I’m going to shoot that fly” …..”Sure you are Kev”.

BANG ! Bullet hole appeared where we last saw the fly. We walked up to the target to closely inspect it. Wouldn’t you know it, there was a nice neat .32 hole in the paper and……..fly legs sticking to the paper !

I shouldn’t have doubted his skill, I witnessed him split that .32 on an axe head more than once.
 
T'was at a TAB rendezvous over near Montgomery, Texas. The match was off hand rifle at a 10-inch steel gong suspended from a tripod. The first firing line was at 25 yards, and it was an elimination shoot. Hit and you move to the next firing point. Miss and you're done. I was shooting my .54 J&S Hawken Slantbreech replica, built around a Douglas Premium barrel by Huntschool Hering. It was late afternoon when the match started, and by the time we had shot and moved back 20 paces four or five times the light was dimming down t'ords twilight and it was getting hard to make out the gong against a background of trees and brush -- plus the land sloped away gently there and we were getting to a place where the swell of the ground between us and the target was starting to block our sight line. By that time it was down to myself and ol' Iron Chest (Mike) who was shooting "Pooter," his .62 caplock. Mike loaded that iron so light it sounded like a cap pistol in an empty oil drum when he shot, hence the name. I guess we'd been shooting for well over an hour. We had volunteer "spotters" off to the sides about half way to the target gong because we'd started having trouble hearing the "Clang!" of a hit. We both hit and walked back with the range officer to the next mark again, and I turned to Mike and said I was getting tired. He grinned and said, "Don't worry, `Foot, this'll be over right soon." I asked him if he was planning to miss this shot and he just grinned again and held out his paw with one round ball on the palm. "Nope," he said, "This's my last ball." He loaded up
and fired. No "Clang." The spotters yelled that it was a miss.
I stepped up and could not see the gong at all. It was below the curve of the field. Fortunately I had marked a tree in my mind and knew that the gong was at the base of that. I aimed at the tree and held a mite high, squoze the trigger, and "Clang!" -- except we were so far away we couldn't hear it and had to take the spotter's word for it. The range officer said that shot was something like 150 yards.
 
30 years ago or so, I took my Kodiak Double 50 to the local Turkey shoot.

The game was running deer at 40 yards. 2 shots in a given distance of travel.

5 deer on a cable being pulled by a boy running toward you over to the side.

My first shots were a tad behind, but now I had the lead!

I won the next 4 rounds shooting against modern rifles!

They talked about it for years, how a muzzleloader out shot the modern boys!

My most memorable shot is shooting a bull elk broadside at 40 yards!
 
Back in the verrry late 1970's I had just purchased my Jonathan Browning Mountain Rifle. I was still getting acquainted with it, there was a dozen idiosyncrasies that I was just beginning to figure out. A coworker invited me out to a black-tailed Jackrabbit hunt in the Owyhees, so I took the new rifle out for a trial run with some standard .54 components. The day went to pieces quick. The bore was burred and shredding patches, a .530 swaged ball was a hammer it down fit, useless in the field. The sight as provided, was releasing the elevation screw a partial turn at every shot, and the trigger adjustment screw dropped out of the trigger plate, forever gone, not replaced, and not needed. The few shots I got off did not connect. We were returning to the car with a very disappointed me when we spotted a lone rabbit sitting broadside quite a ways out. I had the old girl loaded so I sat down and got a pretty steady hold on him, then I floated the muzzle up till the drop looked about right. I shot him straight through the chest, the ball was dropping so fast it entered on top of one shoulder and exited below the other. That shot saved the day, the rifle has required a lot of work but I still have it today. We paced it off at 213 long steps.
 
A work friend got a repro walker revolver for $100 plus powder and balls. He filled the cylinder to the brim and seated the balls. We placed a small shaving cream can on a post about 60 yards away. He hit it the first shot! Tried to repeat it, he could NEVER hit ANYTHING with that gun again! Got mad and sold it….
 
Only once did I have a memorable shot about 15 years ago. I was at a local ML shoot and the one station everyone was avoiding I tried. You sat on a 55 gal. drum, like on horse back, and shot at a 300 yard 12x12 plate. I had a tang site on my 45 underhammer and didn't adjust it for the range. To me knowing the published data on a RB just held over my guess of what was needed and rang it first time. The two gents at the station from the club that ran the shoot just looked awe struck.
 
Maybe not the best shot but a interesting one, a few years back hunting squirrels with the dixie .32 a gray squirrel was laying on a limb looking at me about 30 or so yards away, so I drew a bead on his head and cut loose ,well Mr. squirrel hit the ground, so I figured ok got him, I commenced too re-load while keping a eye on the squirrel about that time he starts too run around in a circle and up the tree he goes and into a hole. Well along about a week later I was hunting squirrels again same tree only this time the squirrel was on the side of the tree, same rifle I was using the week before, took aim and shot this time I went right too the squirrel good head shot and DRT. Now while looking at the squirrel I noticed a freshly scabed slice straight along his side, ran the whole length of his body, figured it was the same squirrel from the week earlier.
 
By that time it was down to myself and ol' Iron Chest (Mike) who was shooting "Pooter," his .62 caplock. Mike loaded that iron so light it sounded like a cap pistol in an empty oil drum when he shot, hence the name.

Iron Chest earned his name at a TAB rendezvous. It was an "under the table" shoot. You sat in a chair at a table, held a hand of aces and eights and shot under the table at the target about 10 yards or so away. Iron Chest's first shot hit the stump we used to hold the target, came back and hit him in the chest and knocked him and the chair he was setting on to the ground. We thought he was dead at first. He finished the contest after we set up a stand to hold the target for the rest of the match. He was Iron Chest thereafter.

Mike once told me he used 35 grains as a load for the .62 rifle. Beware the man with one gun. He was deadly accurate with that thing.
 
Iron Chest earned his name at a TAB rendezvous. It was an "under the table" shoot. You sat in a chair at a table, held a hand of aces and eights and shot under the table at the target about 10 yards or so away. Iron Chest's first shot hit the stump we used to hold the target, came back and hit him in the chest and knocked him and the chair he was setting on to the ground. We thought he was dead at first. He finished the contest after we set up a stand to hold the target for the rest of the match. He was Iron Chest thereafter.

Mike once told me he used 35 grains as a load for the .62 rifle. Beware the man with one gun. He was deadly accurate with that thing.
I’d have had to change my shorts if that happened to me.
 
Other than a very few nice targets with tight groups, actually nothing special, I did make a great shot once on a running doe with a flintlock smoothbore (me, not the deer). The range was only just under 25 yards so maybe nothing worthy of mention.
 
45 to 50 yard offhand head shot on a sitting ruffed grouse using a .45 caliber round ball, I could see the sun gleaming off it's eye which was my point of aim. A near perfect .45 caliber hole outlined by the head and beak.
 
I once watched a man shooting a silhouette target offhand and hitting it each time at 100 yards with a Brown Bess. And to those who say it can't be done, they're wrong. I saw it with my own eyes.
I had a Navy Arms Charleville that would do about as good. It's just one of the guns I wished I still owned.
 
Other than a very few nice targets with tight groups, actually nothing special, I did make a great shot once on a running doe with a flintlock smoothbore (me, not the deer). The range was only just under 25 yards so maybe nothing worthy of mention.

Being straight up is more worthy of praise than something one does with a gun!
 
Shot August 15th 2021. Twenty five yards off hand open sights,Using a 45 caliber target rifle I made in the Early 80's using a Douglas barrel 1/66 twist The load was 40 grain FFF Kik powder,.445 ball cast with a Dixie" hair curler" mold using a leather over powder wad and .014 pillow ticking patch, lubed with synthetic sperm whale oil
 

Attachments

  • card shot 001.jpg
    card shot 001.jpg
    85.5 KB
I once shot a clay bird out of the air at about 70 yards with my .54 cal hawken. It was not planned. The guys to my left where throwing birds, I had just shouldered my rifle to shoot a steel target at 75 yards. A bird that they missed popped into my view so without thinking I shot it out of the air.

In AU a few years ago at the World long range ML match's one of our team mates shot a magpie out of the air. He was shooting at I think the 900 yard target and at around 400 yards the bullet hit the bird as it was flying by. The guy scoring saw it happen. He did get to shoot another shot for score.

Fleener
 
Back
Top