What got you started in this hobby/sport?

[daniel collums]

What got you started in this hobby/sport/? For me at the age of 13 watching my friends dad shoot his. Then that cold Dec. day he brought that huge ten point buck home, he got it with a T/C Hawken .50 cal kit gun, that was some big medicine. From then on i wanted a black powder rifle. My first at the age of 14 was a CVA .45 Kentucky kit and it didnt take but a little while and i was a deer killing machine with that rifle. I never did do a lot of shooting for fun just enough to keep in good with the gun, then from there it got crazy if you follow. Now i got 2 .54 T/C hawkens a .54 renagade a T/C hawken .50 a T/C renagade .50 a T/C .50 white mountain, a .50 traditions kentucky and some of them others that are not side hammers. now i am on the hunt for a made in spain .54 gpr then after i get my mind made up i might get a custom. But first i got to get enough different ones for my kidds. i almost forgot my .45 handgun a little bitty philly derringer.

 

[kodiakmarine]

It started for me with a visit to Fort Osage. I went inside the trading post and saw a variety of early trade goods on display, and then I saw two muzzleloading kits. One was a CVA Kentucky rifle and the other was a Thompson Center Hawken. It had never occurred to me that building and shooting a muzzleloader was something an ordinary guy could do. The bug bit me and I guess I just stayed bitten. Still love it! :thumbsup: BTW, that sounds like quite a collection of smokepoles. :hatsoff:

 

[Wes/Tex]

I"ll admit it...it was Fess Parker as Davy Crockett! I was a kid back in the early/mid 50's and dad-gum if he wasn't the neatest thing I'd seen loading and firing that big old gun, licking his finger and rubbing the front sight! Then everybody started saying the gun was electrically fired cause no flintlock would work 'most' of the time...what a challenge to a bunch of youngsters!! You kidding me...we even asked to sing "King Of The Wild Frontier" in Sunday School. You young fellers just can't appreciate what it all meant. Lot of you got started because of "Jeremiah Johnson" or "Mountain Men"...we were a generation ahead! I mean Davy Crockett and Annette Funicello on the same channel...you kidding me??!! :thumbsup: :rotf:

Yes, I've still got the 78! :haha:
No, you can't have it!! :blah:

 

[rafterob]

The revolutionary fever of the bicentennial!

 

[bpd303]

Going hunting with my dad & grandad in the late 1950s and watching grandad shoot squirrels out of tall trees with his .36 caliber flintlock Kentucky.

Shots by the way that my dad & I couldn't make with our 22s. The rifle went to my older brother when grandad passed on in 1962 and probably went to his son when he passed away last year. Sure would like to have that rifle.

 

[Jumpshot]

I was browsing semi-auto pistols in a gun shop one day and I saw a flintlock longrifle in the rack behind the counter. It was a mass-produced gun (I don't remember which brand/model), not a custom, but I asked to take a look at it and immediately fell in love with it.

The guy had to explain exactly what it was to me. I was still pretty new to guns (I grew up in a family that was not into guns at all) and had not seen a muzzleloader yet. I had no idea that shooting "the old guns you load from the front end with a long stick" was something people still did these days. I figured it was just modern guns and that's it. But when I held that rifle, I was hooked. He gave me some information to look into and I was off. First thing I did was call DGW (pre-internet days) and ordered a catalog, then I started browsing bookstores and ordering books I couldn't find locally. I was going through books like a baseball player goes through socks. I especially loved the history of early guns (pre-flintlock) and the development of powder.

I didn't have anyone to teach me anything about muzzleloaders. My first rifle was a flintlock and I learned everything by reading books (that's why I tell people not to shy away from a flintlock as a first gun if that's what they want; it's easy to learn with the right resources, and now with the internet it's even easier).

In fact, I didn't have anyone to teach me about modern guns, either. I learned all that from reading, too. I'm 100% book-learnt when it comes to all things guns. But that's another story. Anyway, my new-found love for muzzleloaders led me to a stronger interest in history, so the whole thing pretty much snowballed from there. I could probably get a degree with all the reading I've done. :hmm:

 

[necchi]

Got tired of the 30-06, no challenge anymore.
Did some work for a guy that bartered a 54 Renegade for my labor.
That was 1983,, I swallowed hook, line and sinker.

 

[azmntman]

As a paper boy the pressroom foreman was kinda an idol. He took me shooting and had a caplock .50 Like Wes I was into fess parker (as danl boone though, he could split a pine tree with his "hawk" ya know) and that was that. Week later he told me the camera man had a CVA KY kit he was selling, bought it for $40.00 and built it pretty quick. That was 1973. Now I have a .32, a .36 5@ .50 3@ .54, 3@ .58 a 20 ga a 12 ga a 1858 revolver an ROA and a baby dragoon. Also a KY .50 pistol. Litteraly have bought and sold that many more (and I miss em all).

Its the historic thing for me...thinking about my great great greats having to use these to feed the family and protect em from yanks n unfriendly natives, british etc. My family just doesn't unnerstan... :idunno:

 

[buzz]

Always like the smell of black powder smoke since i first time i saw one fired dad and i biult several cva kits still have two
Dad got into mountain man thing i didnt but few years ago buddy and i went shooting new iron and few ww2 stuff i took dad's old cva rifle as i found powder caps and balls and rest or the story is i'm hooked again since that outing

 

[wpjson]

My father died in 1987 and left me his T/C .50 Hawken. I fired it a few times and as I was not in an area where I hunted much, I just set it aside. Eventually I moved back to Montana and got back into hunting. 3 years back while hunting, I noticed all the deer I was seeing were close in due to the terrain and timber. So, I thought, what the hell? And that next summer I drug the old muzzleloader out and found someone to explain the basics. I was also loaned a Harper's Ferry flintlock which I loved. I was telling a neighbor one day about my new found love of muzzleloading and he gave me an Ethan Allen Pepperbox and a Prairie pistol. Next I got a .54 barrel for my T/C Hawken thinking I could switch out barrels. But, as everyone knows, that don't work, so I had to get me a stock. I was starting to accumulate guns at a pretty good rate. Anyhow, at the beginning of that hunting season my wife got ill and required major neck surgery, so I did not get much hunting in. I have since aquired a 1851 Navy Colt, 1860 Army Colt, an inline and a double barreled shotgun. Some may ask "Why?" I ask "Why not?"

 

[Wes/Tex]

Like Wes I was into fess parker (as danl boone though, he could split a pine tree with his "hawk" ya know) and that was that.

Speaking of hawk chunking, did you see the Johnny Carson show when Ed Ames came on to chat about the show and how he, as Mingo, got to practice shooting and tomahawk tossing for the series? For the big finale, he tossed a hawk at a man silhouette. Surprise, surprise...the tomahawk hit the man picture right in the jewel box! Brought the house down! Carson stood there expressionless till the hilarity died down then turned to Ames and with the coolest expression you ever saw, said, "I didn't know you were Jewish." Yes, the place fell out! :rotf:

 

[Captjoel]

Like Wes I was into fess parker (as danl boone though, he could split a pine tree with his "hawk" ya know) and that was that.

Speaking of hawk chunking, did you see the Johnny Carson show when Ed Ames came on to chat about the show and how he, as Mingo, got to practice shooting and tomahawk tossing for the series? For the big finale, he tossed a hawk at a man silhouette. Surprise, surprise...the tomahawk hit the man picture right in the jewel box! Brought the house down! Carson stood there expressionless till the hilarity died down then turned to Ames and with the coolest expression you ever saw, said, "I didn't know you were Jewish." Yes, the place fell out! :rotf:

I do remember that skit from Johnny Carson's show! Then several years later I got hooked on SCTV out of Canada. The cast did a spoof using this same MO but instead of throwing a hawk threw rocks instead. Ole Mingo hit John Candy right in the shnuts! Oooowwwwwww too funny! ff

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I was 13 and saw the AMM camp at the National Boy Scout Jamboree in More-Rain State Park in PA. It was really cool.

One of the other Scouts got me into CW reenactment, a Confederate artillery battery... through high school. Dad got me a TC Hawken kit... never did much with it though. Then off to college, then the service, without much hunting done.

When I left the service, and became a married man and a cop (and a part time gunshop employee too), and I was looking for something well outside of my job to get rid of stress... when a guy who was selling off his guns came into the gunshop, and in is collection was a very poorly made flinter. The parts were good... his skill was not..., and the shop owner told me I could have the flinter if I wanted it.

So I restocked it into a working rifle... and some coworkers who did 18th century living history found out I had a flintlock longrifle..., and that's how I got back into BP.

The first deer I ever killed was with my 3rd flintlock rifle... now all the deer I have ever taken have been with the same rifle. I learned how to hit human sized targets with a bolt-action rifle in the Marines out to 1000 yards... bolt actions on deer just never interested me... but a flinter in poor weather, that's a challenge.

BESIDES THAT... all you folks who are part of the black powder community returned to me my faith in people. Where I was policing at the time, over a couple of years, all I saw were crappy people doing crappy things to each other. My wife tells me I was going down-hill pretty fast... though it was gradual to me and I didn't realize it. I got back into BP, and complete strangers acted as if I was a longtime friend. Some guy at a local shoot let me, a total stranger, try his $1400 longrifle... he just handed me his bag and rifle and said, "Just bring it back here after you've shot a few rounds". (A $1400 rifle in 1992 was pretty expensive) I was glad he didn't tell me how much it cost as I'd a been too worried about screwing it up. Folks left stuff out in the open, expensive stuff, nobody had anything "walk". Kids played all over the place at the event... no real adult supervision and no need... the way it used to be... the way it ought to be... THEN as I was leaving the event on Sunday, two guys had a really heated argument in the parking-field. They were arguing about which one of them was going to fix a complete stranger's truck for free... the guy who owned the tools, or the guy who was the master mechanic... not an argument about who did what to whom..., not an argument about about who was at fault for soemthing stupid..., but an argument about who was going to be the most helpful to a stranger... they finally figured out to team up and get the stranger's truck fixed faster than if each did it on his own.

When I got home my wife saw I was pretty happy... I didn't even know why, but looking back I now know why. To this day, when I get too cranky, my wife tells me "It's been a while and I think you need to spends some time in the woods... go to an event or something."


So that's why I still participate, and doubt I won't stop until they carry me away feet first..

LD

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

NICE story Dave! Thanks for sharing!

 

[azmntman]

When I got home my wife saw I was pretty happy... I didn't even know why, but looking back I now know why. To this day, when I get too cranky, my wife tells me "It's been a while and I think you need to spends some time in the woods... go to an event or something."

Can you have her call my wife please? LOL

Actually I got the same caliber wife you do...lets me do about anything I want whenever I want. Working at a home office together helps I believe...24 hr "sexual harassment" :shocked2: :rotf:

 

[Spikebuck]

I grew up bowhunting only. Did so from 1973 until 2000, much of it with traditional bows and wood arrows I made. I was getting an itch to try something new (additional) and knew that with traditional bowhunting roots a modern gun would not be my choice...and they don't allow spears or atlatls in Minnesota! So, I picked up my first muzzleloader and have been hooked ever since. It's been a wonderful addition to my bowhunting and now I cannot imagine not going out with the muzzleloader each year.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Ours was an interesting journey. It was 1969 and we were about to make a move from the Chicago suburbs to start a business and new life in southern Indiana. Prior to the move we took a weekend trip to South Bend, Indiana to visit Barney at his business of Barney's Cannons. (now known as South Bend Ordinance). I had, still have, an antique signal cannon I wanted to show him and get his opinion on. While there he mentioned a place in southern Indiana where they had a big event twice a year shooting old style rifles with black powder and some cannon people met as well. He said the town was Friendship. Looking at the map we discovered Friendship was only a few miles away from where our new home would be. Right after the move a shoot was scheduled and we went for a visit to see what was happening. I saw the people, smelled the smoke, absorbed the atmosphere and was hooked. Still hooked. :grin:

 

[glw]

Hey Loyalist_Dave, I feel the same way about muzzleloader folks. When I went to a club shoot last summer, they treated me like a distinguished guest too and, as you say, let me shoot their custom flintlocks. Good people. That was The Osage Territory Muzzleloaders.

 

[Col. Batguano]

I turned 18 in 1974 and was too young to buy a cartridge pistol, so I bought a Ruger Old Army pistol. My parents made me get rid of it. Then, I bought an Italian `51 Navy that was a POS. I bought a decent semi-ML'er (Shiloh `63 Sharps repro) to extend my hunting season. Later in life, I bought my first "real" ML'er (not counting military antiques) a custom 40 cal Late Lancaster flinter, in anticipation of using it to teach the boys about them at Scout camp. I started building a couple of years ago after buying another custom (Bedford flinter).

I wish I had discovered building years and years ago. My cartridge guns rarely get my attention any more, and it would have saved me a lot of money.

 

[Patocazador]

I got started in the 70s for purely selfish reasons; the state opened a muzzleloader season that was prior to gun season. It gave me a head start on the modern gun hunters and filled the time between bow and gun seasons.
In the off-season the only reason I shot black powder was due to boredom. About 15 years ago something just appealed more to me about it than it had in the past. I'm still not into the dress-up mode though.