What's the difference? Pyro/Black

This is not aimed at anyone, I just clicked the last post in the thread.

I get the impression that some people think we should open this web site to the discussion of all firearms in the hope that we will attract people to traditional muzzleloading? Isn't that what you're saying? All stick together?

This way of thinking could be applied to all organizations then...

Single-Action clubs should allow auto pistols in an effort to persuade those shooters to adopt a Colt single-action?

I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but that would be the logical extension of this way of thinking.

 

[MikeChapin]

...
A member of our club tried to get us to amend our by-laws to be " primitive " only....

I've met a few of those guys myself over the years.

I've always been of the opinion to allow in-lines to shoot with the club. So far I've had no takers. We don't see many in-lines around here. Except for a few areas there are no special seasons for muzzleloaders. We go out with the rest of the center fire hunters. There is no advantage for a center fire person to get one to hunt in a muzzleloading season.

The few people I have seen at the range using them seem to think a 5" group at 50 yards, off a bench is great. They seem amazed that I can usually do better than that offhand with a flinter. I always invite them to our monthly club shoots but none has taken me up on it.

 

[paulvallandigham]

MIke: Shooting is a big ego thing for most men. I don't know why. I understand the thinking, but I don't understand why they don't grow up, and treat shooting as any other skill that requires correct practice to do well. And I don't understand why guys don't want to shoot next to better shooters, so they can watch, and learn how to be a more skilled shooter. Most good shooters are willing to answer questions about stance, hold, breath control, and follow through. Most can help you with load development. But new shooters have to ask.

I also like to go out to a regular rifle range and shoot next to the guy with the fancy rifle, big scope, expensive gun case, and brand new boxes of commercially made ammo. If you have a spotting scope, offer the guy the use of it, to check his targets. I have seen men spraying magnum bullets all over a target off a rest at 100 yards, while I am shooting nice groups in the black at that range. When we go down to patch holes, the guys look over at my target, and then look back at their own. When we get back to the firing line, he looks at my open sights, and gear, and quietly packs up his stuff and drives off without saying a word.

It is not my purpose to drive guys like that off. In fact, It made me both sad, and angry that the guy left without saying anything, including a thank you for the use of the spotting scope. But men are that way. Occasionally, when I am shooting my BP shotgun at a trap or skeet field, some of the modern gun shooters will come over to question me about it, gauge, load, etc. But when I offer tham a chance to shoot it, they almost always decline. In those two sports, you have a lot of shooters who only want to win, and they work hard to break those 100 x 100 scores. They don't want to shoot any other guns but their owns for " fear that they will learn a bad habit ", or miss a target, and break their mental self image.

Those kind of shooters drive me nuts.

If you think you are not going to miss another target after you learn to hit them consistently, and shoot your first " straight ". BOY, do you have something to learn. I did that only once in my life. A neighbor down the block came back from the service on leave, and bought a then new Remington .350 Magnum carbine, with the laminated stock. He bought a scope and mount to put on the gun and he was looking for someplace to shoot. He came down to talk to dad, as the word on the street was that dad was a target shooter. We took Eddie with us to the range, and he fired about a dozen cartridges through this gun, which he could not control, at the target, trying to get the scope zeroed at 100 yards. It was beating him half to death, because he had not been trained to handle a heavy recoiling rifle. He asked me after a break to change targets to fire a shot to see if it was him, or the gun that explained why the bullets were hitting all around the black but not inside it. I lined up and fire one shot, which cut a hole as near to dead center in the bullseye as I would shoot in the next 20 years. Not having fallen off a turnip truck that morning, I declared, " Nothing wrong with those sights !", and walked away to massage my shoulder. I have never fired another round out of a .350 Magnum. But I certainly would be willing to do so today.

See my article on handling heavy recoiling rifles and shotguns. [url] www.chuckhawks.com/handling_heavy_recoil.htm[/url]

Paul

 

[MikeChapin]

MIke: Shooting is a big ego thing for most men. I don't know why. I understand the thinking, but I don't understand why they don't grow up, and treat shooting as any other skill that requires correct practice to do well. And I don't understand why guys don't want to shoot next to better shooters, so they can watch, and learn how to be a more skilled shooter. Most good shooters are willing to answer questions about stance, hold, breath control, and follow through. Most can help you with load development. But new shooters have to ask.

I have seen this myself and, like you, don't understand it. I got halfway decent by watching better shooters and asking a question here and there. My goal at the time was to be able to place all five shots into a six bull black at 25 yards offhand. I had done a lot of shooting of centerfires and could place shots rather well off a bench. I had not much experience with offhand shooting.

The next step was keeping concentration when there was a lot of movement around you. The club I was in provided that. The rule was no touching of the shooter but any other harrasment was fair game. Having someone come up and stare at you while you are shooting is an amazing concentration breaker.

...When we get back to the firing line, he looks at my open sights, and gear, and quietly packs up his stuff and drives off without saying a word.

It is not my purpose to drive guys like that off. In fact, It made me both sad, and angry that the guy left without saying anything, including a thank you for the use of the spotting scope.... ...

I've seen that before also. My first reaction to someone outshooting me is to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong rather than get all hot and bothered that the other shooter did better than I did. Maybe it was because I was surrounded by good shooters early on. Othern, on this forum, and several others that I associated with over the years gave me something to strive for rather than getting smug with my own skill level.

If you think you are not going to miss another target after you learn to hit them consistently, and shoot your first " straight ". BOY, do you have something to learn....

I usually shoot like the little girl with the curl. When I'm good, I'm very very good. When I'm bad I'm horrid. Mostly I shoot well enough to win some plunder at shoots. When I get on a hot streak, I'll pick up a couple of aggregates. Then there are the other times when it seems I can't hit anything worth a darn. I know it's me and the more I try to buckle down tho worse it seems. On those days I just go ahead and shoot and just take pleasure in the act of shooting even though I'm not accomplishing a whole lot.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Yeah, on those days, I just concentrate on the basics, knowing I am screwing up on one or more of them, and that is why I am in a slump. Been there before. Some days that little guy in your head decides he wants to play, and won't work worth a darn. That is what makes shooting such a challenge, and such a worthwhile challenge. Like anything else, when you can turn in a good performance when you know you are not at your best, and everything is trying to go wrong, you know you finally have arrived. :thumbsup:

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

Paul,

As is the case most of the time, you're right again! My son and I just joined a "primitive" club...they still let us in even though we use caplocks. They are looking for new members and had left flyers in a BP store that we frequent. To their credit, they don't have a rule about caplocks even though most of them use flinters and wear dead animals on their heads and feet.

Maybe in the future I will buy a flinter, or worse yet wear a dead animal on my head or feet. I told them at the last meeting of the club that I would respect there wishes and not show-up to their Rondy with my Walker revolver. They don't have a regular hand gun shoot anyway...YET!

The club is also scheduling a shoot with some hunters that use the inlines, but they want to do a gong shoot. I told them to make it a paper shoot so that the inline guys could use their sabots and the clubs' gongs wouldn't be damaged. Most inline shooters use the sabots, not PRB, because all of the stores push them along with the subs. Some inlines haven't seen anything but plastic touching the bore, and some shooters use regular gun cleaner for the plastic fouling.

In a paper shoot, the inline guys could take that walk you spoke of to patch the sighters, and stare at the results of the more primitive firearms...I think that would get them asking questions and trying-out some caplocks & flinters.

We all have to stick together! In the local gun club that I belong to, we have several leagues / disciplines. We all share the eight outdoor ranges, from the small pits to the largest one, our 100 yd. rifle range. Static Steel, Knock-Down Steel, I.P.S.C., I.D.P.A., Shotgun (clays), High Power (Garrands & A-R's) AND Black Powder League . It would be much too expensive for the BP League to turn into snobs and be forced to buy separate property just to segregate themselves from all of the modern firearms.

Our Black Powder League has divisions for every type of gun that shoots BP, including them thar fancy carrrrtridge guns. An Olympic shooting coach uses an inline and the guy next to him shoots a capgun and the WOMAN next to me shoots a flinter. I shoot a caplock as well. At the end of the day we all shake hands and congratulate the winners in each division and the highest shooter as well. Sometimes it's me and sometimes it isn't...and there's no hard feelings because so and so used this or that type of gun. I feel lucky to be surrounded by people who shoot BP well and have learned alot from them...sometimes enough to beat them at their own game. These are all my friends, regardless of what the trigger is connected to.

In my opinion, if it burns BP, it belongs on the BP range in competition. The guys with the inlines would soon see how good the guys with the dead animals on their heads can shoot. And if enough of these new-found primitives go to the store clammering for real Black, who knows, maybe Mr. Storeowner can find a way to make a buck too!!

All the best, Dave