Why do you shoot a muzzle loader?

[mbokie]

I'm sure this will sound stupid and out of place, but....the damn thing makes me feel complete, independent and as if my fate is up to me.

I cannot account for it, but that is what it does. Not to mention that it's more fun to shoot than anything else in my arsenal.

 

[VEARL]

(Why do I shoot a muzzleloader ?)
Ya mean to tell this pilgram that there is something new out there?
Next your goin' to say that something is on the moon.
Roundball and Smoke is the beat medicine for what ails ya. :surrender:

 

[Walks with fire]

I think it's because I like doing things myself and a flinter gives me that feeling. I wouldn't own an inline if you gave me one. I use a recurve bow but have no use for a compound bow; I like revolvers but don't like the semi-auto guns.

 

[watopeka]

Really started around 35 years ago , was reading about these bp guns and a somebody that new everything had told me that you could not hit a barne door with one at 20 paces ,so we got into a very serious argument. So i bought one a thompson center in percussion and later a flint and made him a liar. Feel in love with it, even when they get a bit testy. Then a saw a hand built rifle that was really the clincher .Built 2 flinters going for a third and a forth not to far in the futur it's my best medicine, slower paste lots of learning and i am amaze how times flies when i shoot . Not many flinters around my part of the country so when they see me with a charcoal burner i get a lot of attention.

 

[rawhide]

well I started mls for hunting. almost 16 years ago. with a inline I was always interested in the traditional style so I bought one. old cva hawken. well on a sad note I'm a alchoic. ben sober now for 10 years!!! why because I started bucksking and shooting rondys. helped to unwind and have fun and just for a little while for get all the bad and look like a free trapper. in other words I fond my self. and I'm a better man for it. now in my neck of the woods I'm the squril gun champion, 5 time state champ mens rifle, and in my club 2nd place mens pistol 2 years in a row. I love this stuff.

 

[TFoley]

Why do I shoot a muzzle loader?

Because over here in UK, where so much priceless shooting heritage has been taken away, I can STILL shoot a big boomer rifle, a musket or a muzzle-loading handgun.

tac
Whitworth
Musketoon
Colt Walker
ROA

 

[lakota]

I love my muzzleloaders. I love all of the stuff that goes with them. I love the smoke and the smells. Its versatile and cheap to shoot. There isnt anything out there that is quite as fun to shoot.

 

[rsieber]

I shoot it because I basically got it for free and I do have fun doing it. Besides, it feels like you touch the past when you do it

 

[Nappers]

I was very fortunate to inherit a nice custom half stock built by Andrew Fautheree and Harold Moss.

I had it for a year or so and took it out and messed with it and looked at the goodies that came with it.

It was my 2nd cousins gun then he gave it to my dad when he passed away and my dad gave it to me when he passed away.

I found out a buddy at work shot them quite regular and he is very precise in what he does, at work, home and play. I figured I couldn't learn from a better person, I won't blow the gun or myself up. I had powder, balls and patches.

He took me to the range and we shot it and it's a blast and been hooked since, after hundreds of dollars later, I am accesorized to the max with a Traditions Trapper model pistol added for rendevous.

My rendevous name is Patches, I asked my buddy what I needed for a rendevous, he said I need patches etc, I bought 2yds of pillow ticking, washed twice and dried twice and it mic's at .22 with .495 balls, I ended up with 1500 patches or so and had a ton of cleaning patches, so....Got Patches as my knickname.....

I love it, it's a sickness thats for sure, I hope there is no cure, the only cure at times is money and time to shoot!

 

[smoothy]

My Dad helped me get a Colonial CVA pistol kit back in '73 when I was in the 8th grade. From there I was facinated with the Zouave rifle and 1858 Remington revolver. We found an old guy in town whose nickname was Snorky (everybody had a nickname in my town) that used to shoot black powder. He had a tin of old Remington size 10 percussion caps (uses size 11) and shot a few rounds off. I still have the CVA brochure from back then.
In '83 I got a Thompson Center Renegade. After that came a CVA replica of the Colt Army 1860, love those open tops, and then started building my own guns buying and making one part at a time due to budgeting constraints. First a southern mountain flintlock rifle and then a colonial flintlock fowler.
Its the nostalgia and history I like most about these guns. I've gotten deer with all my blackpowder long guns. Taking my .62 cal colonial flintlock fowler deer hunting this coming season. It's her turn, the others will be jealous. :grin:

 

[Ken Morrison]

Because it's so much more fun then any other firearm. Also the smell keeps me coming back.

I almost never hunt or target shoot with a center fire arm since I started shooting a flint lock six years ago. I wish I'd gotten into muzzle loading 35 years ago.

 

[David W.]

Why would one NOT shoot a muzzleloader? :idunno:

 

[HOGGHEAD]

For fun. Tom.

 

[Stumpkiller]

'Cause if I left it loaded it would be dangerous to keep around.

 

[Congress Own Regiment]

When I was a little boy they caught my eye and stared my imagination. As a young man they peek my interest in mechanical art that functioned as a tool to feed and to defend. Learned there place in history admired there graceful lines. By the time I was grown they got into my blood. Now it does my hart good to use them every chance I find.

And modern gun are just a boring stack of wood plastic and steal. They do have steal in them still don't they?

 

[Blackpowdersmoke]

I was introduced to muzzleloading when I was 15 yrs old by a guy I went to high school with. He had moved into our area a year or so before and he was the only person I knew that had black powder firearms. He had a .58 Zouave, a replica Berdan rifle with a brass tube sight, and a replica Griswold and Grier (Confederate) revolver. I used to go to his place and shoot them and I became facinated by black powder firearms. My parents gave me my first rifle, a T/C Hawken .50 percussion as a Christmas present in 1973 when I was a junior in high school. The next year they gave me a replica 1858 Remington revolver. I still have both of them and still shoot them along with 14 other black powder guns. It's just something about the BOOM and the smell of black powder along with the challenge of hunting with them that I truly enjoy....BPS

 

[Beau Ouiville]

I got a ML rifle to extend the deer season for me in this state.

Then I got a ML shotgun because I seem to do estate pheasant each year and that is like shooting fish in a barrel to me, although I am not a very good shot.

The third reason I got into blackpowder is because I watched too much Daniel Boone as a kid!

 

[Birddog6]

Frontier times & their ways & weapons have always fascinated me, even as a child. I read every book I could find about it, always thinking I was born in the wrong century.

I shot my first ML when I was about 16.... Built my first rifle when I was 25, and still have it. Ugliest rifle I ever built. I get it out now & then just to see how ugly it really is & to see what I can build now, which is just slightly better. I have been in love with ML's ever since the first time I shot one. The smell of the powder, the smoke, having to hand load it & "I" make it do what I want it to do... Just nothing like it for me.... :thumbsup:

And building a rifle with my own hands & building it like I want it & sometimes pleasing others, for me that gives me a sense of accomplishment. It is not something I bought or traded for, it is something I did myself & it gives me a good feeling inside me to know that. It also makes it hard to sell them or give them away at times, cause every one of them have a little of me in them, and money can't buy that.

Keith Lisle

 

[rmonday2]

There is just something mystical about holding an instrument designed hundreds of years-ago to survive and protect ones self or family; too bring meat to the table and know without a dought that you understand the satisfaction our founding fathers felt when they poured that powder down that black hole and seated that hunk of lead snug to the bottom just to prepair for the day.
I "can" go back 200 years and live in the moment every time I pick one up!

 

[hrchotaw]

A crisp fall morning,I was 8, and my grandpa was the smartest man on earth! He had a little bench sat up and I shot my first muzzleloader.At that time it was just like Dan'l and Davies,now i know it was a 1873 trapdoor converted to a muzzleloader.Then it was with my Dad and then my boy ,and soon my grandkids!Very special times doing something I Love,and THAT BOOM AND SMELL!!! :thumbsup: