Your first muzzleloader?

[Cowboy]

What was your first muzzleloader? Your first baptism into the world that we love so much? “ Precious Memories “

My first was a CVA Mountain Rifle Kit. I was 13 or 14 years old at the time. Put it together and did a horrible job at that! Looked like crap but I loved that rifle!!

Actually took some rabbit with it. After school I’d get home with only a few hours of day light left. Wade through the sage brush and snow that blanketed the Wyoming landscape. Right at dusk I’d be trampling back home with a couple of rabbits for the freezer. Between my brother and I, that freezer was always stocked up!

Some of the fondest memories growing up in the mountains around Cody Wyoming.

Anyway, what was your first muzzleloader and some of your fondest memories with it?

Please do share.

Respectfully, Cowboy

 

[Bearkiller]

My first taste of black powder happened over 40 years ago when my dad bought me a CVA Kentucky rifle kit. I was about 13 and like many that age I was all excited about it for about 10 minutes then my attention went in another direction. It was three years before I slapped the kit together and I do mean slapped together. It looked awful. It was about 20 years later that I rebuilt it properly. Wish I still had a photo of it. I sold it to a friend a few years ago and she developed some health issues and haven't seen her or the rifle since.

Before I sold it I joined a BP club and did a lot of target shooting and trail walks with it. Maybe I can talk her into selling it back someday....

 

[tenngun]

What was your first muzzleloader? Your first baptism into the world that we love so much? “ Precious Memories “

My first was a CVA Mountain Rifle Kit. I was 13 or 14 years old at the time. Put it together and did a horrible job at that! Looked like crap but I loved that rifle!!

Actually took some rabbit with it. After school I’d get home with only a few hours of day light left. Wade through the sage brush and snow that blanketed the Wyoming landscape. Right at dusk I’d be trampling back home with a couple of rabbits for the freezer. Between my brother and I, that freezer was always stocked up!

Some of the fondest memories growing up in the mountains around Cody Wyoming.

Anyway, what was your first muzzleloader and some of your fondest memories with it?

Please do share.

Respectfully, Cowboy

I bought a cva pistol kit when I was 15 but never got around to putting it together, bought an mowery Allen and Thurber brass box lock rifle, .50 1/60, twist.... for $90.00 when I was 17. It was a shooter. After my first go round with it I invented the short starter. A year later I learned there was a club for ml shooters. I went to my first shoot with my loading tool in my big Tandy leather shooting bag and my long horn powder horn. I imagined, on the way to the shoot, the amazed look on other shooters faces when they saw my loading tool. Alas my great invention was just a night late. My dad later put that cva together one after noon

 

[Don Steele]

My first was a mail-order T/C "Hawken" style rifle. Flipping through the pages of my latest copy of The Shotgun News ( or as one of my buddies used to call it: "The Bayonet Gazette") I saw a full page ad featuring Thompson Center muzzleloaders from Ron Shirk's Shooting Supplies in Lebanon, PA and decided sort of "off the cuff" that I wanted one of those. I had NO experience with blackpowder. Of course, in the mid-1970's....there was no internet, and I didn't know anyone who knew anything about shooting blackpowder.
When my rifle arrived...My first foray into the world of shooting muzzleloaders didn't last too long because I didn't know about BP "fouling". As I went through the loading procedure after each shot, the rifle got progressively harder to load and being a lot younger and somewhat less careful...my response was to simply push HARDER on the T/C ramrod, without knowing HOW to "push harder" on a ramrod. The result was a broken ramrod as one would expect...but fortunately I got out of there without having to pull the end of said ramrod out of my arm.

 

[Howie1968]

My first muzzleloader was in1986 it was a CVA im assuming a mountain rifle as it had 2 wedge keys. it was 50 caliber. I was living in northern Indiana. I earned it by helping a gunshop owner clean guns take out trash and sweep his store for the whole summer. I got the rifle powder all the accroutments. I ended up taking 2 deer that year with it. long story short went to college, then military desert storm and operation restore hope. after that I worked for department of corrections than became a full time hunting guide for over 30 years I stayed away from muzzleloading as I bowhunted . I was hunting a WMA here in Texas when I couldn't get closer than 50 yards to the pigs. I immediately thought muzzleloader as on this WMA you can use muzzleloader. about that time I found this forumn. its been a couple years now ive had some great mentors my first rifle back into traditional muzzleloading was a lyman .54 deerstalker, I now own 7 different .54s 5 .50 cals a .58 and a pedersoli Kodiak .72 I also own a flintlock. when I first got back into it I used conicals mainly. one of my mentors sent me a bunch of roundballs and I pretty much shoot roundballs in everything now. what a great adventure this has been. and thank you to all of my friends and mentors ive met on this site!!!

 

[Stumpkiller]

My first was a T/C Seneca percussion in .36 cal. Followed quickly by a T/C Renegade percussion in .54 cal.

 

[Snakebite]

I was getting ready to ETS from the Army and move home to Austin Tx. That was 1977, I had been looking at a T/C Hawken at a local gun shop but as a Spec 5 and only bringing home $580 a month, and knew I'd be looking for a job when I got home I hadn't pulled the trigger yet. A guy came into our unit from Alaska and he had two rifles built by Bill Fuller of Coopers Landing AK. He suggested I wait until I got home and see if there were any builders in my area. So I did. I went to McBrides gunshop in Austin and they told me there was a guy named Davy Boultinghouse in Round Rock TX that built guns. So I contacted Davy. He ended up building me a Hawken rifle, .54 caliber, Douglas XX rifle, Ron Long triggers and lock and a very nice piece of wood (see the avatar) all for a sum of $500.00. I had 9 months to pay it off which was a good thing because I was only making $3.85 an hour back then. We had a club in Austin called the Hill Country Free Traders and I won many shoots with that rifle.
Funny story, I went back in the Army in 1984 and my second tour in Germany was in Hohenfels. We had a club in Grafenwohr called the Northern Bavarian Renegade Rifles which had German and American members. Once a year we had a rendezvous and my son and I had a little camp set up. A German guy came by and looked at my rifle. He asked if he could pick it up and I said sure. Then he asked me how much I wanted for it. I told him it wasn't for sale. He was getting a little persistent about a price and I kept telling him it was NOT for sale. For a minute there I thought about saying 10,000DM but I was afraid he might say ok. I made some good friends with that rifle in Germany.

Snakebite

 

[Juice Jaws]

My first was a Ruger Old Army Revolver in the early 70's. I think I paid around $100.00 brand new. And of course some where down the line traded it off for something shiny and new. Wish I still had that revolver.

 

[Walkingeagle]

TC Hawken .50 percussion, used with all necessary accessories. Bought for around $250cad if memory is correct. This was in 1997 I believe. Eventually sold it to my brother.
Walkingeagle

 

[Kansas Jake]

My first one was a CVA Kentucky Flintlock kit made by Jukar about 45 years ago. I worked hard to make it a nice kit with the very limited knowledge I had at the time. Unfortunately it had a soft frizzed and was a disappointment. The barrel looked like a water pipe inside, so I never shot it enough to see if it was accurate in spite of the barrel's looking rough. I was able to swap the frizzen from a pistol a also built from a kit and it would fire, but I was soon building a TC Hawken Kit in percussion. I still have that rifle although the first two are long gone and I don't really miss them.

Now that I think about it, I ran across the soft frizzen the other day in a box of junk in a drawer in the garage. I tried to harden it back in the day with information I could find and even had someone at the plant where I worked try to coat it with a hard metal to get it to work. We never were able to make it work.

In spite of that rifle, I'm still in love with smoke poles.

 

[Boomerang]

My first was actually a CVA 45 cal old Ironsides cannon kit when I was a kid, but my first rifle was a TC Hawken in 50 cal.

 

[Roguedog]

I was about 14 years old, my parents bought me a T/C Englander I believe. It had the round barrel and was 50 cal. It was lost in a house fire. My next "first" muzzleloader was a T/C Renegade, also in 50 cal. Due to negligence and inexperience, I ruined the barrel but recently had it rebored to 58 cal. I still use this gun often. Not HC to any period but it reminds me of my youth and slings a roundball with deadly precision.

 

[Flintlock_bob]

Back in the late '70's or early '80's I bought one of those Japanese .69 cal Tower Flintlock pistol, my cousin bought a, IIRC, CVA flintlock pistol. Mine fired reliably my cousins not so much. I still have mine.

 

[Sparkitoff]

I started with a Zouave by Zoli. I did not know anything about them but I took it to a local gunsmith who got a big smile when I walked in. I asked him how to load and shoot it. He sold me a pound of powder, a tin of musket caps and gave me a bunch of conicals that he said he had just finished casting. Ends up he was a .58 caliber enthusiast. I poured a scoop of powder from the scoop it came with, shoved a conical down the bore and fired until I was sighted in at 100-yards. Later that year I proceeded to shoot a fork-horn buck at a range of about 25 feet. Some years later someone offered me a lot of money for that rifle and I took it. One sale I regret.....

 

[Eterry]

In 1979 we moved to the STICKS, no phone, no neighbors, 13 miles from a town of 5000 to an old Butterfield Stage Stop. I was in 8th grade shop class, and I needed a project. My teacher, Coach Willis, asked us who wanted to build a muzzleloader in class? My hand shot up, and after begging Dad he gave in and got me a CVA Kentucky rifle 45 cal. Four or five other kids built a gun, but I'm the only one who kept his.
We had about 45 minutes a day to work on it, but I had it together by spring break. Took it home, in the white, on the BUS and shot it for a week. The manual said 70 grains was max, so I settled on 60 grs (ffg was all I could get). WHAT A RUSH...the smell, the smoke, the noise...I was HOOKED!!

I prowled the adjoining 5000 acres and shot everything that moved with that gun, but never saw a deer close enough. My most memorable shot...was shooting with friends in the front yard when a rabbit popped out and ran down the road about 75 yards and stopped. Having no fear I raised up and killed it, so fast it surprised even me!

I went to college and my brother shot it and didn't clean it. I found out about 3 years later, the gun is in my garage, the barrel full of ATF. I want to take a deer with it.

 

[Cruzatte]

What was your first muzzleloader? Your first baptism into the world that we love so much? “ Precious Memories “


Respectfully, Cowboy

Mine was a Dixie Gun Works Tennessee Mountain Rifle. How I discovered black powder and muzzle loading was like this. I had been reading the Fox Fire series of books. When Fox Fire V came out, I read it from cover to cover. It had interviews with luminaries like Bud Siler, Hawk Boughton, Bob Watts, and Hershel House. I was fascinated. I had no idea people were shooting and building these things anymore. I had to have one.

So in the back of the book, was the address of Dixie Gun Works. I sent off for their massive catalog. When it arrived I poured through it, reading it almost like a good novel. I had to have a flint lock. Nothing else would do. Fortunately, no one was around to dissuade me, saying "Beginners shouldn't be starting with flint locks." My reasoning was "If Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone could learn to shoot behind the butt of a long flint lock rifle, so could I." And I did, finally ordering the TMR.

Oh boy, was that thing heavy! But it performed flawlessly.

Well, that was over 35 years ago. That Dixie rifle has been gone a long time. Now perhaps, when you can find one, who knows? They may be collectors' items.

 

[Bent Sight]

My first muzzle loader is a Thompson Center Renegade I bought late November of 2017 from a local gun shop. It had been at the shop for so long it had a pretty coat of dust on it and they were happy to see it go.

Now I own three muzzle loaders and have sent a total of 705 round balls downrange since last year. I may have to enroll in a 12 step program if I keep shopping for more muzzle loaders.

 

[PK]

TC New Englander, .54 caliber with a 12 gauge extra barrel. Still have it. Shot a lot of deer. Has been my primary grouse gun for 20+ years.

 

[S.Kenton]

My first muzzle loader was a CVA Kentucky rifle... I cut my teeth on it when I was around 16 yrs old I’d say. I shot that thing to death! I sold it some time ago to another newbie.... wish I’d not done that..

 

[excess650]

I think I was a sophomore in HS and got a CVA Mtn Rifle kit (.50 percussion) for Christmas 1975. I browned the barrel after heating it on the kitchen stove (electric) and swabbed it with BC plumb brown..<stink>.., but it turned out OK and I STILL HAVE IT! I never shot anything bigger than a racoon with it, but that needs to change.