Your first muzzleloader?

[yonderin]

TC Hawken, .50.

Bought "new" at a local gun shop and later found caps in the patch box. Excellent shape so a young, ignorant guy was a perfect mark.

Not knowing anything about muzzleloading, when I couldn't get it sighted in, a kindly and knowledgeable person took it off my hands for next to nothing because "the barrel was crap".

Someday I must get that "SUCKER" tattoo on my forehead removed.

 

[Jamie from Alberta]

My first two were inlines (NEF/TC) as I couldn't quite get into the whole process of B.P.
My big bro who ordered a TC kit back in the 80's after watching Jeremiah Johnson was hooked, I thought he was messed up lol. Because my job in the Canadian Army is repairing weapons aka: Weapons Technician Land he gave me his Perdersoli Frontier 50 for a stock repair (wrist was broken and splintered after load in moving truck shifted and put weight on awkwardly long box for several thousand kilometers), Tah Dah I fixed it!
I took it to the range for a test fire and that hooked me after a few 50gr pre-measured charges that he gave me. I needed my own bp gun. So after finally watching J.J. I bought my first used CVA St.Louis Hawken in 50. I shot the heck outta that one but needed something more....a kit..like my Bro had done.
So I ordered a Lyman GPR 54 kit gun. My brother told me or warned and said "take your time don't rush it". So I worked on it during my 1 month off before deploying to Afghanistan and when I finished it I was on the plane to another country in effort to fight terrorism, I didn't have a chance to shoot beforehand until I came back home.
Now I am like others an absolute addict LOL!!!! My brother eventually gave me the Pedersoli Frontier because I did such a good job on it but only on one condition, I buy a drop-in flint lock and convert it which I eagerly did and now i have 2x Pedersoli Frontier flinters, 32 & 50.
Latley I've been shooting my TC Hawen with drop-in .58 Green Mountain barrel and I just picked up a TC Treehawk 12gauge shotgun. What an enjoyable addiction.

 

[old ugly]

1983 TC Renegade, 54cal. Kit

 

[hanshi]

My first one was an H&A .45 Heritage model underhammer. Let's see, that was over 55 years ago.

 

[saaman]

My first black powder was a brass frame Navy replica in 1967. I used it shooting rabbits in west Texas and was able to drop a running rabbit once out of six shots. Soon I noticed the cylinder gap growing so I tightened the cylinder pin half a turn in the frame and continued hunting with it. When the gap grew some more I made another half turn on the pin and sold the gun. After that all my cap and ball revolvers were steel frame.

 

[Enfieldguy]

My folks gave me a Guns & Ammo Black Powder Special when I was about 9 or 10 and I immediately started bugging them for a '51 Navy. I got a brass frame Navy about a year later. I literally shot that gun to pieces. Learned a lot about the durability of brass revolvers. It wasn't long before I was rolling my own combustible cartridges too. Oh, and I still have that G&A BP Special too. About 10 years ago I even scored a hard-cover edition.

 

[McClura]

I got to fire a fellow workers TC Hawken 50 cal percussion one day at the range, 1975. I was hooked. I found a Hawken .50 percussion at the old TG&Y store in Oklahoma City and put in Lay A Way. Got it out right before hunting season. I had been talking and taking notes to a few people that was shooting them at my range.
I had a box of roundball, two different types of patching and a pound of FF Goes with a hundred #11 caps.
I think I shot all of that in two weekends. Took it hunting instead of my Lever 30-30 and took a spike whitetail. I was head over heels into BlackPowder then. Took several more with that rifle and started to shoot competition at some of the ranges near my home.
After 3 years I was having issues with accuracy and TC said send the barrel back. Got a new one in two weeks.
I still have the Hawken. It has a Sharon, .54 cal roundball barrel on it now, 1-60 twist and was a drop in barrel, blued and with sights.
It is still shooting and took a cow elk with it in Colorado in 1992 with roundball at 40 yds. I loan it sometimes if someone thinks they might want to get started in side locks.
I started building flintlocks in 1981 and still make one every once in a while. I hunt and still shoot a friendly match every once in a while.
Still hooked on making smoke.

Mike

 

[Jock Ellis]

In the summer of ‘63 my father took me to an auction in downtown Atlanta and let me bid on what the auctioneer and the late lawyer/gunsmith/outdoor writer, Schley Howard, of Decatur who rebored it to .375 from .36 and re-rifled it called a Kentucky squirrel rifle. It has a half stock of curly maple. It has the small buttplate and a percussion lock that doesn’t really fit the stock well and leads me to believe it started life as a flintlock.
At about 80 feet it is - for me - amazingly accurate and I lost a BP turkey shoot in the ‘80s to a reproduction by 1/32”. Older and wiser - geezer - now and an non destructive testing (NDT) inspector, I should do a test of the barrel. Someday I will but I don’t remember shooting it since the turkey shoot.
When my son moved out he started carting off my guns but when he picked up the rifle I had to ask him, “Where do you think you are going with that?”

 

[thomas]

My first was a Hopkins & Allen minuteman rifle, in the late 60's

 

[russellshaffer]

Mine was a Tower pistol, $20 from a pawn shop in 1965. I knew next to nothing about black powder so I loaded it with a capfull of powder. Don't remember what I put on top of the powder, but probably some shot. I figured that since it was an antique type weapon it wouldn't be very impressive to shoot. I held it very loosely, about like you might do with a 22. So, when it went off it flew out of my hand and landed several feet behind me. The flint was stuff we picked up on the ground and broke up with a hammer and we filled the pan to capacity. My brothers sold or traded it while I was in the Air Force and nobody knows anything. I wonder how many grains a Dupont cap held?

 

[spudnut]

Mine was a cva 45 cap Kentucky, my buddies brother talked me out of the Bess kit in the gunshop,( they're too messy) shortly got a tc hawken capper I still have and recently aquired another Kentucky, been through an armoury of smoke poles sice the first one

 

[Tanglefoot]

Well .... My first ML rifle was an 1803 Harper's Ferry - an original. There weren't many replica muzzleloaders around in the early 1960's. "My" Harper's Ferry was in good shape, but missing the top hammer jaw and the screw. I got parts from somebody back then (Norm Flayderman, I think) and put it together, got hold of a dozen flints and a nutcracker mold from Dixie and cast up some round ball, and bought a pound of FFFg from the local hardware store. Worked just fine.

 

[Grenadier1758]

My first muzzle loader was a Navy Arms (Uberti) Reb brass framed revolver. I bought the Reb because it was $30 cheaper than the steel framed Yank. Yeah, should have bought the Yank but I just didn't have the extra cash. Shot that pistol quite bit during college years and set the muzzle loader aside for about 15 years when I bought a T/C Hawken. Soon to follow was a CVA Mountain Rifle. As I met other shooters and builders, I started to descend that slippery slope and added other guns. After all these years, I still find a lot of enjoyment shooting. Nothing quite like touching off the Long Land Pattern King's Musket and watching a knock down target fly off the stand.

 

[Keb]

T/C .45 Hawken in 1986. I sold it a few months later and started building my own flint guns.
That was the last production gun I ever owned.

 

[Buckeye Shootist]

My first muzzleloader was an original 1858 Remington New Model Army .44 C&B pistol that I bought in July 1963 for $100. I still have this pistol, & probably have shot 2 or 300 rounds out of it. It was on display in a local museum for about 20 years, so haven't shot it much lately.

 

[J.G. Terry]

My first muzzle loader was the earthly remains of a Lorenz .54 caliber rifle musket. My Dad bought if for $1.50 in a pawn shop when I was a kid. The front half was missing. Next came a old Belgian made 12ga SxS. Still have the Austrian rifle musket fragment.

 

[gds260]

My first muzzleloader was a CVA Hawken style kit I bought while in high school in 1977. Man did I do a rough job with it but it shot and I did kill a doe with it. I have hunted with a muzzleloader of some type since then.

 

[Sure Shot Rick]

Euro Arms .44 Kentucky Flint lock. Real hard to get ignition. I had the frizzin faced with what turned out to be radio active material. It would spark a marvel. I then read an article about the stuff and had it replaced with a piece of spring steel. I think I sold it off a blanket at Fort Frederick. years ago.

 

[Zonie]

Someone put a layer of depleted uranium on your frizzen.

A few years ago this was a fad but when the NMLRA figured out what was happening they banned the stuff.

Probably a good thing. No one I know wants to be breathing in uranium, depleted or not.

 

[Idaholewis]

My first Muzzleloader was a TC New Englander .54 Cal, My Dad gave it to me.