How did you get into the BP Sport and why choose Flintlocks

I was raised in the western part of New Jersey. As a teen, In the The mid-60’s, I was introduced to hunting And instantly hooked, I started hunting small game, and quickly graduated to whitetails, in great abundance in NJ at the time. Back then, firearm deer hunting was limited to using buckshot/shotgun. While I thoroughly enjoyed wing shooting waterfowl and upland game, using a scattergun, to hunt deer with one held little interest with me. I soon turned to archery and muzzleloading, both relatively new methods with few participants back then. My first muzzleloader was a percussion, built from a kit. I found the beauty of the rifle, along with its effectiveness at typical deer hunting distances to be very well suited. I quickly evolved to the flintlock, primarily because it’s history and design was very intriguing to me. It did demand greater knowledge and skill for success, but, once mastered, it added an extra measure of “romance” to the sport. To this day, my sense of satisfaction successfully taking a whitetail with a flintlock has not diminished. Hunting them in the still beautiful Northeastern woodlands with flintlock is like heaven!

In 1970 a Navy classmate and fellow Marine officer from Cincinnati got an original muzzleloader from his father and got it in shootable condition. We shot at targets in the North Carolina swamps. I was hooked and bought my first 'kit' from Golden Age Arms in Ohio.
Then my Great Aunt joined the DAR.
I have been shooting, building muzzleloaders, making accouterments and clothing ever since; as well as re-enacting.

Along about 20 years ago I almost lost my right hand, literally, but that's a long story for another day.
After three years I was still dealing with a hand not functioning properly, but they (the surgeons) told me to "just be glad you still have your hand". I couldn't even lift a glass to drink let alone pour a cup of coffee.

Well, I had to give up skydiving (17 year veteran) and snow skiing not to mention my stick shift pickup...I never trusted automatics. So I was looking for a new hobby, one that would help me with my hand/arm issues - - that is when I came across a group of Pirate Reenactors.....I thought "Sword fighting, that would work my hand! And being Stage, it just might work"

So I got involved. However, I wasn't satisfied with just Hollywood, I tend to read a lot and the Internet was also a 'hobby' of sorts (another story for another day). I wanted 'Authentic', I wanted Living History. So I read, I researched, I worked on my kit, I learned new skills, and.....I bought my first Flintlock.

I searched out any reenactors that would teach me about Black Powder, I attended various safety classes, i learned to fire the cannon, i purchased myself a blunderbuss....but i wasn't happy - shooting blanks just didnt seem right. And the way many of the reenactors treated their weapons, well, from my research just seemed Blasphemy!!

So I found me some Real Muzzleloader shooters, they took me to a range, taught me how load patch and ball; And I was Hooked. Never fired a blank since.
Now I have a few more muzzleloaders and a couple cap and ball....life is Good!

Oh, my hand, its I would say about 90% now. Still cant do pushups, still get 'tingles' around the wrist, but no more involuntary convulsions and it hasn't 'dropped out' (gone 'dead') for the last five or six years now.

I also blame Davy Crockett, and my Dad who constantly made up stories about Crockett when we played. I must have gone through a dozen longeifle cap guns, coonskin caps, and powder horns. I was 21 before I really got into shooting them much for real - I had shot a couple caplocks and a flinter once but never had much chance to get serious til then. Dad had a Jack Garner Tennessee Mountain flinter that he never really used (I think he bought it as a lark and then found he wasn't really into all the extra steps required for loading a ML). The family bought a farm to shoot and hunt on while I was in college, and that's when I finally had the chance to get into it.

Dad initially bought me a CVA Hawken style used from someone, but the bore was so badly rusted and pitted you couldn't really load it. And then the end of the sear broke off on the third shot, so it was a big paper weight. That's when I kind of commandeered Dad's unused flinter for deer season. The rest is history. He gave it to me for Christmas that year, and it is still my main deer gun 20 years later.