Thought I would share an interesting experience

Last Sunday I though i would shoot out the the WNS Trader row, and make one more trip over to Tip curtis’s Tent. Tip was gone but as I had a friend with me we walked the entire Traders Row.

After that I ask if they had ever say a muzzleloader being shot, and got kind of a Dumb Look. so we went over to the are where they were having Primitive Matches.

Friends eyes were opened big, and said things like this is History, and WOW, and it looks like fun.

Think i may have a convert on my hands.

:bow:

That was a good move on your part. For people not familiar with the sport, seeing traditional black powder firearms being fired creates quite the spectacle.

Case in point. Most of the guys I work with hunt. Many of those also have muzzeleoaders they hunt with to take advantage of the extra nine days we have here in NY for the late season muzzeleoader season. Yet you should see the looks and hear the comments made when they see me with my Hawken. You'ld think I just walked out of the stone age!

Traditional muzzeleoaders are definately not the norm!

Folks see them in the movies but I think they have a problem actually relating to what they have seen.
It's only when they are actually seeing with their own eyes that they realize these things are actually real.

When a friend shot one of my flintlocks he couldn't get over the sounds of the flint hitting the steel, the sight of the flash in the pan and the speed with which the gun fired. He was truly amazed.
It gave him an entirly new feel for history of the gun and our past.

I've had a similar thing happen a few times when I let freinds shoot one of my caplock pistols , It's one thing to shoot one but it's an eye opener when I show them how to reload . When they see how long it takes they are shocked they say things like if the other guy still had a shot or two left we would be dead meat if this was the old west. I sort of give them a new element of understanding and a little more respect the early pistoleros .

When I got home to clean my ML shotgun last weekend, my sister's boyfriend was there helping clean the garage. He is a very experienced "modern" shotgunner; we call him the Duck Doctor. He seemed very interested in the ML, in the style (cap lock), the hammers, and how you can go from quail to geese with the same gun. He also helped me analyze my patterns a bit.

He also got to see the cleaning process, and he remarked, "h*ll, I spend longer than that cleaning my modern guns." (But he is bordering on OCD when it comes to cleaning anything. Our garage sparkles now.)

"That's going on my list of things to do as soon as I finish my thesis."
:grin: