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Joined
Nov 30, 2015
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Location
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Mine was a caplock rifle circa 1970 or so. A half-stock rifle made in Italy. I believe I got the ad from the NMLRA magazine, "Muzzle Blasts." It was in .45 caliber back when choices were limited. With it, IIRC, came a misshapen bullet mold that wasn't exactly round and was in brass.

This is a memory from a long time ago. Back then, the choices were cap and little else. There was not market for flint guns that I remember.

I traded the rifle for a 1958 Ford truck back in the day, about 1974 or so. It was a good truck.
 
mine was a 54cal Renegade kit gun purchased in '74, the year they came out. it was an awesomely accurate gun.


similar to yerself, a few years later I traded it & a couple ca't'idge guns for a 4-wheel drive pickup. 3/4 ton with 1 ton suspension under it. it would pull the gates off of Hades & got every bit of 9 or 10 miles to the gallon uphill, downhill, headwind, tailwind, fully loaded or unloaded. workin' over 50 miles away, I didn't keep it long. still miss that gun.
 
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.
 
Mine was a 45 cva kentucky percussian,then a tc hawkin,then a dixie brown bessthen a dixie mountain rifle,next a32 blue ridge and another dixie bess,then a custom lanchaster,then a 20 gauge american fowler,another blue ridge ,a first model bess,adixie yeager,a harpers ferry,a blunderbuss ( currently for sale on facebook)a 1717 musket,a cookson fowler ,a matchlock,a nsw tradegun,my old tc hawkien comes back,and finaly a 45 cva kentucky percussian,what a long strange trip its been :thumbsup:
 
I got the "itch" to own a muzzleloader about 1976 or so. Scanning the pages of the "Bayonet Gazette" (aka: Shotgun News) :wink: I kept seeing a big ad from Ron Shirk's Shooting Supplies. Decided to order a Thompson Center Sure 'nuff 50 caliber caplock Hawken with all the necessary "accessories". :thumbsup: Quite a thrill when it arrived. I didn't know anything about shooting blackpowder. Nobody I knew did either. :nono: I got out to the farm with my new rifle, loaded her up and went to shooting. First shot was great. Second shot...a little harder to load, but still good. Just pushed a little harder on the ramrod. :nono: Third shot...had to really push HARD to get the ball down the barrel. Fourth shot...broke the ramrod. :redface: I didn't know about fouling, or the proper way to seat a ball. I just grabbed the ramrod at the top...like Daniel Boone...and shoved her down. :doh:
Somehow or other...I got past those early days without ruining the rifle or killing myself.
I still have that rifle..it's in great shape and has taken several head of deer/hogs over the years.
 
I never had time to get into black powder, nor was I ever exposed to it. I injured my next and lost strength in my arms so I couldn't bow hunt. Thought I'd give black powder a try and traded into a .50 renegade. That was about 8 years ago iirc, and I haven't looked back. I have too many long rifles now, but don't have the renegade anymore.
 
Bought a Thompson in about 1978 or 9 and shot it and hunted with it until sometime in the late '90s and then sold it to a friend at the time and he left the area and I heard he had passed (young). His now adult son contacted me and wanted to hunt the farm and I was glad to have him here. When Muzzleloading season started he showed up with the old Hawken and hunted with it as much as he could. Good to see the old thing again.
 
The first rifle was a Investarms .50 cal Hawken

I owned a cap & ball revolver prior to that , don’t remember the brand but it was a .44 cal. This was around 76’.
 
10 yrs old, so like 1972-73 era. I was a paper boy and the pressman was kinda like an "idol". He took me shooting once with his black powder rifle and this was after a few summers of non stop fess parker so i became an addict right then. Next week he informed me the cameraman had a kit gun to sell and I bought a .45 KY (CVA?) and built it. Looked good too! LOTTA fun. next (as a kid) was a cheapo .45 flintlock pistol that was a hoot and accurate and went off all the time. Then a .50 mnt pistol (thought the belt clip the coolest thing ever) then a .45 revolver brass frame that I am quite sue I overloaded at all times. Now we get a 1970 Plymouth Duster and Girl friend and we stop buying....till we marry. I now have wayyyy to many (per the wife) and need to cull the her to get a NW trade gun (per me).
 
I got a T/C .50 cal. Hawken for Christmas along about 1979. It was to take advantage of the muzzleloading deer season. I used it the next year and found that it was awkward to carry and heavy. I bought a Sile Hawken Hunter then and still use it to this day.

I still have the T/C Hawken and it looks new mainly because I never take it hunting. I'm rough on my hunting guns. They don't get treated like babies.
 
Mid 1970's, a .45 "Kentucky" purchased in a drug store on the east side of Houston. One of those with the stock in two pieces and a band of brass concealing the splice. The barrel had narrow lands like in a modern day Remington. Tight patch was the only way to go.
 
My first was a used CVA Kentucky 45 I bought from a pawn shop back in about 87 or 88. I got it when I first got into hunting deer and found out they had a special "Primitive" season. About 4 years later I converted it to flint. That was before the internet and before I knew you couldn't covert CVAs to flint from percussion. I still have it.
 
I bought my first muzzleloading rifle back around 1970 something. I forget the exact date. I had developed a mild interest in muzzleloading but had never actually bought a rifle yet. Then one day I was at a gun show in Houston and saw a .50 cal. T/C Hawken kit. It was Sunday afternoon and the guy wanted to sell it so he didn't have to haul it home. I picked it up at a great price and then the work began. The T/C kits back then required a lot more work than they do today. To the best of my memory, only the lock, trigger and sights were finished, the rest required a lot of work to get them to a finished state ready to install on the stock. The barrel and tang had to be draw filed and blued, the brass was just as it came from the sand casting and the stock had to have a lot of wood taken off before it was finished. It was a fun project and took me about a month to have it ready to take to the range. It was, and still is, a good shooter. I still have it.
 
I bought my first two on the same day in february of 2015. my first purchase was an Italian (Mavi) .50 cal. Hawken style. Investarms parts fit it. traded a handmade knife and an old russian moist nagant for it. came with 2 molds-1 lee RB and 1 Lee Minie mold, spare lead, some black powder, caps, a case and some balls. he got the better deal initially. first muzzleloader and i didn't even try the ramrod down the barrel. long story short- ramrod only went half way in when i got it home, chock full of rust. i got it cleared out- eveporust is a miracle worker, it does have some pitting in the first third of the barrel by the breech. the stock was also cracked and repaired behind the lock. it shoots ok but i have not spent a lot of time working up a load for it. It is a candidate for a re-bore out to .54. i have not done that yet, no one in Canada that i know of does that, and not sure if the rifle is worth it. i did refinish the wood with a light sanding and scraping followed by some BLO and then some Tru-oil stock finish and it looks really good.
turns out the knife couldn't`t cut a nail in half but rather failed at it and the russian rifle was not accurate at all. i don`t know for sure, i never fired it. the guy wanted to trade back.
the second purchase that day was a never fired CVA .32 Squirrel. very accurate with dutch`s system, when my boy shoots, that what he uses.
 
Mine was a .50 T/C Hawken caplock. Sold it to my brother eventually who still uses it. Many others, all production or kit rifles. Down to just a parts build “poor boy” ains style half stock from my own two mechanic hands (notice I didn’t say craftsman or woodworking!).
 
I bought a Thompson Center Renegade .50 caliber at the end of November 2017. It is a barrel of fun to shoot. I've only fired 170 shots through it so far.

I regret not getting into black powder sooner. I am already looking for my next black powder rifle.
 
Back around 1974 or 1975 I bought a Investarms .50 caliber percussion hawken kit for $100.00. The deer season had just ended and I never found a deer within range of my shotgun. Rifled barrels and rifled chokes had not yet been invented and I read that muzzleloaders were much more accurate than a smooth bore pumpkin ball. I still have that gun and always will. My oldest son wants it when I pass. Keep yer powder dry.....robin :hmm:
 
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Back in the mid 1960s I ordered a .45 Heritage model underhammer from H&A. About 1969 I again ordered a rifle from them; a .45 flintlock "Minuteman". That rifle was reliable, heavy and looked pretty good; don't know why I finally let it go years later.

But I still have the underhammer. It has taken bobcats, deer and squirrels. It is right up there with the most accurate muzzleloading rifles I've ever fired. The flat tg/spring is dead so it's now just a wall hanger.
 
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