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Got a chunk gun

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rich pierce

70 Cal.
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I bought a heavy percussion muzzleloader target rifle. It weighs 25.5 pounds. They are used in chunk gun shoots at 60 yards. Prone position, over a chunk rest. The heel of the gun must not touch the ground. A series of 10 card sized targets with an X printed on them are used for scoring. You bring your sighter target, whatever shape and size bullseye you want and shoot 3-4 shots for group. Then take your first X target and place it behind the center of the group and fire for score. Keep replacing the X targets one by one and shoot 10 of them. Each shot is measured from center of X to center of your shot. Add all distances and shortest total wins. Open iron sights only.

It’s a .50 caliber slow twist Ed Rayl barrel 1.5” across the flats. Takes 130 grains of 3F according to the previous owner.
 
I have forgotten if the lore of that particular chunk gun used a paper patched bullet or patched round ball. You did get a good gun for the (wooden) chunk matches.

Normally a chunk is chosen from the local wood pile. Some folks have favorite chunks. Some can get quite elaborate with built in levels and other adjustments. Local rules will determine the complexity of the chunk.

Below is a complex "chunk".

Chunk Gun Rest.jpg


Go to the wood pile for a standard chunk of about 18" long and 3 to 4" in cross section.
 
First lesson I learned about Chunk and Table shooting was that you do NOT want the p.o.i. of your group too close to your bullseye !!
 
First lesson I learned about Chunk and Table shooting was that you do NOT want the p.o.i. of your group too close to your bullseye !!

Don’t want to obliterate your aiming point! Of course if I was still a kid I’d shoot one shot then see the bullet hole clearly enough to use it as a bullseye. Just kidding!
 
Well before copy machines could be used to make multiple copies of the sighter target, the fighter target was a shape tacked to a target or on a stick held in place on the target by the spotter at the target. The spotter had great faith in the skill of the shooter to always hit the target so the spotter was in a safe position. Of course target spotters are no longer standing next to a target. No Range Safety Officer would allow such practice today. Anyway, the shooter would not want the sighter target to get shot up so the point of impact was just outside of the sighter (target) . Now shooters want the group to be just outside of the sighter target so when the sighter is placed to cover the group, the holes in the sighter are over the white of the X card and the sighter target shape is still intact for consistent sighting.

Point of aim and point of impact sighting set up is quite different in chunk, over the log, table shooting than off hand or bench. While the point of aim would be at the 6 o'clock position of a circle or a corner of a square or triangular sighter, the impact group would be completely out of the black sighter.
 
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It will take me a while to get used to the new gun, new sights, new trigger pull. Today I could cover all my shots with my palm at 60 yards which is a lot bigger than a quarter or half dollar.
 
If my eyes were 10 years younger, I might give it a try. When I was a kid, my first exposure to ML rifles was at the Ga. Mtns. Fair in Hiawassee, GA not too far from my house. They were shooting "Over the Log" matches and were set up for it. I was maybe 11 years old, but still remember their loading rods had ceramic door knob handles, which was/is a good idea. Now you can't find ceramic door knobs.

I doubt they hold the log matches any more up there, too many tourists upset by the sound of rifle fire. But I wanted to try such a thing. Of course, it would have cost money to do at the time, and money is something we had almost none of. But I kept the memory, as my uncles used ML cap locks up to at least WW 1.

I don't know, but I would imagine in 1955-56 a lot of these rifles might have been originals. Don't know who was making MLs back that early. Or how they networked.
 

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