Your first muzzleloader?

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 manure".

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

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.

1983 TC Renegade, 54cal. Kit

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

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.

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.

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

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?”

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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