A follow up on the Scout project

Well the last week of camp is done.

We worked with over 250 Scouts through the 7 total days we visited camp. The number could have been well north of 300 had we not gotten rained out on 2 of the scheduled open troop shoots.

About 1600+ rounds were fired during the sessions. The donated Zouave muskets ran fine. A properly balanced minie round can be shot without wiping many times. My record was 53 with no fall off in accuracy. How do I know about the accuracy, read the next to last paragraph about the kid shooting the gongs off the chains at 50yds.

Some observations-
Teaching kids to shoot well is fun and rewarding. I personally worked with about 80+ kids during the sessions and there were only 3 that I wasn't able to be successful with. I had most nailing crackers offhand on the wire in about 30min. The cracker presents the same aspect as an 8in black at 100yds. Of the three I wasn't able to get figured out, one was severely cross dominant. He insisted he wasn't and after about an hour with him, I convinced him that he was cross dominant and to live with it and shoot left handed. He tried as we were running out of time and started hitting the target. Maybe not exactly a fail but I noticed his cross dominance early but didn't insist he try something different. Lesson learned. One kid just shouldn't have been on the range. I'm sure he was there because his friends were and he seemed terrified the whole time. He fired a few shots, didn't hit and insisted on sitting well back from the line. Last kid, not sure why. His form was great, follow through and steadiness was great, he just couldn't connect. He did wear glasses though and we were out of time before I could explore that with him.

Kids of all ages love to shoot reactive targets. The standard stuff was just ho hum. When we switched to "puff boards" (drywall squares) they really knuckled down and general marksmanship improved. The "Cracker Challenge" was a great hit. After 2nd week, we started to get lots of leaders from troops in the main camp coming to visit the primitive range and watch kids busting crackers with Civil War muskets. Some kids decided shooting the wires and clothespins holding the targets was even more fun, even though they swore with angelic innocence that it wasn't on purpose, yeah, about that. Good shootin guys! Mustard packs make interesting targets. A hit from a 58 minie makes for a very Jackson Pollock type of mess and it can be smelled from 25yds away over the black powder smoke and the jokes about Col Mustard's demise at the hands of Professor Plum with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch were hilarious (this is Scout camp remember!). There was one kid in one open shoot where the target was steel gongs at 50yds and I swear he was shooting at a spot that would dislodge the gongs from the chains. Three gongs were almost completely knocked to the ground and he was the one shooting each time.

My conclusion- this was an extremely worthwhile effort and I sincerely hope the board of the NSSA is game to expand it. Without support from the folks at Schutzen, S&S and Lodgewood and PJ Kelly, we would never have been able to put this on for the kids. We have a dedicated Merit Badge session scheduled and two troop shoot requests.

Well done sir.

Did you notice any great initial fear of recoil, given the caliber? I noticed that when shooting with Scouts and 50 cal guns. I download them to about 30 gr. FFFg. Then they seem to think it's a snap. When they think three is nothing to it, and ask for a "hunting load" they find out about recoil. What load did you use under the ball (or Minie)?

There were often questions about recoil. The camp guns were typically loaded with 45g 777 for patched round ball and after they shot that, the comment was often that it was less than a shotgun and they were keen to try the musket.

The musket load was 45g 3f Schutzen. Minie was 380gr RCBS Hogdon. In every case, the Scouts reported less felt recoil with the muskets. That opened the door to a physics discussion on recoil v momentum. On paper, the muskets have nearly 50% more recoil. Because of the mass of the musket, the perceived recoil was far less. Couple that with the wide butt on the stock v the narrow 50cal camp guns and they universally preferred the musket even with it's "greater" recoil.

I've had those talks too with the Scouts. Some times you really connect with them, and they want to know how stuff works, and other times it's the; uh huh, uh huh, uh huh bit. When can I shoot it again?

When you run the numbers for Kinetic Energy, a PRB in 50cal is only 175gr. While the minie we were shooting was right at 390gr with a similar charge weight. The PRB guns weighed in at about 6.5-7lb while the muskets are right at 10. Not hard to set up the math for that one. While the musket does have more KE and momentum, the Impulse, or how the energy is transferred, is far lower than the camp craptastic plastic.