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Question on flintlocks

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The trigger. Various shooters say "squeeze" the trigger, "mash" it, "pull" it, "tickle" it and on and on. Elmer Keith wrote two things about how this is done. Elmer said to "pull" the trigger and that he always wanted to know when the gun fired; he didn't want to be surprised. All these descriptions are open to what the shooter thinks he means by squeeze, etc. I like knowing when the gun fires and, like Keith, don't like being surprised. This is why having a rifle that fits the shooter is so important.

Hanshi, in the emboldened part above, I'm not sure what you mean by this? Do you mean at what point of the trigger pull the sear releases the full cock notch and causes the lock to function and fire the rifle? (This is also known as when the trigger "breaks" or "lets go.")

If so, can you describe how you know when that is going to happen as you pull the trigger?

Gus
 
Hanshi, in the emboldened part above, I'm not sure what you mean by this? Do you mean at what point of the trigger pull the sear releases the full cock notch and causes the lock to function and fire the rifle? (This is also known as when the trigger "breaks" or "lets go.")

If so, can you describe how you know when that is going to happen as you pull the trigger?

Gus

I'm not Hanshi, but after dry firing ten or so times I can pretty much know when the sear is going to trip, I dry fire with the gun in the days coming up to shooting so I can judge the trigger break.
 
I'm not Hanshi, but after dry firing ten or so times I can pretty much know when the sear is going to trip, I dry fire with the gun in the days coming up to shooting so I can judge the trigger break.

Thank you. So what do you do when you know the trigger is about ready to break when shooting offhand?

Gus
 
I can not tell you, I have always been a very good off hand shot and can usually time my shots so the sights are where I want them when the shot breaks.

I actually think its from practice practice practice, other than that I can not say.
I used to be a good shot. Cataract surgery is just around the corner.
 
I used to be a good shot. Cataract surgery is just around the corner.

I had surgery for a detached retina, fortunately not in my dominant eye, and also in both eyes for cataracts. I now see better than I ever did before and without prescription eyeglasses, though I still wear eyeglasses to protect my left eye and for reading. Had I been able to afford the "bi-focal" lens insert when I had the cataract surgery in my dominant eye, I would not need reading glasses.

I wanted to mention this to offer some hope for you.

Gus
 
I had surgery for a detached retina, fortunately not in my dominant eye, and also in both eyes for cataracts. I now see better than I ever did before and without prescription eyeglasses, though I still wear eyeglasses to protect my left eye and for reading. Had I been able to afford the "bi-focal" lens insert when I had the cataract surgery in my dominant eye, I would not need reading glasses.

I wanted to mention this to offer some hope for you.

Gus
Thank you. A detached retina is more serious than cataracts. I was shooting a friends 600 nitro express one day, when I was warned the recoil could cause retinal detachment if I shot it too many times. That was OK because I didn't think my shoulder could take any more. Neither could my ears, even with both plugs and muffs. Both my parents underwent cataract surgery, and they only needed reading glasses from then on.
 
I can not tell you, I have always been a very good off hand shot and can usually time my shots so the sights are where I want them when the shot breaks.

I actually think its from practice practice practice, other than that I can not say.

All that dry firing and live firing practice keeps your wobble area smaller than most folks and definitely helps you to shoot offhand better.

I was around NM and Sniper for most of my 26 years in the Corps. I was a Team Armorer for THE Marine Corps Rifle Team twice over the years along with building and repairing the arms for them. Of course I got to know some of the finest shooters in the country because of it.

The reason I asked you is because I've only ever run into tiny number of the best shooters who could do that and not jerk the trigger and cause the shot to go off from the center of the bullseye. I also asked them how they could do that without jerking the trigger and none of them could explain it either.

Gus
 
My dad has been doing that for over 40 years. He shoots left handed, but uses a TC Hawken which is for righties. Once he got used to the flash, no problem
View attachment 133918

View attachment 133919View attachment 133919

Well you could always try stocks like these!

Just kidding, you have some good answers already. I just wanted to share these. I think the flintlock was made for a fellow who was right handed and right eye dominant that lost the right eye.

LD
I remember a great article maybe 40 years ago in American Rifleman mag. on some GORGEOUS flintlocks stocked like those, w/ 2 full 90 degree bends between tang and comb... I think at least one was an original ( ca. 1790, from what I remember in the pics.)
Costly custom work, I would wager, regardless of the era...)
 
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Due to the effect of what was then considered to be corrective surgery 28 years ago, I have radial scars on the cornea of my right eye. They are not an issue until I am in low light, and my pupil dilates far enough to overlap them, and then they cause enough distortion that my brain automatically shifts to looking through my left eye. It really causes problems when I'm competing in traditional bow shoots; if I don't realize the light is low enough that I have to start semi-closing my left eye, I will consistently start shooting 8 in. to the left at 20 yards... Since my favorite time to hunt is at, and just after, sunset, I consciously have to remember to start squinting my left eye, or else I'm risking a miss or, even worse, a cripple, due to an improper sight picture.
Does anybody have a local deer population that only comes out between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.? If so, PLEASE PM me!
 
My Dad was an avid hunter, so as soon as we had the strength to hold long guns up, the only practice shooting we got was offhand. He said if you could shoot offhand well, then any other position would be easy. Once I was old enough to make a little money, I often bought .22 shorts to shoot in Dad's Win Model 74 that was only meant to shoot long rifles, but still functioned with shorts. Shorts only cost 43 cents per box of 50 when long rifles went for the princely sum of 67 cents. I had baskets on the side of my bicycle, so I would put the cased rifle in them, stop at the gas station to buy the shorts and ride to a dry dump, well outside town. There were always loads of soda pop bottles to shoot at and with a lot of practice, I got to the point at 32 paces (25 yards) I could shoot the top parts, then the middles then the bottoms of the bottles. I don't remember how I did that, though.

There was no medium or big game hunting in Iowa that we could afford, so I didn't fire a centerfire rifle until Marine Corps Boot Camp where I began a love affair with an M14. The week long "Snapping In" or dry firing training was excellent marksmanship instruction, though it seemed almost sadistic at the time. I never was so physically worn out and aching as when we returned to the barracks each night.

HOWEVER, I must admit I was daunted to learn we were expected to shoot offhand at 200 yards. I had never even shot at 100 yards with a big bore rifle, let alone 200 yards offhand. For my first annual qualification, I ran 6 straight bullseyes at 200 yards before I blew it and fired a perfect center shot on the target next to mine, so I got a Maggie's drawers MISS. That blew my mental program so bad, I just missed shooting at least 220 out of 250 for Expert.

Marines fire an annual rifle re-qualification every year until they are promoted to MSgt/1stSgt when the Corps no longer expects or even allows us to shoot rifle re-qualification. Normally and unless Marines had an MOS like MP's, we didn't qualify/re-qualify with the pistol until we were promoted to SSgt (E-6) and we requalify with the pistol through MSgt, or at least we used to do that. For a number of years, I shot Expert with both the rifle and pistol, though it was always LOW Expert or in the 220's with the rifle.

Finally I asked one of my best mentors in muzzleloading gunsmithing (CWO Frank Higginson) and who just happened to be the BEST Pistol Shot in the Corps for years (he won the Nationals and the Pan Am games a number of times, though he never won at the Olympics) whether he knew when the trigger was going to go off and shot then OR if the shot was always a surprise. It surprised me when he said his best shooting was always when the shot was a surprise. After he retired and when he was in his 60's, he began coaching the U.S. Muzzleloading Teams' Pistol Shooters, though he no longer competed. I heard the following from a number of shooters who were at one of those training sessions. They said they finally got him to shoot an original Remington .44 Army they were having trouble doing well with at 25 meters. He shot it offhand like they did and he scored a 92 out of 100 and said the pistol needed work. They thought he was joking, so one of the best shooters who had a Ransom Rest and knew how to use it, tested the Remington in that ultimate shooting rest machine. They tried it four times and the best score they got was an 89 out of 100. Frank had outshot the Ransom Rest, the first time he shot the pistol!!! For those who don't know about the Ransom Rest machine, that is so incredibly rare, it is almost never done by most of we mere mortals.

OK, so I used Frank's advice on my next year's Rifle and Pistol re-qualifications and upped my Rifle score to finally breaking into the low 230's that year and upped my pistol score about 11 points.

I got a chance to go through the NRA Law Enforcement Police Firearms Instructors Course in 1986. To graduate that course, you have to shoot at least 90 out of 100 with the shotgun and the pistol as well as score at least a 90 out of 100 on the written test. Fail any single one of those and you don't graduate. So to say it ain't easy, is a rather big understatement. There are always some folks who have had many years of shooting and instructing, but who don't graduate the first or even second time. It was a challenge to many of the shooters on THE Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol teams, though they all qualified the first time. I barely graduated as I only shot a 92 with the pistol, though I shot a 94 with a shotgun with no sights and aced the test. HOWEVER, and even after all the years of excellent marksmanship training in the Marine Corps and shooting Expert Rifle 11 times in a row and Pistol 8 or 9 times in a row at re-qualifications (I didn't shoot 4 years while I was on Independent Duty, because they wouldn't let us) AND being around some of the BEST shooters in the Corps for years, I had a personal epiphany on shooting where it seemed all the lights FINALLY went on.

Now I wish I could tell you it was some great secret or something I had never been taught, but it wasn't. That course didn't teach anything I had not been taught before. I joke the different way they taught things finally got through my thick skull. Grin.

So the next year at Rifle and Pistol re-qualification, I applied what finally got through my thick skull. Unfortunately, I had a problem with my rear sight not functioning correctly and yes, even as a NM Armorer I didn't realize until after I shot for record, but I still shot 242 out of 250. However the next year after that, I shot a 249 out of 250 and was the 8th Marine in history to tie that all time high score. No one has equaled or bettered that score at Quantico since then, either. The following year we had hugely varying wind conditions on the range in CA, but still managed to shoot a 244 and that turned out to be the last time I was allowed to requalify with the Rifle.

Sorry for taking so long to give the background, but I wanted to qualify what I hope may help others in their offhand shooting. Unfortunately, I will have to go on with this in my next post as I'm having some problem with arthritis in my fingers nowadays.

Gus
 
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Hanshi, in the emboldened part above, I'm not sure what you mean by this? Do you mean at what point of the trigger pull the sear releases the full cock notch and causes the lock to function and fire the rifle? (This is also known as when the trigger "breaks" or "lets go.")

If so, can you describe how you know when that is going to happen as you pull the trigger?

Gus
Just read this thread ,I think it’s just getting to know your gun. I have 4 double rifles and the triggers are relatively long and heavy 577-500 no2 , .6”rifled:12 bore cape rifle, and double .36 ml and 450-400 nitro I don’t think you will even know how you pull the trigger in anger just practice. so it’s plenty of dry fireing to get to know your guns, my 1890 7.5-53. Swiss target rifles all have brilliant set triggers I got a couple of bsa Scorpio psp air guns. Shooting 1/2”dia blobs at 50 yards takes some trigger skills squeezing on a long trigger pull I often do well with a quick twitch or a tap on the trigger but it’s not consistent When I bought the first pcp in .22 , being retired , I was shooting 500 pellets a week Why can bsa not have set triggers ????? I shoot mainly 50 yards over morning coffee. The 177 being more accurate but it has a better scope.

I have 3 Bess flintlocks 1820 yes a big squeeze is needed or it won’t go off, So many flint and percussion had set triggers as they are target rifles but you don’t get set triggers in European sporting guns

Interesting stuff. Love to Hanshi up
In Maine
 

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