Do to the necessities of life I sold off all my weapons back in the early 90 's. The one I most regret selling was a custom, .62 caliber, fullstock, flintlock "Hawken" rifle.
I put Hawken in quotes because I now know that the rifle I had built, and delivered, in 1989 WAS NOT a Hawken rifle, no matter what I thought at the time.
It had a 38" long, swamped, 1:48" twist, Getz barrel that was factory coned. I could thumb start a patched ball more than halfway into the bore. I used a home-made short starter (1/2" diameter) only to take the stress off of the 7/16" diameter ramrod. The short starter really was not necessary, as if one choked up close to the muzzle with the ramrod, the coned muzzle allowed the patched ball to be pushed down into the bore until any chance of breaking the ramrod was eliminated.
I had the builder install a hooked, Nock-style, chambered breechplug to fit the long, Hawken-style tang. This was before you could buy them as cast parts from T.O.W. Cost me roughly $200.00 in machine shop time, but was worth it. Along with one of the, then fairly new, Chambers White Lightnin' touch hole liners & one of my favorite locks, the large Siler flint; ignition was as fast as any rifle I've ever owned.
Curly maple, stained very dark. All steel parts, except for the ramrod tip. Steel parts browned. No patchbox. Plains-style buttstock with beavertail cheekpiece. Three captured barrel keys with oval escutcheon plates. Long doubleset triggers, double bolted to the beavertail tang. Scroll triggerguard.
In retrospect, kind of a mish-mash of design ideas, and parts. I do not believe the builder signed it, although I asked him to.
When I first started shooting it I started with 50 grains of fffg Goex, and by the end of the first range session had settled on 75 grains of fffg Goex. Because that's what I had on hand to shoot with the first time out, and sometimes serendipity shows right up in the beginning.
By the end of three hours in that first shooting session, I was able (with my lousy eyesight), to keep 5 shots consistently in a 50-cent sized group from the bench. And, about 1.5" diameter groups, on average, offhand. This was at 50 yards.
Which was then, and still is, my self-imposed limit for open sight hunting. Unless a weapon has a telescopic sight on it, I simply cannot see well enough to ethically take a shot at any game animal past that distance. Period. I made that pledge to myself when I was in my 20's, and for all the years that I hunted, I never failed to keep my pledge. There were some huge disappointments, when game was past my range, but thems the breaks.
Simply put, that was as well as I could shoot at that time in my life. Sometimes Mr. Murphy is looking in the opposite direction.
I LOVED that rifle. With 75 grains of fffg black powder, and a 0.610" diameter lead ball weighing about 340 grains, recoil was very moderate. I have no recollection of the patch material I was using then.
Vis-a-vis recoil, I should also mention that I had asked for a wide, flat, early-style buttplate, instead of the typical hooked, deeply-curved Hawken buttplate.
As I recall, the weight was right around 9 pounds. Even with the sling swivels that that rifle had, that is more weight than I want to carry around now that I am 66, and have progressive osteoarthritis.
So a .45 caliber is the absolute maximum that I can consider shooting any longer. More likely a .40 caliber.
Even though the "Little Devil" on my left shoulder keeps whispering sweet nothings into my ears trying to convince me to go with a .58 caliber, or larger.
So far, my "Good Angel" on my right shoulder has kept me from that mistake/stupidity.
