My Navy Arms .58 Zouave was complaining that I haven't taken her out for quite a while, so I took her to aSunday afternoon shoot. She ain't a pretty lady (needs a refinishing)but she's lots of fun. Also, she's still wearing the LOL hardware store nuts & bolts peep sight mounted in a forward position.



Her favorite load is 70 grains GOEX FFFg under a .575 ball in a .016 patch. But I've never shot her with hotter loads of GOEX, so I thought I would give that a try.
I put a target out a 50 yards and loaded with 105 grains of FFFg and a .575 ball. Took only three shots with that load. It was kicking the hammer back to half cock.
I'm thinking my nipple may be getting a little worn, because the mainspring sure isn't weak. Here's that first target.




So I put out a new target anddropped the load to 100 grains. Here's the 5-shot target.



Those four shots into a one and three-quarter inch group are about as good as I can do with this gun.
That shot way to the right that increased the group to over four inches is a mystery to me. Every one of those shots felt good, surely nothing bad enough to cause that much difference.

I decided to shoot another group with the same powder charge, but with a .570 ball. Here's the result.




Not too bad. Not my best, butabout my average "pretty good" group with this gun at 50 yards. Easily "lung of deer" anyway.

Up until now I'd been using some .016 patches cut from a $2 Good Will Store table cloth. So I figured I would try the same load with.018 pillow tick patches.
Here's the target.



Dang! Another group with four pretty good shots and one screwing it up. What's up with that.

Let's staywith the .570 ball, drop the charge to 90 grains, and go back to the table cloth patch material. Here's that group.




Well, at least with this one I know the shot low and to the left was my fault. I squeezed when I shouldn't have.
Anyway, I didn't want to break the pattern of 4 pretty good shots and one bad one.

OK, drop the charge another 10 grains and keep everything else the same. Here's what happened.




Not so good. I wonder if it's the load or me? Anyway, that 80 grain load is a lot more pleasant shooting than the 100 grain one.

Drop the load another 10 grains to 70 - which has always shot well in this gun. Here's the target.



DANG !!![:@] WHAT IS IT WITH THOSE 1 in 5 FLYERS ???

I had timefor one more round. So I shot the 70 grain load again, but switched back to the .575 ball which the gun has always preferred. Here it is.



Well, at least I finished the day with a "feel good" target. One day I may try to set the gun up with a peep back on the tang and see what happens. But to tell you the truth, I kinda` like that big 3/16" peep set forward on the barrel.