The weekend finally got here, headed over to Troy, ID to take part in the Hog Meadows Muzzleloaders Association's Rondy. This is a local Rondy but it really is well attended.
I can not say that I am an actual Rondy person, as I only shoot the walking trail. It is just an event that I really like to do shoot. I am shooting a Renegade 50 cal with a .015 prelubed cotton patch, a Wonder Wad on top of 60 grains of T7-3f.
On this particular trail we have 20 different stations along the walk... The first stop is to shoot the tie breaker card - which for the first shot of the day - i really felt it was going to be a good day... One guy in my group got closer - but man he was shooting a 62 cal round ball gun - his one ball just about took out the hole target, more on this 62 cal later. Any way after the tie breaker shot we move to station #1 - a really easy shot @ this point my confidence came back to earth as I missed it. Still can not believe it... I am sure it was a crooked round ball...
The second target was a spoon target - 3 different size target that are suspended from a swing frame. I had decided I was going to shoot the mid sized sppon to score two points to make up for the miss on #1.... well I was the next to last guy in my group of 5 to shoot and they all shot the small spoon! crap I was forced to shoot the dinky one... Well I lucked out and spun that spoon around several times it was really a solid hit - again hoorah for me... Now this is the interesting part... the guy with the 62 shot last and he also chose the small spoon. When he hit that spoon it picked the hole apparatus up off the ground and rolled it over backwards... When I went up and picked the rack up to stand it up again - it was a heavy steel structure and that 62 just knock the whole dang thing over. I asked him about his powder charge - he said it was a reduced load for targets 80 grain GOEX 3f. It now my conclusion that a 62 cal round ball packs a pretty decent amount of blount energy... if it does not penetrate it will certainly turn something upside down...
As you can see I ended up missing four targets points out of the 20 possible. All the misses were long shoots 100 yds plus.... except...... after missing #20 a big steal elk at an estimated 150 yards... I really wanted to try again as I had missed all the long target and I could not figure out why for sure.... Well I re-loaded and thought 'aw what the heck!' Instead of holding a bit over the target I am going to hold on the target just below the back.... I should have let the gun drive all day instaed of trying to tell the gun where to shoot.... I hit the 'dag gone' thing - I can not believe that a round ball would go that far on somewhat of a line with 60 grains of powder... Wish I could back and shoot all of the those long targets again... But I will be 'more ready' for Colfax, WA next weekend...
I had fun and SHOOTING IS JUST PLAIN FUN!!!! gonna try the flinter a little bit next week if I can get somebody at the Colfax shoot to help me git started....
