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09-22-2009 | 11:16 AM

#1

Semisane

Boone & Crockett

Joined: Apr 2007

Posts: 10,918

Likes: 1

From: River Ridge, LA (Suburb of New Orleans)

Mind Games

I just got off the phone with the owner of Jack’s Powder Keg, making arrangements to pick up my annual case of GOEX in Baton Rouge next Saturday (12 cans FFG, 12 cans FFFG, 1 can FFFFG, $11 a pound

).

After I hung up I got to thinking about how much powder I burn over the course of a year. In addition to GOEX, I shoot probably six or eight pounds of Pyrodex and Triple 7 that I pick up in WalMart’s post Christmas sale. Then I got to wondering “how much powder did the early frontiersmen burn over the course of a year?” Have you ever wondered about things like that? Did Daniel Boon shoot more than two or three pounds of powder a year? I suspect not.

Consider this. The 31 men, 1 woman, and one dog of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery who made the two-year, four-month round trip to the Pacific packed a little over 400 pounds of gunpowder (52 eight pound lead canisters holding four pounds of powder each). I’m sure they each had a small personal supply when they departed in addition to what was packed as expedition supplies. But the records say they had powder left over when they returned that was auctioned off to the public along with their guns. That’s an average use of less than a half pound of powder a day for the entire crew (about 100 grains per man, per day). They sure didn’t do a lot of plinking.

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