I had a long and fun session with the Great Plains .54 flintlock Sunday morning.

I shot 45 times on the same flint that was in the gun and it was still sparking well when I quit. I only had a "klatch" on one shot, and wiped the fouling off of the bottom of the flint and it went off fine on the second c0ck fall. Checked my records when I got home and found that flint already had a dozen or so shots on it from the last range session. Its a black English flint from a pack of a dozen that I bought from Track of the Wolf. So far I've gotten at least fifty shots out of every flint from that pack.

I've been wanting to try some very thin/easy loading patches. So I picked up some .008 bleached muslin from JoAnn's fabric shop and cut a bunch of patches to try. They start easily with thumb pressure and take only one hand on the rod to seat on the charge. I used a 1/8" wonder wad under my hunting load of 85 grains FFFg GOEX for some serious target work and they shot about the same as the .017 table cloth and .018 pillow tic patches I usually use. It sure was nice not to have to use a short starter.

Anyway, just for the heck of it I used the thin patches and a light charge of 60 grains to take 10 quick shots without wads and without swabbing between shots . Here's that target.



Now all of this shooting has been with the Lyman peep sight and from the bench with Caldwell shooting rests. I haven't shot off-hand standing on my hind legs without any sort of a rest in a long time. So I thought I would wrap up the day with five off-hand shots at fifty yards just to make Cayugad feel good about his open sight shooting. I almost threw that target away, but what the heck - I ain't proud. (Embarrassed, but not proud.)