It was one of those kind of days. I wanted to shoot bad, but the weatherman told me it was going to rain. The temperature was only 66 degrees which is nice. But the sky did look foreboding. So I convinced myself to stay inside and wipe down all the rifles as I do periodically.

There in the far back corner of the gun wall I could see a Hawkins rifle. And I wondered why it was not with the other Hawkins section of rifles. So I pulled that one out. Yes indeed it was a Thompson Center .50 caliber percussion lock Hawkins. And it did have a shoot card on it. A shoot card is a small card that hangs from the ramrod. On the card is the make, model, caliber, and favorite load of the rifle. And there listed was 90 grains of Goex 2f and a patched ball. So I must have shot the rifle recently?

While I wiped it down, the clouds looked no kinder, but the urge to shoot was there. I figured maybe I could get off a quick ten shots before the rains came. So I grabbed up some gear and headed out to the range.

Rifle: T/C Hawkins - percussion .50 caliber
Powder: Goex 2f
Primers: Winchester magnum #11 caps (I suspect they are CCI magnums)
Distance : 50 yards
Weather: slight misting and very windy - wind right to left
Patch: Pillow tick with Liquid Wrench and Moosemilk comparison

As I grabbed my target, I also saw a bucket of old grapefruit that I failed to eat and because of that became science experiments. So I grabbed two of them and headed to the 50 yard line.

I set the box up and then placed one of the two grapefruits on the top of the box. At the bench, I used the known load of 90 grains and moosemilk patched ball. Using a true 6 o'clock with the grape fruit resting on the top front sight ... well




They did not last long.. Two shots later and quite a mess, the were no longer a threat to the world. Just the woods and trees where pieces of them landed.

I then swabbed the rifle clean with Rusty Duck black off and prepared to test the Liquid Wrench lube.






1-4 are shot with liquid wrench. 3 for some reason was a flier. I was not swabbing between shots. And I noticed that the last two were getting hard to load. Not hard in the sense that they were impossible to push down, but they felt "sticky" for a better choice of a word.. moving down the bore to be seated.

But the sight picture was the same for all 4 shots. I was shooting 90 grains of Goex and did not think I was flinching at all. So more testing is needed with this lube. It should be noted the mist was now falling pretty steady.

I then swabbed the bore clean using Rusty Duck. And changed over to Moose milk. Again shooting 90 grains I shot three shots. Not to bad of a group.

I then decided to lower the powder charge and shot 85 grains for the last two shots. The mist had changed to rain for the last two shots so I decided to call it a day and run for the house.

Now its back to wiping all the rifles down again.. but it sure was fun to shoot.