Today was a very enjoyable day on the range. It looked like rain, and we could use it, but I knew the weather man was lying. So I decided to risk it and shoot.

Rifle: 50 caliber Lyman Great Plains Hunter 1-32 twist 32 inch barrel

Sights are primitive open sights. Buckhorn style. I have yet to adjust the rear sight for left or right but did file some of the front sight off to get the POI raised up.

I had great luck shooting 295 grain Powerbelts out of this rifle and so I picked up some Powerbelts that were on sale. BUT they are 348 grain. So I figured they would still shoot well.

I could not be more wrong. The powerbelts were all over the target. I started covering the holes with duct tape and then changed to just marking them with a red pen. The rifle was spraying them. Very strange.

So back in the house to see what I might shoot. It was then I spotted a whole bunch of Buffalo Bullets HP conical bullets in 385 grain. I decided I never had luck pushing them hard, so I decided to lower the powder charge to 60 grains of powder and see if that did not make them start to behave.



The powerbelts were not working but the conical bullets began to behave pretty good. Now I only had the target at 38 yards. That lawn mowing always messes me up. But that's fine. Open sights and that's a good distance for me. I know some of you long distance shooters scoff at that distance. But to me that is hunting distance.

The rifle was holding a good group. And I was swabbing between shots with pure isopropyl alcohol. Lots of fouling today for some reason. But with 60 grains of powder, this rifle was a real joy to shoot. No recoil, and it was working good. Ignition was very fast until the flint shattered in half. I replaced it, and then all was back in order.



I changed to a different part of the target and all was going good. It was holding a very good group although it was shooting 2 inches high. But I could adjust for that. Like that Blackhorn bottle picture. I held six o'clock on the picture and it just laid them in the top of the bottle.

But after a lot of shooting today it suddenly started to group to the right. Two hits side by side. I checked the sights and they were good and tight. So I wondered.. is the rifle dirty or am I just getting tired and hot? So I decided to stop for the day.

Cleaning the rifle I learned the truth of how dirty the rifle was. I turned the water bath dirty black so there was a lot of soot in the barrel. That might explain why the POI was starting to change. But we will see next time out. I want to try those conicals with 60 grains of 3f and see how they do. That would make a good deer load for me.