Temperature 72 degrees, no wind, sunny, no bugs (got too cold last night and killed them off), just a perfect summer day.

Rifle: Thompson Center Hawkens 50 caliber 1-48 twist barrel original,
percussion cap model. Open sights

Powder: Schuetzen 2f black powder. 85 grains worth

Projectiles: roundball and 240 grain .430 XTPs

Patch: pillow tick with dishwater lube

Caps: CCI magnum

Distance: 40 yards on the head!



I taped a chunk of laminate flooring to the target board. That target was shot to pieces because I put 400 rounds of .22 caliber through it. What a blast!! I then put a Birchwood Casey bulls eye on the laminate floor and it showed up real good.



Took my first shot and needless to say, that gets a person a little pumped up. I mean, that is on a clean dry barrel.



2-1/2 inches at 40 yards is not deadly accurate, but hunting accurate it is. I made a big goof when I shot 240 grain XTPs. The XTPs were .430 and I brought out the wrong sabots. When I loaded the rifle I thought.. man they loaded easy? But they grouped real good.

Then I loaded up roundball and shot my first of three off hand shots at the target. I missed the laminate and put a hole way off in the paper target. So I shot again.. this time I hit the laminate. Shot #3 well we are not going to talk such foolishness anymore. I need to work on the off hand shooting. I wiggle like the devil when I try to hold on target. I would like to blame my lack of skill on hangfires.. but nope.. just me!!

Then I started to get some extreme hangfires... I had no idea why.



7&8 I held through the hangfires. I shot low, but at least I held through them. So I loaded up for one last try, at a bottle of water. I had places a 2 liter bottle of water up at 40 yards and wanted to make it explode. Actually I was curious of the damage a simple roundball would do. And like Ron.. I wanted to capture the geyser, but my video was a smoke cloud instead...



After four misfired caps.. meaning snap but no pop... I pulled the nipple and found the reason for the hangfires. I was swabbing between shots using the fancy lube which was dishwater. I was using an old light brown T shirt for patch material. When I pulled the nipple.. there in the end of the nipple was a chunk of T shirt. How it managed to get in there during swabbing I will never know. But I removed that.. drizzled a little powder under the nipple, capped it and BOOM!!! it went off perfect. But I called it quits because the rifle was getting really filthy when I swabbed. I took a photo of the patch after swabbing but must have moved as it was so fuzzy you could not tell what it really was. But it was dirty..

At least I found the problem. The damage of that simple round ball is amazing. It entered the front of the bottle, blowing that out even the bottom out.. and the ball was still in tact enough to exit the back of the bottle. That would have been some penetration there. You can see the exit hole there on the bottle and the fact the front is all but blown away.

Over all it was fun. But I do have to work on my off hand shooting, or promise myself that I will not take any off hand shots at critters.