Well Slowburn, I'd say that's a darn nice way to start your day!

I known I have several center fire shootin' irons in my safe that I've never fired, but here's what I found to be coincidental when I read your OP. I bought a NIB never fired T/C .58 Hawken rifle 1-1/2 yrs. ago today on 4/14/14 (some of you may remember I posted a few pics) and had never fired it so today I thought... what the heck, I might just take that .58 out this afternoon and throw some .570 round balls through it. It seems everyone else on here has been shooting their big bores lately so maybe that's what got me in the mood to shoot it. Besides, I might just use that during part of our early doe only ML season which starts the 17th.

Well, a friend called around 1:00 and asked if I could help him round up and load some cattle he was sending to a sale so I didn't get home until darn near five but I decided to shoot for a bit anyway. My target backstop was out at about 40 yards so I hung a target with a 3" bull on it and rounded up my gear. I loaded up with 70 gr. FFg, a .020 pillow tick patch, and .570 ball. My first shot was about 2" high of the bull and about 1" left of center. I swabbed with a moistened alcohol patch and shot again, this time in the bull at 10:00 with my next three shots hovering in a nice little cluster all in the 10 and 11:00 portion of the bull. I'm going to shoot it some more tomorrow and play around with a load a bit, maybe make a sight adjustment, but so far I'm happy.

Incidentally... when I finished shooting and was picking up my gear, I heard what sounded like deer moving through our brush lot. Several minutes later there were 7 does that came out and just a few minutes later a small buck (which I believe was a 6 pt.) came out. They all milled around for about ten minutes or so then went into the neighbors corn. Oh if they only knew!!!

BPS