cayugad

It was a beautiful day today. Nice and warm, in the 40's and just a light 7 mph wind from the east that don't affect my shooting range too much in the woods. With the snow gone, I was out fixing my PVC target stand as winter was rough on it. So I threw a paper target on it at 44 yards and went to the house.

I stood and stared at the rack of rifles for about five minutes. I just couldn't make up my mind. I knew I wanted flintlock. So I had to decide how hard of cleaning I wanted. Well I took the custom .54 caliber made by Tennessee Valley Muzzleloading.

With all the necessities gathered I moved to the shooting bench. First I tried two off hand shots. Boy was that a mistake. They were about seven inches apart. So I sat at the bench and took my time. That Colerain barrel with 90 grains of 2f Schuetzen black powder and a .530 round ball was pure heaven. Five shots, six o'clock hold under the bull and all of them in a 2 inch circle.

Then for kicks I upped the charge to 110 grains of powder, same ball and patch and tried that. I was surprised that it shot basically in the same spot as the 90 grains of powder. I was going to kick it up some more but figured ... what's the use. I am never going to hunt with more powder then that. We burned off five shots there, and the group did start to drift upward a little. Not much mind you. But some.

So we went back to off and shooting. The swamped barrel did help my hold but honestly people ... I stink at off hand shooting. I would have photographed the target but with the off hand hits, it looked terrible.

So finally into the house, cleaning water, ice tea, and the Sirius XM radio on my favorite channel, I sat and cleaned that bad boy up perfect and put it back in its place. Sometimes you just got to burn some powder.