I finally got the chance Saturday to give the Minuteman a good workout.



The session started around 10 a.m. under 60° overcast skies and ended around 3 p.m. in bright 77° sunshine.

I started off with five shots at 50 yards with 85 grains GOEX FFFg, a .575 cast lee ball, .018 pillow tick patch lubed with Liquid Wrench and wiped between all shots with one side of an alcohol patch. Here's that first target.



Man, that combination was a bear to load. Getting the ball in the muzzle by whacking the short starter with my hand was positively painful. I had to resort to tapping the starter with a wood mallet. Once short started, the ball went down tight with two hands on the rod.

I adjusted the sight a bit and then shot another five shot group with everything the same except the patch. I changed to a .016 patch from a tightly woven linen table cloth purchased at a Goodwill Thrift Store. Here's the second target.



Getting the ball started with the .016 patch was a little easier, but still way harder than what I consider acceptable. I didn't have any thinner patch material on hand, so I shot another shot group with the .016 patch and switched from the .575 cast ball to a .570 Hornady ball. Here's the third target.



That group isn't too bad. My .58 GM barreled TC Hawken will do a bit better at 50 yards. But that gun has set triggers and the Minuteman has a god-awful heavy trigger.

Sticking with the .570 ball and .016 patch, I upped the charge to 95 grains and shot a fourth group. Here's that target.



Not so good. But I have and excuse. The overcast skies had cleared up and the sun came out. I had a devil of a time getting a clear focus of the little shiny bead of the front sight.

For target number five, I made a temporary sun shade for the front sight, reduced the charge to 75 grains, and banged away. Here's the shield and the fifth target.





I knew I had one really bad trigger squeeze/break during that string, and assume that the high right shot.

OK, enough at 50 yards. Let's return to the 85 grain load and stretch it out to 75 yards. Here target number six.



Not exceptional. Not even great. But certainly "minute of deer" at 75 yards.

The rear lollipop peep sight on this gun had three apertures - large, medium and small. All of the shooting so far has been with the medium aperture.



After shooting the 75 yard target, while the target was still out there on the frame, I switched the sight to the small hole and looked through it at the target. It's amazing how much sharper the front sight was with that tiny hole. I wish I had started the session with the small hole.

Anyway, I tried one more group at 100 yards. Here's the seventh and last target.



Well, BLAH!!! A six inch group.