What to shoot this weekend?
 

Saturday I get a whole days worth of shooting at my buddies range temp will actually be around 50 so It is nice to have a pre spring day to shoot. I have two catagories of rifles to shoot and it kinda goes like this.

Obvious,

New Scout .54, Got three different kinds of bullets to try in it (need another tackle box) and I am really excited for two reasons I have never shot a .54 and can't wait to shoot this beast. It will be shot with the open sights for now.

Renegade flintlock, after some so so range sessions I now have a new touch-hole liner (with the 5/64 opening) some 4F priming powder and some workbench experimenting making spark under my belt. I hope to make this thing bark like a percussion gun it is a must we shoot this this weekend. Oh, and my buddy has never shot a flintlock so I am sure this will take up an hour or so.

.32 Crockett, It may be the only roundball shooter that I can enter into a contest on another site. With the long barrel and sight radius I need to try and see what I can do off sticks with this thing. If it fails this weekend the back ups are the Bobcat and CVA Missouri rifle.


The other guns to shoot.

My Scout .50 just because the thing is a tack driver and I love to shoot it.

Encore 209x.50, you know this gun shoots so good I never experiment with it just sight it in and hunt with it. I might want to kick around some different bullets and powders with it but I don't know, she is on the short list.

Norinco M97 with the red dot scope. I have not shot in the barrel yet with this gun so it will stay home. I need the kids to chuck some lead through the bore before I use this for serious range time.

That leaves me with one other experimental gun and you guessed it. The Omega. Right now I have saved it as a bargining chip for other rifles because of how cheap I bought it but I really am curious how well the thing will shoot. It holds fine with the open sights and the trigger is fine as well. I do not care much for the ergonomics of the thing but if it shoots good enough it may make a good present or back up for camp.

Everything else stays home. except may be the Plains Pistol. If I bring to much I will not give each the attention needed to work out loads and all.

I plan on shooting 6-7 hours with only 5 rifles. It will be weeks before I can shoot this much again and want to make the most of it. Like I posted the given may only be changed by a substitute roundball shooter but the "may be" rifles I would like to hear good reasons on what to bring.

Oh, and Cayugad I will bring that bottle of Pinnical that has been left in my truck box for the last 7 months I bought one of those plastic bottle pour spouts so I am going to see if it will shoot. What the heck got all day!!

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

sounds like a lot of fun to me...

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

I don't think it is a question of what to shoot? Maybe
how much to shoot. And how much you can shoot
with the amount of daylight you will have :D!!!
But any amount of time that the good Lord gives
me to shoot man thats precious. Good Luck
God Bless Danny

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Dan, I am not sure what gives me the day to shoot if it is the lord I thank him but it is not often I get a whole day for my hobby so I am gratefull.

I think we are given a little leeway in these things;)

I just want to take advantage of a good situation to the max. Who knows? we may have so much fun with a couple of guns thats all we shoot all day. My friend collects old militay guns and has some rolling blocks and pre 1900 bolts he bought this winter that need shooting too.

And I must say he has one 7mm rollingblock that is the best shooting single shot cartridge gun I have ever shot in my life. God I love shooting at his range.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

PBH

I am planning on a shooting trip to the Strychnine gravel piles this weekend myself. The weather here has really been nasty this week - 60 mph winds last night, snow the day before and etc, but it is suppose to nice this weekend. I have not totally decided which gun I am going to shoot the new Omega or the new GM stainless Hawkin. Right now I am leaning to the Hawkin. I want to shoot it out to 100 & 150with several different bullets. I am really liking this 10mm 200 grain XTP, I think it really has possibilities... not only does it shoot well but the ballistics are awesome.

Anyway I am looking forward to Saturday morning...

Hope you have a great weekend

mike

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Well made up my mind.

Scout, Renegade and the new Omega for rifles and the 1858 revolver because my bud has never shot a cap and ball gun. I may bring the .32 but just having the Renegade may force me to use it in the contest and win or loose it would be a victory for me to hit anything with a flintlock at 100yds. Of course I will never win but if I can hit the target three times with the thing it will be a personal victory.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Pittsburghunter,
Looking forward to hearing how it all went. With all that shooting and cleaning afterwards, we won't hear from you until late Sunday.[&o]
I hope to get out thisweekend myself. I'll be shooting the T/C Express with the peep sight I installed last night.I cansee much better now and I can hardly wait for hammer time:)

Sounds like we'll all be out doing what we enjoy most.Have fun everyone and report back.
I wonder if Cayugad got his CVA?

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

PBH

I'm shooting stainless today - I am out the door with a 24" Remington and the GM Hawkin... The weather is excellent - sunny and 28 degrees right now but going to high 30's - what more can one ask....

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

I got out today with the TC New ENglander. Just a perfect day.Mix of sun and clouds and 53 degrees with little or no wind.Too perfect I think,the range was pretty crowded.Lots of centerfires and only one other MZ. New guy to MZ,shooting a real nice Thumhole Omega.I planned on shooting Round ball only,but I had a few .44/240 XTP's that will not load in the Omega without a hammer.I was really surprised how well they shot. Shooting at clay birds on the bank at 120 yds.I was hitting high at 50 yds,and even higher at 120 using 90gr BM3.At 90 gr I don't get the blowby on the sabot that I seem to get with 110gr.I put about 25 shots inside a 6" circle,which is about as good as it gets with open sights.My old eyes really need a scoped rifle. I got to the range and found I had forgotten to bring a patch jag,so I just shot.If it got a little hard to load,I put in a Patched RB with TC prelubed patch.It seemed to work out well. Got home and clean up only took 15 minutes. Really like BM3 for cleaning.

Charlie

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Well ended up only shooting two rifles and the first part of the day ented up being kinda sour. First I decided to shoot the new Omega and set about bore sighting it with the sights I have put on it from my Encore. Well the sights didn't line up well and even bore sighting I know it was going to be about 8" high and it did not dissapoint me because it was at least 8" high[:@] However that was not the start of the fun for me with the Omega I had somehow purchased a box of the old Shockwaves that came with the oversized sabots and got the first bullet I ever tried putting in the rifle stuck about an inch and a half below the QLA and I could not get it down the bore so out came the breech plug and 100g of loose FFall over the trigger mechanism in went the range rod from the back and 5 or so hits with a 16ounce hammer I got the stupid thing out.

Why the hell T/C never pulled these bullets from the shelves is beyond negligent in my opinion. Well I did have the pack of extra sabots T/C sent me over a year ago when they first discovered the problem and I used them for the rest of the shooting of the Omega yesterday.

As I knew the sights were useless I just fired for function checking out how the rifle felt and whether I liked it in General. So Even with the bad time I had shooting it, it should be a good shooter. It shoulders well The recoil pad that came with it was exellent and the trigger was outstanding. In fact the triggers short creep and light break made for some confident shooting and I am sure once I get the sights set up the way I want them it will shoot fine.

Now I will talk about the rest of the days shooting with only one other rifle, the Renegade. I had been experimenting with flints and the ones that worked best in the shop were the sawn agates. This is what I used for this range session. I had also replaced the vent hole liner with a new 5/64th one and picked up some 4F for priming.

The gun shot so good and so fast you never even noticed the pan flash I felt as confident with that rifle as I ever had with any muzzleloader and even with winds a steady 15 gusting to near 30 I was able to eeck out a couple 3" and better groups by the end of the session. This was at 72yds so I am very pleased about that.

I shot around 30 rounds through it never needed to adjust the flint and never had any hangfires. It only failed to go off once and that was after cleaning the bore I forgot to wipe the pan out a the little but of moisture that came out the barrel had turned my prime to mush. A quick wipe with a dry cloth and Boom!!

This gun is good to go time for load developement and more practice. If I new flints shot this well I would have bought one sooner. Ignition time seemed to be as fast if not faster than my percussion sidelocks.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Pittsburghunter,
I'm glad that you finally got the Omega out to the range. Didn't the Omega come with sights? We have both of our Omega'sscoped, so if you need a set of sights for an Omega, just ask and you shall receive. I think I have your address around somewhere??
It sounds like the Renegade flinter made your day....cool.
I was surprised that you didn't takeyour new .54 Scout out to the range with you. I think it was the right decision though. I like to focus on one ML at a time and very seldom take out more than that.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

I actually brought 4 rifles including the new Scout but I was having so much fun with the Renegade I decided to wait for another day. It was my first time shooting a properly funtioning flintlock and I was having a ball!! My shoulder is not to happy about that though. (thirty plus shots out of the Renegade and another 40 or so out of military guns).

The Omega came with sights but I did not like the ones that came on it so I figured I could do a direct swap with the Encore but that did not work. The barrel of the Omega must be tapered more than the Encore because I needed at least another 1/16" or more of height on the front sight to have gotten it to work. The Encore sights are T/C's 1/4" MOA click adjustable sights and the ones that came on my Omega are a cheap Williams knockoff. Remember it was one of those "Z5" models. Over all though the Omega was user friendly and will be a hoot to shoot after I decide what to do with the sights.

As far as Shockwaves go I think I will just look for the new bonded ones in the future the boxes are not date coded but I know these came out after they fixed the sabot problem.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Pittsburhunter,
Thisis a picture of thefront and rearsightfrom my Omega. The front sight is 7/16" high. Is that taller than the one that came off the Encore?

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Hmmm the rear sight looks a bit different than the encore one I put on the Omega but the front sight looks the same. The gun is still packed so I can't measure it but I will. I just looked at the Omega sights that I had transferred to the Encore and the front sight is close to a half inch high. I would just put the origional front sight back on but for some silly reason T/C reversed the element colors on the Z5 sights and it would be green on green[:@]

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Pittsburhunter,
I prefer the green fiber optic up front. Have you thought about a peep sight? You already know how I feel about them.
Let me know if you'd like to give these sights a try on your Omega.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

To be honest I would like a set of plain old square sights for it. I just like them more than any other open sights out there. At this point I may put a scope on the thing but I think I saw in T/C's catolog some target sights so I will check them out as well. Just for giggles I am thinking of pulling out the elements and turning these sights into plain old sights. I am not a fiber optic fan either. Well as far as sights go. Fiber optics is great for telecommunications.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Pittsburghunter,
I guess it's kinda like why there's so many flavors of ice cream.....we all have different tastes.
I know that you'll figure something out and have fun doing it.

RE: What to shoot this weekend?
 

Yeh we all get our start somewhere as far as our quest for what we like to shoot. When I started my formal/informal shooting I owned scoped and flat blade open sight guns so I just got use to them. I do like peeps but it is hard to find ones that match my style of shooting. Both M1's got it right.