A strange day at my range
 

Today I got up early and put in my time at the wood pile. Then decided to shoot before the rain came. I picked a .54 caliber Lyman Trade Rifle Flintlock. This is an accurate rifle with 90 grains of FFg Schuetzen powder, .018 pillow tick patch and home cast .530 ball.

Since I have not shot in a while.. I started at 25 yards. The groups was amazing. Not quite a single hole, but a large ragged hole. So I figured 50 yards would be a piece of cake. Boy was I wrong. Same target, same load. And the group was over five inches. Twice I tried new targets, and both times well over five inches at 50 yards.

So I came back to 25 and again, nice tight group. So ... do you think the physical exertion of splitting wood for four hours, causing muscle fatigue, could be the reason for the poor groups. I admit I was tired from splitting and stacking four trailer loads of wood. But the large group really shocked me. Especially with this rifle. To be so dead on at 25 and then so rotten at 50 just don't make sense to me today.

I then put that rifle away and pulled out my Sig Sauer 522 .22 caliber rifle to see how that behaved. The spinner targets at 35 yards never had a chance. Then the rains started so I put it all away.

I guess I have to shoot that trade rifle again. It really bothered me to see those kind of groups. The sights are tight, and all was normal. Oh well.. just one of them days.

cayugad

Some days are just like that... and since you are so far ahead me when it comes to shooting PRB I would not even venture a guess as to why or might, or anything. You tell me when you git it fixed...

I do believe that it was the drop in barometric pressure that caused the widening group size. A stable barometer is required for all fine target work while using muzzle loaders. :party0005:

That is the best excuse I can come up with for you Dave.:biggrin:

HA

That's a puzzle for sure Cayugad. I've seen that kind of dispersion out there between 75 and 100 yards. But not between 25 and 50. It had to be either something you were doing with the sight picture or something you did to anger the gods of muzzleloading.

Do you think it is because he is shooting that Sig all the time anymore?

My first thought was that the sights on the .22 must be better suited to your eyes than the sights on the .54.

I know as I get older those 100 yard groups sure opened up for me. I used to shoot about 1 MOA groups at 100 yards, and today a 4" group keeps me smiling. (with open sights - with a good scope groups remain tight)

Sounds like the shooting gremlins got you like they get every one of us once in a while. Or maybe your tired old muscles were just too tense to do any shooting.

I was going to shoot today if possible, but spent (much more time then planned) most of the day at the doctors office being poked and tested for all kinds of things. Then went to Wal Mart for all sorts of things (two more bricks of .22 shells), came home and remembered I had to go vote for the Wisconsin Recall Election, and by the time I got all the things that needed to be done, finished.. it started to rain. But to be honest, this really surprised me yesterday. If it had been a different rifle I might have just ignored it. But my Lyman Trade Rifle is a real shooter 99% of the time. Maybe this was just that 1% that sometimes happen.

A couple more days and the entire wood pile will be split and stacked. Then I can concentrate on shooting and getting my fishing boat out on the lake. I need a good day of fishing...

Powder?
 

Try again with a different can of powder. Or maybe some goex or something. I cant explain it but I have seen it before.It gets real frustrating when that happens the day before huntin' season! Trust me.

Funny you should say that.. try different powder. Because when I shot the other day, I was almost out of powder in the other can. So I opened a new can of Schuetzen when I was shooting that group. Now I am wondering... when you get to the end of a can of powder, many times the size of the grains have really gotten small. This is from sifting, them being bounced against each other, etc. So maybe it was in the old can of powder, I was shooting a much finer grain of powder then I normally do. Thanks for the insight. You might have set my mind at peace.