Christmas came a little early for me

[hellrazor]

Dixons was full today but they said it wasn't as bad as yesterday. They said yesterday was one of the busiest days all year.

I got the last 4F they had packaged in the small containers. Guess they have to split more containers for tomorrow.

They had a few newbies buying flintlocks for the season starting Friday. Sure hope they do their homework. 4 days isn't much time to get everything figured out and going.

 

[tddeangelo]

There were plenty buying rifles yesterday, too. And a few that had repairs they wanted done before Friday, of course, lol.

Shot today and I'm smilin' like a fool.

Shot 105gr FF at 50. Zing, spot on point of aim from the clean barrel. Beautiful.

I wonder what 120 will do? Tried it. 2.5" high. Great windage. Hmmmm....

2 more produced a group of about 2", center of the triangle as 2" high just a tiny shade left. Wow. Let's try 100.

4" group, centered at 1-1.5" low. Wow. WOW.

Shot with the back of my left hand leaning on the rest, sort of like a shooting rail on a treestand. Didn't rest my right arm nor the buttstock on anything. I'd put a deer target out at 100. Bam. Right above the elbow, tight to the shoulder. Hot dang. Offhand at 100...two shot I duffed...bad. I screwed my head on straight, let the shot surprise me, held tight to the target, and the ball punched the heart of the vitals marked on the cardboard deer.

Then.......I shot jugs.

First try, the ball jumped out of #3 and got away.

2nd try, it made it out the back of #5 and deflected, never hitting #6. First two jugs were totally destroyed. The third jug was beat up good. 4 and 5 had a hole bored through. I found a "flap" where the ball punched open the 4th jug. The dent was perfectly sized to the ball as it was fired, so it didn't expand at all. With a 0.600 diameter, that's not a problem. Exit from jug #5 looked similar.

I figured if it had stayed straight, it would have been caught in #6.

QL predicts 1638fps, with a +/- 150fps disclaimer. The online RoundBall trajectory calculator says it has to be going 1750 to make the trajectory I'm seeing.

Recoil is about on par with a 30-06 with a moderate/mid-range load.

I'm happy.

 

[hellrazor]

Recoil is about on par with a 30-06 with a moderate/mid-range load.

That isn't bad. Good thing flintlocks are heavy.

Someone called in for a repair today and got verbally spanked. "Call back next week when everyone is back from hunting and make an appointment." Someone else called and wanted a trade-in price on something and was told "no prices over the phone, you need to come in for an appraisal". Sounded like it didn't go over well.

I got a laugh at a newby going over gun cleaning on the flintlock he just bought.
'Just get a bucket and clean it with water'
"Do you need to use soap?"
'No, you don't need soap, just water'
"But someone said you should use soap."
'No, you do not need to use soap...'

I laughed to myself and left at that point. I almost chimed in with ''get soap on the frizzen & flint and let me know how well your next hunt goes." I did that once and only once. I have a folded up piece of sandpaper in my emergency kit now.

I remember buying a new flintlock there a long time ago and getting into a debate on using a brush to the clean the bore. Went over like a lead balloon... I got smacked with a - clean the flintlock the right way, season the bore and you will never need a brush. Point taken. :lol:

 

[tddeangelo]

I was there yesterday just in time to get to watch someone ask Chuck for sabots and Triple 7 powder. Now that was fun.

 

[truck driver]

This Dixon's sounds like a store I need to visit.

 

[tddeangelo]

I'd wait till July and go to the Gunmaker's Fair, Rodger (held at Dixon's). You'll love it.

 

[truck driver]

I'll need to find it first, don't know where it's located.

 

[tddeangelo]

It's easy. Go to Cabelas. Go east on I-78. Then exit North on Rte 737. 2-3 miles on your right.

Hopefully I can put a doe on the ground here later this week when the season opens. Then we can see what the 62 does for whitetails.

 

[hellrazor]

I was there yesterday just in time to get to watch someone ask Chuck for sabots and Triple 7 powder. Now that was fun.

I witnessed that already. I was looking at the round ball display right in front of the counter when the question was asked. Was about 8 or so years ago when inlines were approved for the early season. Was funny as hell. He told them to go to Walmart for that crap because he doesn't sell it here.

I hope I can smack a doe on Friday or Saturday. We are doing a 5 person flintlock hunt with the neighbors at the cabin. I have a spot that rarely fails me in early season that I am going to do a friday afternoon hunt at. If the deer are still real spooked from rifle season it might not work out too well.

truck driver, Dixons is the muzzleloader shop to visit in PA. They have almost anything you could want for traditional flinklocks, capslocks, etc. Check out the videos on youtube for Dixons muzzeloader or Dixons gunmaker fair.

 

[hellrazor]

Get ready for a warm start to the Flintlock season. Around 50 friday and saturday....

 

[hellrazor]

I hunted Friday afternoon in my normal muzzleloader stand that always produces deer. Didn't see anything for the whole afternoon. So I guess the deer aren't moving into the fields like they usually do. Mast crop is better this year.

I went up into my buck stand Saturday morning. I saw 3 doe coming through the laurels and promptly missed a doe on a hang fire at 7:20am. Click, flash 1-2-3-WTF!-fire. I freakin hate hang fires.

7:50am - 2 deer came in and stayed too far into the laurels for me to get a shot.

8:45 - The 6 doe I kept seeing 3 weeks ago in buck season came trotting through pretty fast at 35-40 yards. 1 slowed down in an opening, pulled the trigger and click.. misfire. All 6 deer hit the brakes to see what the loud click was. I reset everything and nailed the only deer standing in a clearing between the trees.

Was down at my deer, caught movement about 120yards to my left and watched a group of 8 doe run through. About 30 seconds behind them was another group of 3 trying to catch up.

Then I heard more noise behind me but when I stood up to look I couldn't see over the laurels. They had to run right past my stand.

Warm weather was strange though. Was 55F on top of the ridge while the valley was 45F.

So I saw 22 doe by 9:30. I saw 2 more deer in the afternoon when I was putting a drive on for the neighbors crew. Nobody else had any shooting.

Season is over for me. Have 1 more tag but not going to bother since I have a buck too.

 

[tddeangelo]

Congrats, hellrazor!

I've been hunting fairly hard since the opener, and have come close a few times. The first morning, about 15 minutes into shooting light, I had a 6pt buck at 20 yards broadside. I shot a buck earlier this year, so my one and only buck tag was gone, and Mr. 6pt got to go on his merry way unharmed.

That evening, I had three nice does slip through a shooting lane at 50 yards before I could get a shot. The next night, a doe came almost into a lane where I could shoot, then swapped ends and was gone.

A couple days ago, I went out in the frosty cold weather and was rewarded with a doe approaching to about 30 yards. I quietly eased the lock to full cock, only to find it wouldn't engage in that position, and thus my rifle was...well...useless. Talked to Allen, and he met me the next day and repaired it on the spot. Back in the game, I loaded her up and got out there on New Year's Eve. As I climbed my stand, I got to see out into the field behind it, and there stood a deer. She was at 190 yards, but the terrain would let me close pretty easily by 75 yards. 115 yards is doable with my rifle, if I can get into a supported position. So...I tried a stalk. I got to 110 yards just fine, but the terrain wouldn't give me line of sight from prone, and sitting wouldn't work, because the ground sloped too much to my back, making it very hard to get on target, and requiring too much muscle contraction to hold position, making it less steady. While trying to figure out my next move, the wind swirled and they decided they didn't want to stick around.

Last night I went out to sit a field stand again. The deer seemed to be feeding heavily on the grass in the field, so I figured I'd try it. Winds sustained in the 15mph range with gusts over 30 were not helping, but they slacked a bit toward dark.

Just past sunset, the wind was somewhat abated, and looking to my right, a small doe stepped out. I watched her feed for a minute or so, having no shot at the moment, but no others came out. She moved closer, so I twisted around in the stand and got my left hand over to the right side and on the shooting rail. Properly oriented, I waited for her to pass into an opening. I finally got my shot, let the pressure on the trigger gradually stack until the sear released....the rifle went off as fast as it's ever gone off, which is very quick. The remaining wind moved the smoke enough to let me watch the results of the ball strike on the deer. It was very, very dramatic.

When the ball hit, the deer was literally smacked down. That's not just a phrase, she was basically swatted straight down. She landed on her back, hooves in the air, and never twitched or kicked. When I went down to the deer, there was a big wad of deer hair 6-8 feet closer to my stand from the deer.

Here's the photo:

When I checked out the deer, I was very surprised to discover that neither the entrance nor exit wounds were visible! The blood in her nose said I shot her through the lungs, but no holes???

I had shot her quartered toward me. The ball entered at the base of the neck, slightly forward of the near side shoulder and high on the deer. I was in a 15' stand shooting down a slope, so I had a pretty steep down angle in addition to the deer being quartering toward me. The ball exited behind the far side shoulder, about midway top to bottom. With the hide off, I could see a LARGE hole in the muscle going in, and an equally large one going out. Apparently, the angle of the shot let the deer's hair lay down over the holes. The holes in the hide were about ball-size, and I'm shooting 0.600" projectiles from this rifle.

Also surprisingly, there appears to be almost no bloodshot meat around the wounds. I'm shooting 120gr of 2F powder, and the trajectory I have with it, checked against a roundball trajectory calculator, says I should be getting 1750fps, give or take. I had thought it might beat up the deer kinda badly, but it didn't.

So there we are....although I have a few more doe tags, so we'll see if I can whomp another one yet.

 

[DrMike]

Excellent, Tom. Great report.

 

[hellrazor]

Congrats. Always nice to christen the new firearm.

120gr must have a decent kick unless the flintlock has decent weight. I tried a max load of 150 in an inline once and decided I wasn't going to stick with it. Shooting that in a tshirt was interesting.

I would love to find a roundball and see how much it deformed on a hit. My doe this year had hair blown off just like your did. When butchered there was a wad of hair about 1/2 way through the wound channel. My only fubar shooting was not remembering I was sighting in at 100 yards so I ended up with a spine shot at 35-40. 2" higher and I would have missed.

 

[tddeangelo]

Recoil isn't bad at all. It has a 46" barrel though, and is no featherweight. Plus, the buttplate is at least 1.5" wide or more. That coupled with the custom fitted dimensions and there's very little recoil perceived. I get pushed around, yeah, but no discomfort.

 

[tddeangelo]

And I hit a little higher than intended for the same reason. It hits 2-2.5" high at 50 and I knew to aim for the heart at that range, but when on autopilot...... :roll:

Gonna head out here in a bit and see if I can't up the tally by one more. :twisted:

 

[JD338]

Awesome job Tom, congratulations.

JD338

 

[hellrazor]

Aren't you hunting this week? Powder won't get damp....

 

[tddeangelo]

Sure am, and it sure won't! I didn't get out tonight. Was out for the last half hour last night. The deer beat me to my spot, though. Gonna try to get there for the last hour of light tomorrow if the wind isn't bad. I normally don't mind the forecasted 10mph wind, but with temps in the teens, that may be a deal breaker....

I'll be out Fri/Sat for sure.

 

[hellrazor]

I would have to break out the OLD eddie bauer goose down arctic parka for this stuff. This wind would suck..

I hunted in -5 with -20 windchills with that on. Half of me was warm.