Pennsylvania Game News - April 2010 - 63

loaded should be identified as such. The old-fashioned way to show this was to stick the ramrod down the barrel. It literally sends up a flag to anyone wondering why it is in the bore and clearly shows that the rifle is loaded. Any muzzleloader that is loaded needs to be deprimed and made safe for storage. This is easily done by cleaning any trace of primer from the pan, placing a bird feather quill into the touch hole (wooden toothpicks break off, creating a problem), moving the frizzen to the open position and placing the cock in the fired position. “Will the gun still fire accurately next year?” This is usually the follow up question to the first (loaded?) inquiry. If the flintlock is kept in a cool, dry environment in a locked gun cabinet or safe, the answer is yes. Black powder is a stable mixture. It’s not a volatile chemical compound like many of the replica powders. Its one weakness is saltpeter. This potassium salt absorbs moisture. If you block atmospheric moisture from the saltpeter with a greased, patched roundball, and block the touch hole with a bird quill, the load is essentially a sealed cartridge. I have shot many loads from clean, loaded guns, many months later (even years) for other hunters, and found them to be just as accurate as they normally are. Personally, though, I like to totally clean my flintlocks before I put them in storage. Another question I often get is, “Where can I safely store my can(s) of black powder until next year?” The answer is in a cool, dry, fireproof environment. For me, that spot is my chest freezer. Think about it. Where is the one place in the house that survives fires? That frozen, dry spot that even if heated, defrosts all the food into a Fun Game answers: wild ginger, jack-in-the-pulpit, pitcher plant mushy, but cool environment that is substantially insulated from fire and heat. I place my cans in plastic storage bags to prevent ice crystals from reaching the exterior of the cans. I have done this for decades and never had a problem. A couple of cans stored in the freezer should be the max, however. Any more powder than two pounds should be stored in a steel powder magazine outside an occupied building in storage safes designed for powder. Flintlock Success I was able to steer Scott in the right direction. I used my CO2 discharger to get rid of the replica powder and sabotted bullet. A quick fouling patch and reload of a good dose of 3Fg black powder and a .490 roundball wrapped in a lubed 0.015 cotton patch, and a small quill in the touch hole, had him back in the woods, ready to go. I also gave him a little plastic bottle filled with 4Fg primer and told him to go home, practice, and let me know if he had any success with deer in the remainder of the season. A week later I received a phone call from Scott. He was anxious to tell me that he had just made meat the old-fashioned way, with his T/C Hawken. His enthusiasm for how well the gun worked was apparently contagious. His brothers are also now carrying flintlocks that work, just like the one that allowed Scott to score on a big doe from SGL 182 on the last day of the season. No man (or woman) is an island. The best way to achieve success with a flintlock is to learn from the experiences of others. One great way to do this is to visit the site of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association (www.nmlra.org), or find a local black powder shoot (more than 250 are scheduled across Pennsylvania for 2010) and enjoy the fun as you learn the intricacies of this all-engaging shooting sport. Contact the PA Federation of BP Shooters, Inc. at 10 Stump Rd., Danville, PA 17821 (570-275-4349). APRIL 2010

http://www.nmlra.org

Pennsylvania Game News - April 2010

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