Black powder cartridge gun

Interestingly one of the topics I find that a lot of hunters and shooters aren't aware of are black powder cartridge guns. People seem to think that smokeless powder created the need/desire for cartridge guns instead of the other way around.

Last year dad gave me an old Damascus barrel side by side shotgun. For those not in the know Damascus steel is made by folding layers of different quality steel and iron together to make a solid where the layers are attached but still different materials. This would be instead of mixing the metals to make a homogenous whole. Damascus steel is easier to make with primitive tools than modern "fluid steel". The problem is that it's nowhere near as strong and isn't tolerant of smokeless powder shotgun shells.

Well that's no problem, I've got black powder (well, for cartridge guns I use Pyrodex) and for $80 Lee will send a simple shotgun shell loader.

My initial experiments weren't terrific. It's difficult to get the height of the load correct to ensure that the crimp is nice. To negate that issue I picked up a roll crimper.

The roll crimper does exactly what the name suggests, it rolls the lip of the shell to secure a card wad in place holding your load inside the shell.

There is definitely a trick to getting the crimp just right but after a little practice I could produce a pretty nice product.

The over shot wad gives a handy place to label the load, these are all 1 1/8oz of #6 shot. The two cases with the B are bismuth shot, the other two are lead. The powder charge is the same volume as the shot or about 3 drams.

This is a half loaded shell, looking at the case itself you might notice that it's been cut off, the shotgun has a 2 1/2" chamber. For best results I started with a 3" shell and cut 1/2" off. This cuts off the old star crimp and makes it easier to get a nice roll.

These are all bismuth loads. Back when I first got my 16ga muzzleloader I picked up 2 pounds each of #4 and #2 shot. Last year there was a sale so I bought 10 pounds of #6. #6 bismuth is good for ducks, #4s for geese.

During bear season I found a beaver pond with a ton of duck activity so one day during duck season I snuck in before dawn. The pond was completely deserted until right at sunrise when the wood ducks started piling in. 

I had a pretty good hide and enjoyed myself just sitting there watching the birds come in, completely unaware of my presence.

My shooting wasn't great but I did manage to score two.

Its pretty sweet taking ducks with a 120+ year old gun using shells you made yourself. That duck hole is a great spot that appears not to be hunted by anybody else. While I was there I heard, but never saw, some geese. I'll definitely be back next season.

Bismuth, getting ready for duck season

 All of a sudden it occurs to me that I don't appear to have written hardly anything about my recent forays into the world of non-toxic shot.

For those of you not in the know waterfowl (ducks, geese, etc) need to be hunted with non-toxic shot. For most folks that means steel. However steel shot is hard and will damage the barrel of a classic gun. Last year I decided I might like to hunt ducks with my grandfather's 16ga Remington model 31. The old 31 (mine is from 1924) is often regarded as the smoothest pump action gun ever made. They only made them for a few years and mine is the only one I've ever seen.

A 2020 pheasant with the old model 31

16ga is a fun, uncommon, gauge. The advertising used to say "Hits like a 12, recoils like a 20". These days its mostly out of favor but has it's adherents, including me.

So to shoot ducks with the 16 I needed a non-toxic shot softer than steel which brings us to bismuth. The other advantage is that bismuth is more dense than steel which gives it more oomph and better ballistics. The disadvantage is that it's much more expensive...

So last year I ordered a case of #5 loads from Boss Shotshells. This is not a paid endorsement of them, in fact AFAIK they don't do that. While I did get one stud wood duck last year with the 16ga mostly it shot partridge.

I guess tailgate pictures are kind of a thing for me...

Edit: I almost forgot the green wing teal from last fall that I took with the Model 31. That gun logged a great season, 1 teal, 1 wood duck, 13 partridge, one pheasant and a porcupine. Not bad for a gun that's pushing 100 years old.

When I picked up the 16ga ammo I also got 2 boxes of 12ga #4 shot. These are their 2 3/4" "shortie" loads which did pretty well on geese. I didn't have a whole lot of luck with these on ducks. Later I realized that I'd screwed up with the choke. Steel shot doesn't compress much as it goes through the choke owing to the hardness of the steel. Bismuth and lead are much softer so you need a tighter choke to get the same pattern out of the gun.

During duck season last year I noticed a lot of people complaining about finding ammunition, this isn't uncommon during the season, people wait to buy. Last year was worse because of the widespread ammunition shortage. This year I decided that I'd again stock up early.

That's a case of Boss 12ga 3", #5 shot. Should be real good for ducks. Since bismuth is heavier than steel you can use a smaller shot size which gives you more pellets per shot. I went with #5 as a compromise, it should be heavy enough for early season geese but with more pellets should be better for ducks. That case was eye wateringly expensive but as they say "I didn't come this far to miss". These shells should result in a better kill percentage and fewer cripples. I hate the idea of leaving a bird to die later.

The #5s probably won't be good enough on late season geese but we really don't have that much late goose action since the water usually freezes. If I do get a chance for late goose hunting I still have a few #4s from last year and a couple of boxes of steel BB so I'm plenty well supplied.

Finally, for some real entertainment I picked up 10# of bismuth #6 shot. I've got a couple ideas for that, one is to get my first muzzleloader duck. Back in 2017 I tried for a muzzleloader duck and failed. My 2020 and 2021 muzzleloader pheasants (and a 2021 muzzleloader rabbit) were a bit of redemption but I still want a duck. Back in 2017 I was carrying #4s because I didn't realize I could get away with lighter shot, I've learned a lot in 5 years, hopefully this will be the year.

The other thought is to load some black powder cartridges and shoot a fine damascus double. Dad has a bunch of them, these are antique guns that won't hold up to the pressure of smokeless power but will still shoot fine with a proper blackpowder load. A big advantage in a black powder cartridge gun is the ease of cleanup.

So at least from an ammunition standpoint I'm ready for duck season 2022. All that's left is to wait 4 more months...

2021 Hunting roundup

 I meant to post this earlier, I really did. In fact I meant to post some of this during the season, then I got distracted and so on.

Anyway hunting season this year started with a green wing teal the Saturday before the moose hunt. This was the first duck I shot with grandfather's Remington Model 31 16ga.

I'll admit it, I'm a filthy water swatter but a duck is a duck.

The next week was spent driving the north Maine woods looking for, and mostly not finding, moose.

We did find some spectacular scenery, this was in Garfield plantation and it definitely felt like we were on the top of the world.

The weather was against us for moose hunting, it was warm and the moose were mostly hanging out in the swamps. Considering I was hunting with a mostly elderly crew, it was my uncle's moose permit, we weren't going to be tramping through many swamps.

Warm weather was good for finding partridge.

I managed to bag 13 in the week which is an all time record for me. Grandfather's 16ga worked overtime. I wish I had a picture of the one I bagged at 50 yards, tight choke on that gun...

One night Angie made us partridge nuggets. She cut the partridge into chunks, dipped them in BBQ sauce and then rolled that in pretzel breading. Boy were those good.

Strangely I don't have any pictures but in 2021 I got to go on my first goose hunt from layout blinds. It was a typical "You shoulda been here last week" kind of day but we got 6 geese. At one point the birds were trying to land on the blinds which was a crazy feeling...

I kind of bungled pheasant season. The picture above is the second day I hunted and I managed a hen and a cock with my 20ga over/under. I decided that was too "easy" so I didn't hunt for a week. I don't think there were as many birds stocked this year, there certainly weren't as many out. Alternately its likely a bunch of hunters found the field I was hunting and there wasn't as much cover this year either.

In last year's hunting roundup I mentioned that I was working on an article for "MuzzleBlasts" and would you believe it actually got published. Check out the October 2021 issue for the whole story.

Back in August I wrote about the Ward shotgun I'd gotten. It got a chance out on the pheasant field too. This one was probably the best shot in the air I've ever made. The bird jumped up in front of me and flew right by me, I swung around and knocked it out of the air clean.

I wish I had better pictures but this was my first solo wood duck and the first duck I was able to successfully jump shoot. I stalked in to a little pond Ben and I have been hunting and got within about 20 yards of this guy. Woodies are really jumpy so if you can stalk in on one you're doing a good job. The old 16ga really rocked him, he dropped right where he was.

Finally I managed these two buffleheads. We'd originally thought they were geese but up close I could tell the difference. These are the first two ducks I shot from the kayak although I did get a goose a few years ago.

Deer season was such a cluster I don't even really want to talk about it. I missed taking a shot at a buck on our first day in Maine and never recovered. I had a shot on a doe but no doe tag and that was the only other deer I saw all season...

Anyway, it's February, only 2 more months until turkey season opens.

Sausage time is here again

 You might remember that in last year's hunting round up I talked about sausage day. Sausage day 2021 was last Saturday.

We started with about 180 pounds of venison

Then added about 30 pounds of pork fat. You have to add fat to the venison or the meat will dry out and taste terrible. We used fat back so the first half hour is spent taking the skin off the fat. Everything gets ground once separately, then the fat and venison get mixed together, spices added and mixed and then ground again. We use a medium grind which leaves the sausage with a little more chew to it.

We have a little bowl that scoops just about one pound at a time which we pack into 1 quart ziplock bags. Thats what I spend most of my time doing. I don't know why that has become my job but apparently I'm pretty good at it.

This year's take was supposed to be split 8 ways but one guy didn't want his share, he had too much meat in the freezer already. Split 7 ways we ended up with 32 pounds apiece with a few pounds left over to give to some landowners who had helped us out during the season. Giving back to the landowners is an important part of hunting.

Considering I didn't take any deer at all in 2020 it was nice to come home with sausage. That's one of the nice things about hunting with a group...

Hunting 2020 - the finale

Okay I know I've teased this one enough but one of the real reasons for these posts being slow is that Google Photos is just KILLING me. It uploads what it feels like uploading when it feels like uploading it. I've got a ton of pictures in my hunting album that it just will not upload. Then it gives zero error messages, just "Nope, I don't want to upload that." I made a negative review yesterday and Google basically said "It's not us it's you." which, combined with a bunch of other negative recent reviews makes me think they know they have a problem but don't want to admit it. *Sigh* the Google Photos to Blogger workflow was so good...

Anyway after I came back from deer camp I had a couple weeks where I was working nights, class started at 7pm and went until 2am. This left me with a bunch of time during the day so I thought I might go see if I could find some pheasants. I went out once early in the season and while I found other hunters I didn't see any birds. This time I tried a different spot and the foolish things were waiting in the road for me when I drove up.

That's my grandfather's Remington Model 31 shotgun in 16 gauge. I've always had a soft spot for 16 gauge, its a little unusual. The 31 is commonly regarded as the smoothest pump shotgun ever made. I really like that its light and easy to carry, although that first bird was really easy I still spent a bunch of time stomping around looking for birds.

When I was a kid my uncle Reg (really my great uncle) told me that sometimes deer would step out of the woods and look at a truck driving by, so if you were following a truck you should leave a big gap so you could catch that deer. The second day I went out I didn't see any birds in the field but as I was leaving I paused and let some bow hunters out in front of me. As they drove out this pheasant stepped into the road behind them. By the time I got out it had retreated into the ditch but I'm not too proud to shoot a ditch bird. ;)

Having gotten a couple birds with the 31 I thought I might try my 11ga side by side muzzleloader. You might remember this from some previous posts. Its a fine old gun although its long so its not a great bush gun. It was fine lugging it around in the field though which is really what it was intended for.

I actually shot two birds with this gun, the only time I managed to get two in one day. I'm working on a story that I'm going to try to get published in "Muzzleblasts" which is the periodical of the National Muzzleloading Rifle Association. If that happens I will, of course, let you know.

So anyway I ended the season with 5 pheasants which we can add to 5 ducks and 5 partridge and zero deer. Yes, there, I've said it, I got skunked. It was a tough year, we had some snow early in the season and then nothing toward the end. It got really cold, then warm. The deer didn't move the way I expected them to and pressure from other hunters took them out of the honey hole I shot my late season deer in last year. So it goes, better luck next year.

Hunting 2020 part 2

 So in my last post I talked about ducks and partridge in October. In November I headed back north for deer camp. As is usual we didn't see any shootable deer although dad and I did see 3 in the road at night. I had to weave through them to keep from hitting one.

Mike and I had a pretty good time shooting partridge, we took 3 birds on the first day.

I kind of screwed up on this trip, I took my new Browning Silver and a single barrel "Khan" 20ga my dad gave me. That gun is kind of cool, it folks completely in half which makes it easy to pack around. It's also cursed. I had it with us last year too and we didn't hardly see a squirrel the whole trip. Until this trip it had been fired once and that was at a water bottle just to make sure it would go off.

So I asked Mike "Which gun do you want?" and he chose the cursed 20ga. I dropped him off at the north end of a fencerow, told him to go on the other side of it and I'd meet him in the middle. I drove to the south end and just as I walked up to the fencerow I spotted a bird. Well I'm no dummy I pulled up the Browning and bagged a bird. One thing I've been working on is taking longer distance shots and letting the gun do the work and this was a good one. It was an easy shot but a difficult retrieve, the bird was under some spruce trees with thorny bushes all around. I had to about crawl in. Meanwhile Mike was seeing nothing.

When I caught up to him I gave him the Browning and took the cursed 20ga, it wasn't long before he connected with a bird and sent 2 more over my head but I couldn't get the 20ga cocked to take a shot. He got his second bird immediately after that, the foolish thing watched him shoot and just sat there.

A couple days later I rode with my dad and uncle Guy and got my second bird with the cursed 20ga, the second time it had ever been shot and it's first bird. I did miss another bird with it later in the week, a bird I'm confident I would have gotten if I'd had the Browning.

Late in the week we walked another fencerow, again Mike chose the 20ga and this time he chose the north side of the fence. All the birds were on the south side, I connected with 2 and missed out on 2 or 3 more. I felt a little bad but I seem to remember a year when he shot birds on that north side, its just the luck of the draw I suppose.

Anyway, I'm going to quit this post here and finish up in part 3, coming soon...

Hunting catch up.

 Folks, when I don't write for awhile its not because I don't love you, its because I'm lazy... Well that and I'm out doing things. So lets wind back to when I talked to you last, in early October.

Shortly after my last post we took another week at camp. In 2019 I shot my first duck ever while we were at camp in October, it was a merganser which is a pretty lowly regarded duck so for 2020 I had high hopes. In preparation for this hunting season I even got myself a new duck gun:

It's a Browning Silver in 3 1/2". A sweet little gun if I've ever seen one, it swings nice and only once has failed to cycle the action, that time was actually the second shot and it was a light trap load.

The bag on day 4, 2 black ducks, and a male cinnamon teal.

I made one big discovery on this trip, if you sit where they want to be, ducks are dumb. The pond I'm hunting is in an old gravel pit. The pond sits pretty low so its very hard to sneak up on, you're always skylit. That said if you sit next to the pond and cover up, well basically at all, the ducks won't see you. I've got a camouflaged sheet so all I did was cover myself with that and sit and wait. The ducks would fly down and land in the pond and blammo.

Yes, I'll admit it, I'm a filthy water swatter. I can't hit a duck in the air to save my life...

The last bird of the trip was another merganser. There are 2 things here, one, I'd cooked a merganser a year ago and wanted to see if I could make it taste good again and 2 I really wanted 6 birds in 6 days...

So total for the trip was 2 cinnamon Teal, 2 black ducks, a merganser and a partridge. Not really epic but I got my 6 birds.

One thing I didn't do on this trip was hunt the field edges, I saved that for deer camp in November.

In Massachusetts this year I got no ducks or geese at all. I'd taken the first week of early goose off but never was able to get where the geese wanted to be. I went hunting with a group of guys one time and while we saw a bunch of ducks I couldn't get close to them. Strangely on that trip I got sent home with two ducks Zach shot.

Pretty fancy huh? Black duck breast with blueberry reduction. It tasted good too.

The real hunting story of the year came in November, I'll save that for my next post.

Black powder scatter gun fun part 2

 

So the last post ended with my second shooting session and the mention that my cousin had given me some Pyrodex to shoot. During that second shooting session I decided to try loads with Pyrodex. In case you're not away Pyrodex is a "black powder replacement". The advantage, as I see it, is that Pyrodex is not classed as an explosive so its easier to ship than real black powder and thus is available from a lot of vendors who won't carry real black powder.

Pyrodex is more difficult to ignite than black powder but in a cap lock gun its not a real issue. I did notice a tiny amount more delay with the shot going off and it throws a little less smoke which smells a little less sulphery.

What I found that I really disliked is the cleanup. Of course black powder cleanup is never fun but its not terribly hard. I mix up a little hot water with dish soap and soak the barrel for a few minutes, that water comes out all black with the powder residue, then I run a couple patches with TC #13 cleaner, and a patch or two with denatured alcohol to dry things out, then a couple clean patches and an oiled patch to finish the job. Usually the second clean patch will be pretty clean.

I never did get clean patches with the Pyrodex and worse those stupid plastic shot cups left terrible fouling.

Thats a bore brush coated with plastic fouling, its bronze underneath I promise.

Lest you think that the problem was all caused by the plastic fouling I took the gun to shoot Trap last Friday. We fired a total of 8 shots, I fired 4, Angie 2 and one of the other guys at the range fired 2. Each of us managed to hit one bird but the machine was set strangely and was throwing very high. This machine also gets used for sporting clays and they move the aim around. The black powder shots were the first we fired, I got better at it after a couple rounds.

Anyhow I used all pyrodex for that excursion and it was nearly as bad to clean, the Pyrodex fouling doesn't seem to be particularly water soluble, I let it soak longer than I normally would, and with very hot water and the water didn't get particularly black, it took many patches before I finally just gave up and let it be a little dirty. I'm fairly confident that the corrosive elements have been removed though.

So would I use Pyrodex again? Sure, I've got a pound and a half of it and this gun burns through 82 grains (3 drams) for each shot, it'd be silly to not use it. I probably won't use it for hunting, that extra split second delay could be the difference between hitting a bird and not. One of the cans I was given is Pyrodex Select, as near as I can tell Select is just regular Pyrodex RS (Rifle/Shotgun) screened more carefully. Most folks seem to suggest its not any better than RS. At the very least it'll be interesting to test that out.

Oh, yeah I did mention hunting didn't I? That season is coming up soon. One goal I have this year is to take some birds with black powder. Recently I realized that there are a lot of pheasants stocked in my area. I actually saw one last fall while duck hunting but we'd just moved into a new area and I didn't want to spook the ducks. I ended up shooting a goose there so I'd say it was a good choice. I think this old gun will work well out to about 20 yards. That fits with what I've been reading for other folks suggestions on open choke guns.

I've mentioned my 16ga cap lock once or twice, that has a modified choke but its a much lighter gun than this, I don't want to use more than 1 1/8 oz of shot in that and probably I should only be using one ounce. Its been awhile since I shot it, I should probably put it back on the patterning board...

Deer hunting: lessons learned

So yesterday I talked about my 2019 success shooting ducks. Duck hunting for me is a pretty new thing going back maybe 3 years, as I mentioned I've been hunting for around 30 years now and the vast majority of my time in the woods will have been deer hunting. In those 30 years I had zero success. I'd seen a couple deer but never even pulled up on one. I did have the potential for a shot once but the deer was running directly away from me which is a lousy shot option.

So opening day 2019, snowing like crazy. This is first of December and very unusual for us. There was probably 4" on the ground when we first went out. I was hunting with a group of guys who drive deer and, as I had a doe permit and had never shot a deer before they were kind enough to give me a bunch of choice spots. So it was that after lunch I was stationed at the output to "The Dungeon". A dense section of woods alongside a highway. Buddy Ben called on the radio to say he was on a hot track and coming right for me. I stationed myself halfway up a hill, there were tracks in the valley and tracks on top. I figured from where I was I could adequately cover both.

I was wrong.

Three deer came blasting along the ridge. I pulled up on them but I was only maybe 10 yards away, I couldn't find them, even in the 4x scope on my Mossberg 500 12 gauge shotgun. Finally as the third deer came by I figured I'd better try. I got a good idea where she was and pulled the gun up again. This time all I could see in the scope was brown, I yanked the trigger.

By the time I put the gun down there was no deer. "Oh rats." I clambered up the hill just to be sure.

Well son of a gun...

The shot went in her behind which is normally a terrible shot but I'd gotten lucky and it had bounced forward making this a humane kill, it lasted maybe a minute after the shot. I'd gotten doubly lucky, if she'd taken another step she'd have gone off a cliff onto the highway...

We recovered the remains of the slug a few days later. Not much left considering it started out as an ounce of lead.

The last Saturday of the season I hunted with the same group of guys and Buddy Ben once again sent me deer. This is muzzleloader season, you might remember my Thompson Center Renegade. 

This time I was better prepared, pulled the gun up at maybe 20 yards and fired and the deer ran off. I'd cursed myself earlier in the day by saying I had hit 100% of the deer I had ever shot at. A few seconds later Zack fired too but his was a squib, we joke that the bullet just fell out of the barrel. Those were lucky deer that day.

Fast forward to the day before the last day of the season. 

I hunted this one plot pretty heavy, we still had snow and I could tell nobody else was going in there although they had hunted it real hard during shotgun season. Previously I'd had little luck but recently I had learned where the deer were traveling and headed toward that spot. I cut a fresh track and started following. The deer were moving between sections with oak trees, eating the acorns. I found myself in a little glade and looked up to realize there were deer everywhere. There were probably 7 or 8 deer in a 40 yard patch. I was hunting for antlers when they realized I was there and scattered. For the next 2 hours I chased 3 of them. The led me on a merry run but finally, with the sun setting I had to break it off.

That night I pulled the ball out of the rifle and found that snow had packed in on top and melted but interestingly hadn't gotten to the powder.

I attribute this to a good tight, lubricated patch making a good seal in the barrel. Buddy Ben puts a piece of tape over the barrel of his gun to prevent wet powder. I think the plastic wrapped bullets the inline guys use don't seal as well as a patched roundball.

Which brings us to the last day of the season. I'm back in that same area and cut another fresh track. Theres new snow so I know this track is from today. I follow it for awhile until I run across what I can only describe as a deer super highway. We're close to where I had seen the deer the day before and I'm presented with a conundrum.

Do I follow the track I've been following or change over to the super highway? As I stand there pondering two deer run up the hill and stand within 30 yards of me, probably closer to 20. I pull up the old Renegade and with Saturday's failure in my head I aim low, the rifle is sighted at 50 yards, the ball is still rising this close.

The roundball goes in through the ribs on the left side of her body, through both lungs, out the right side and kept on going. I don't want to hear that a .54 with 50 grains of powder is underloaded, if they had been lined up better I'd have gotten two deer that day and been in legal trouble...

So anyway with my success I got a lot of other learning, Buddy Ben helped me dress out the first deer, the second one I did myself. I got to help cut up 5 or 6 deer and then recently we had the annual "Sausage Party".

The party is what it sounds like, get together, grind up meat and make sausage. We had something like 150# of grinds to which we added around 40# of pork fat.

I was unprepared for the volume of sausage we made. Theres hot, Italian, breakfast, garlic and garlic parmesan. I brought home 27#, there were 2 extra packages of hot and I snagged one of them. Angie made meatballs with a package of the Italian and called it the best sausage she's ever had. I'm glad about that, I was worried we'd be stuck with a whole bunch she wouldn't eat.

In view of today's challenges I'm sure glad to know we've got a freezer full of sausage...

One for the hunters

Look, I know not everybody is into hunting, if you're not just pass on by this one. I don't do many hunting posts or talk about hunting very often. This is the first of a two part series so if you're anti-hunt you should probably skip tomorrow too.


I've hunted, off and on, for 30+ years now. I got my first hunting license when I was 13 which would have been 1989. My very first hunt I shot a rabbit which was the biggest accomplishment I'd have hunting for the next 10 years.

In 1999 I shot a moose but other than that I'd shot mostly squirrels and a few partridge. I'd started shooting squirrels a few years back because of spending a lot of hunting seasons shooting nothing and because the little pine squirrels (called red squirrels in Maine these are not the same big red squirrels you see outside of the northeast.) can be very destructive if they get into the camp.

2019 was the year I started to get serious about hunting, its the year that I realized a lot of what I thought I knew about hunting was wrong and the year I started to pay attention better. My success started at camp in October when I got my first duck. I won't show the picture, its too gross, I didn't get a clean kill and didn't know how to wring the duck's neck. My follow up shot made a mess of him but I still got the duck and we did eat it.

Mergansers are often called "fish ducks" because they eat fish and are reputed to taste like fish. I marinaded this one in Italian dressing for 3 days before grilling it. I probably should have pounded the meat to tenderize it a little but other than being a little tough it tasted fine.

Ben and I started hunting ducks together a few years ago before I had my gun license and I had no luck but 2019 was way better.

These are wood ducks, I shot the drake at the top, Ben got the other two. The two drakes and another hen he shot a different day are getting mounted. Wood ducks, often called "The gentleman of the marsh" are really beautiful and pretty delicious.
Interestingly wood ducks are named for what they eat.

Those acorns taken from the gullet of a wood duck.

My final score for waterfowl season was 2 ducks, the woodie and a mallard hen.

Other than the ducks we're having mounted the meat got slow cooked in the dutch oven.
I also scored 2 Canada geese. Geese are much tougher birds than ducks and require heavier shot. Both of the ones I shot needed to be shot twice because I'd had the gun loaded for ducks when I fired. I'll be more careful about that next season. The geese I shot are both at Ben's house waiting to be made into jerky.

I mentioned I learned a lot this year, one of my big lessons that I need to improve my sneak. I started learning this with the merganser. I found that if I could stay behind some weeds I could sneak up on them pretty easily. I also learned that I'm not a very good shot with the shotgun. This is a practice thing and I just need to spend a bunch more time shooting.

Up next: Deer season and more lessons learned.

Time for a new rifle.

My parents gave me a CVA Buckhorn as a Christmas present a few years ago.

Dad and I were pretty impressed with how it shot right out of the box. It came with fiber optic "iron" sights that were actually made of plastic. The hunting season before last I was walking on snow covered ice when I slipped and fell and broke the front sight clean off. I already had the 3-9x scope for it but hadn't been able to make it shoot well. It turns out the mount I had was wrong, with the correct mount it shoots well. I use 80 grains of loose 777 powder with a 250gr TC sabot which will produce 1" groups easily at 50 yards. Thats not extreme accuracy but this is a really cheap gun. The fit and finish is nice but it does have a problem.

This is the closed bolt position. The thing is that this is quite a primitive system and in this position the primer will have been struck and the gun has been fired. That means you can't transport it like this.

In the open position you can see where the primer goes and this is the real problem.

The breech plug holds the primer in the center. The primer is retained by a spring clip around the hole. The breech plug itself is tightened with a slotted screwdriver. The problem is that any time water gets anywhere near the breech plug it can go through the slots, around the primer and in the touch hole and wet the powder. The time I fell snow packed into the breech and wetted the pellets I was using at the time.

Obviously those weren't going to go off. I figured that the problem was only because snow had really packed into the breech and I wouldn't have trouble if I took basic precautions. Well last December I spent two days in the field and didn't fall down once. I did however go through some heavy country. After the first day I pulled the charge and found it soaked.

That clump toward the top of the picture is all wet. Thats a duck sauce container from my local Chinese restaurant, they're super handy for this.

To ensure I didn't have an issue the second day I packed Bore Butter into the slots the screwdriver engages. With the breech plug installed I used a toothpick to ensure all the gaps were filled. I didn't get a chance to pull the charge until recently, when I did I found all the signs of a wet charge that had dried out. This one *might* have gone off but I wouldn't bet on it.

Contrast this to last spring when I was turkey hunting, I had my percussion cap 16ga and it was raining. It rained so much it pretty much ruined whatever crappy finish there was on the stock, that stuff just melted off. I pulled the charge every day, its super easy on a shotgun, and never found any sign of water intrusion. That was real black powder instead of 777, both are fairly hydroscopic but the percussion cap covers the only point of ingress on that 16ga, unlike the CVA.

The CVA is an "inline muzzleloader" which means the primer is inline with the barrel. Its the hot thing these days, the 209 shotgun primer gives powerful ignition and when the powder is dry I really can't complain with how the gun shoots. However that accuracy is no good if the gun won't go off...

I was thinking about another in-line. The newest models are break action which gives good coverage for the primer and prevents the ingress of water but then I was thinking that my 16ga works just fine why not get another percussion gun, a Hawken would work great. I'm thinking .54 cal, it'd be fun to play with a big bore gun for a change and "The Ancient Ones of Maine" gun show is coming at the end of the month...