No ducks

As a followup to my last post I'm sad to report no ducks were shot.

I carried my 16ga Centare loaded with 1 1/8oz of bismuth #4s and an equal volume of blackpowder. Its maybe a slightly too heavy load but I want to throw a lot of shot.

We got in the bush, got the decoys out and were ready when the sun came up. There were about 10 wood ducks on the pond, Ben tells me wood ducks are about done for the season but it seemed good enough to me. They wandered all around the pond before finally coming about 20 yards in front of me. A drake and a hen right together, I brought up the gun, hit the trigger and "crack!" the cap went off but the gun failed to fire.

I scratched my head over that one, that gun has never failed to fire before.

Thus ended hunting that spot, the ducks were outta there not to return. We decided I ought to try it again to see if it would actually fire. I had to cap it twice more before it went off. Only thing I can think is there must have been some bore butter in the touch hole. I should have capped off before I loaded but I forgot before leaving home and didn't want to do it in the bush. I won't forget that in a hurry.

The rest of the day was a comedy of errors, I was closing in on a group of 6 on another pond that Ben couldn't see, he made a whole bunch of noise and they flew. Then the last spot of the day I got lost and kept flushing ducks when I needed to be quiet.

Ben summed the whole thing up "You'da had that one duck, maybe both of them..."

The speed loaders worked well when I had them in my carry bag. I've got a Vietnam era Army surplus first aid kit bag that keeps my stuff. Later in the day I got tired of carrying it so I put 4 bottles (2 powder, 2 shot) in my pocket, the shot rattled around in the bottle in my pocket and made a bunch of noise. I may make a belt pouch to carry 4 or 6 bottles with straps to hold them in place, it'd cut down on the noise and be convenient...

Speedloaders

One of the complaints about muzzle loaders is the time to reload. In practice I've recorded myself getting off a shot every minute while loading "from the pouch". In reality I had the powder flask in my back pocket, the roundball in one shirt pocket and patches in another but you get the idea. For the shotgun its harder. Shooters of yore carried a shot pouch not entirely unlike my powder flask. I'm not at that level yet so I cast around for a way to carry pre-measured shot and powder and ended up buying some speed loaders.



I forgot to take a picture of them so the Amazon link will have to do. While these are geared for rifle shooting I thought they'd work out for the shotgun too and for the most part they do. The reason I got the Thompson Center brand is because I could cut the tubes down to fit my load. I'm shooting 1 1/4 oz of shot and an equal volume (about 3 drams) of powder. This is a heavy load for my 16ga but patterns well and should work on most any birds I'm likely to encounter.

The TC speedloaders will hold about 2 charges but theres no good way to keep the charges separate so I could cut the tube down to hold just one load.

Instead I decided to get creative:

In the foreground my shot dipper, behind it my speed loaders. There 10ml "regent containers", or in common English, little plastic bottles. I like that they have screw on lids which keeps everything contained. I like that they're see-through so. can see whats in them and I like that the plastic takes Sharpie marker like a champ. The ones with the black top are powder, the S marks shot. They are a bit more than twice the size they need to be, 5ml would be perfect but they're less than half the cost total that the speed loaders would be EACH.

Ben wants to go duck hunting tomorrow so currently I've got all 10 bottles loaded with bismuth #4 shot from Rotometals. I'll let you know how it works out.



Again if you follow the links and buy from Amazon it'll help me out by sending a little cash my way but please don't feel like you have to...

Powder flasks

I want to take a couple posts to talk about things I like. In a previous version of this post I had a link to Amazon. They've decided that they don't want me in their affiliate program, so heck with them. My opinion of the flasks is unchanged, I don't care where you get them.

Actually for today's post I'm going to stretch that slightly, today is a tale of two powder flasks:

On the left the Traditions flask, on the right the same basic flask from CVA.

If you want to shoot a muzzle loader a powder flask isn't required per-say but it sure makes life easier. The flask has 2 jobs:
1. Carry the powder
2. Dispense the powder
A powder flask needs to be made from a material that won't spark, both these flasks are brass which won't spark. Back in history powder flasks were often made from horn and in fact you can buy a surprisingly good powder horn on Amazon, I'll cover that in another review.
The thing about a horn is the dispensing part, you pull the plug and pour out the powder. These flasks both have a mechanical shut off for dispensing the powder. Again thats not required but it sure makes life easier...

The body diameter of the two flasks is the same, they are essentially the same length and thus carry just about the same amount of powder. The difference is the valve.

Traditions:

Its hard to see in the picture but the Traditions flask uses a cross bar valve, theres a push button which slides a bar that allows powder through a hole.

CVA:

The CVA uses a more old school lever that uncovers the hole.

I bought the Traditions first, I think because it had more reviews and there were concerns about the finish on the CVA. The CVA I bought a couple months ago because I'd left the Traditions flask at camp. It turns out that I like the CVA a LOT more. Powder flow is much more regular with the CVA, with the Traditions flask the powder gets stuck, so I need to close the valve, put my finger over the end of the spout, open the valve and give the flask a vigorous shake to dislodge the powder.  Traditions says the spout holds 30 grains so I generally have to repeat the process at least twice to fill my powder measure.
By comparison the CVA rarely sticks the way the Traditions measure does so I can open the valve and flow powder into the measure more easily.

The finish is pretty much the same, I did see a tiny amount of corrosion on the inside of the flask along the seam on the tube but it wiped off with a paper towel. The CVA is slightly (less than a dollar) cheaper than the Traditions flask too so for me this is a no brainer, if you're into muzzleloading and need a flask the CVA is the way to go.