Hunting with a muzzleloader

by Jeff Barnard, AP environmental reporter in SW Oregon for 30+ years (now retired)

Are you seduced by the romance of using a replica of the guns carried by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the mountain men, early pioneers and the American Indians who struggled to live with the great Westward Migration? Then muzzleloader hunting might just be for you — and modern muzzleloader hunters get to choose just how hard they want to make it on themselves.

A cloud of smoke billows April 2, 2017 as Bill Crow fires during a shoot held by the Walker Mountain Muzzle Loaders at the Josephine County Sportsman Association outside Grants Pass, Ore.

Flintlocks offer the greatest challenge for the hunter, with their greater uncertainty and longer delay in firing. (Pennsylvania even offers a flintlock-only season due to the greater difficulty.) You get a PFFFFFT and a cloud of smoke in your face before the charge ignites, which gives the deer a chance to hear it and jump. Percussion cap rifles are quicker and more certain to fire, with no smoke in your face. But you can still screw up and be left with a misfire.

If I decide to spend $400 to $600 on a good rifle and gear to go muzzleloader, this is the route I will take. I am leaning towards flintlock. I always had a soft spot for the 18th Century and James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye. But even the percussion sidelock rifle, to me, embraces the spirit of a primitive hunt worthy of a special season. I have seen them misfire on the range.

Jeff Potter shows off the flintlock action of his Poor Boy rifle, which weighs 13 pounds.

But most folks seem to go for the modern in-line rifles, which offer a higher degree of reliability and accuracy, and feel and look more like a centerfire rifle. They still have to be loaded manually like other muzzleloaders.

Unlike many states, Oregon won’t let you turn your muzzleloader into a single-shot version of your centerfire rife. Oregon requires even in-line muzzleloaders to have an action open to the weather. And you can’t use a scope, a centerfire primer, pellets for propellant, plastic liners known as sabots on your bullet, or bullets that are more than twice as long as they are wide. That knocks out a lot of the stuff that passes for muzzleloader gear in the Midwest, South and East.

Munroe Crutchley, 70, is secretary of the Walker Mountain Muzzle Loaders in Grants Pass. He is a traditionalist and has been making his own muzzleloading rifles since he was a young man back in Maryland. The last one, which he made for his wife, took 200 hours, which works out to less than $2 an hour for his labor. That kind of effort needs to be about love, not cost-saving. He has taken deer and bear with his muzzleloaders, deer and elk with a bow, and deer with a modern rifle.

Munroe chooses to shoot a round ball, just because that’s what the original muzzleloaders did. But if you choose to shoot a conical bullet, you need to keep in mind the twist rate of the rifling in the barrel of your rifle. Generally, a slower twist, say one turn in 48 or even 60 inches, is best for the round ball. A faster twist, 1:28 or so, is better for conical bullets.

You also have to choose a caliber. Though William Clark carried a .36-caliber rifle across the country and back, Oregon requires at least .40-caliber for deer and .50-caliber for elk.

Once you have your gun, Munroe suggests you try different loads and bullet patch materials to see what shoots most accurately in your rifle. Munroe uses a fixed sight, which he files down to be zero at 100 yards, but many rifles come with adjustable sights.

Bill Crow shows off his flintlock fitted with a smooth-bore barrel during a shoot held April 2 by the Walker Mountain Muzzle Loaders at the Josephine County Sportsman Association gun range outside Grants Pass.

Most choose to hunt rifles over smooth-bores, but at a club shoot, Bill Crow was regularly knocking down bowling pins at 50 yards with a smooth-bore flintlock in .50-caliber. He has never taken the smoothbore hunting, but it looked like he could be effective. Most of his game taken with a muzzleloader was at 40 yards or less.

“I like to get up close and personal,” he said. “You’ve got to be stealthy.”

There is more to loading your muzzleloader than dropping some powder down the barrel and ramming home a bullet. Munroe wrote up a checklist for a friend once:

• First wipe out the bore with a dry patch to remove any oil leftover from the last cleaning, which can foul the channel from the cap or pan to the base of the barrel. If you don’t, you could be faced with a charge that won’t fire, and all the trouble that goes along with that.
• Snap two or more caps on the empty barrel to be sure the barrel is clear. By holding the muzzle to the ground, you can see a puff of air if it is.
• Wipe the bore again.
• Then pour in your measure of powder. Tap the butt on the ground to settle the powder, then put an oiled or greased patch over the muzzle and press a ball into the bore. Using a short starter you can get it a couple inches down, where it is easier to use the full-length ramrod. It is a good idea to have your ramrod marked to show the bullet is fully seated tight to the charge. Leaving a space can cause a big problem.
• Don’t cap or prime the lock until you are out of your vehicle and hunting. Half-cock is safety, but Munroe puts a bicycle tire valve stem cap over the uncapped nipple to protect it and lets the hammer rest on it. When he is ready to fire, he pulls the hammer back, removes the valve stem cover, caps the nipple and takes sight and fires.

Bill Crow pours a measure of powder into his .50-caliber smooth-bore flintlock during a shoot April 2, 2017 held by the Walker Mountain Muzzle Loaders outside Grants Pass, Ore.

Muzzleloader-only controlled hunts — Apply by May 15 each year

Oregon offers several controlled hunts for muzzleloaders only (23 deer, 15 elk, six pronghorn), but you probably won’t draw the tag to hunt with Old Betsy each year. Some of the popular muzzleloader hunt tags can take several years to draw. Munroe figures he can draw a tag for the Applegate unit (315 tags this year, 1,025 first-choice applicants in 2016) once every three years.

Success rates for muzzleloaders vary from pretty good (55 percent for Applegate Unit deer hunt, where bag limit is either-sex) to low (5 percent for NW Cascades elk hunt. Many muzzleloader hunts include the benefit of a one deer bag limit and/or being later in the year, following rifle seasons. You can find out how hunters in each unit fared on ODFW’s website at the Harvest Statistics Page http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/hunting/big_game/controlled_hunts/reports/. And muzzleloaders are legal weapons during general rifle seasons.

Not all members of the Walker Mountain Muzzle Loaders hunt. Many of them just like to shoot the old-fashioned guns. But the guns are heavy. Jeff Potter’s Dixie Poorboy flintlock weighs 13 pounds.

Potter aims his Thompson Center .50-caliber percussion rifle while Rick Lopian looks on at a shoot held April 2, 2017 by the Walker Mountain Muzzle Loaders at Josephine County Sportsman Association gun range outside Grants Pass, Ore.

Clubs for muzzleloader shooters exist across the Pacific Northwest and the groups get together to at various locations during the year. Here is a 2017 Pacific Northwest Rendezvous Schedule:

http://www.wamuzzleloaders.com/2017-rendezvous-schedule.html