What Got You Started?

[Roaring Bull]

Saw this on another forum and wanted to ask it here.  What got you started in shooting black powder firearms and doing all the things that we do?

Me, I took a BP safety course with my son in February.  We got out first bp rifles in March and now have around 12 in the house.  Started out as something that I could do with my son and now the entire family is getting involved in the life.

[FrankG]

When I was younger bya  couple days the Dan'l Boone , Davey Crocket shows influenced me pretty heavy. Boy I'm glad they outweighed  Superman , bout broke my fool neck jumpin off the garage tryin to fly with my towel for a cape :)

Think I was 5  here. Had me a pop gun Kaintukee and a tomehawk too :)




Then I traded for a CVA 45cal derringer basket case in '75 and by years end had two TC hawkens kits put together :) The first taste of black powder and I was hooked for life ! Thought I had it kicked for a couple years but I was wrong :)

[Dryball]

Me? That's kind of a long story...but here go's! About 1960 when my family moved to California ( I was 14 at the time ) a very kind man took me under his wing and introduced me to firearms...he loaned me his first .22, an early Winchester pump. Well I was hooked...I had no idea so much pleasure existed! From that point on I studied firearms of every kind until about 1970 when I found out about.....MUZZLELOADER'S! I soon became a blackpowder gunsmith and made many hand built rifles for myself and for others. In the mid 70s I started going to rendezvous and I have not yet regained my sanity! So if anyone knows a cure for this addiction...don't tell me!

Ned

[Lady of the Woods]

About 7 years ago my ex husband got interested in BP.  I thought it was loud and dirty (boy was I right) and didn't want to do it (boy was I wrong!)
Once I found out I could play dress up and shoot I was hooked. I've been rendezvousing and shootin ever since then. In fact, I can honestly say it is what kept my marriage together a few years longer than it otherwise might have (finally we had something in common). Now, I have expanded into more reenactment and living history events and like those type of events too. I have been rendezvousing or reenacting every weekend for the past month and with the exception of this one will be out with a rifle every weekend through early December.
Z

[melsdad]

I was always interested in hunting with a flintlock. About 4 years ago I bought my Lyman Trade rifle in 50 cal.. It was equipted with fiberoptic sights, and I bought a box of them (don't be mad fellas) :-[ powerbelt bullets, and some phony black powder. I took the gun hunting 2 seasons with no luck then skipped a year. This past season I took my first flintlock deer. I realized that out of all the previous deer I had taken, (except for my very first deer of course), this was the most memorable so far. After hunting season I wanted to find a way to keep shooting my muzzloader so I headed to the internet and started investigating. I found a few websites with lots of information, and forums were I could ask questions. I then found that a local gun club held a woods walk shoot. I had no idea what that meant, but I soon found out. On March 2nd of this year I attended my first shoot, and I was hooked from that moment. Then I met a fella on another forum, and after a few weeks of chit chatin' on line he invited me out to his place to shoot in April. The bunch that he shoots with has 6 shoots a year and I didn't miss one of them. That is where I won the nice looking box in another post I started. So to answer the question of what got me started would have to be that cold morning this past winter when I watched those 5 deer slowly feed there way toward me, and offer me a clean shot on the biggest doe of the bunch. Once the smoke cleared, and you could hear the deer running off crunching through the woods I followed the short blood trail to my first flintlock harvest, and from then on I was hooked on blackpowder shootin'. Alot has changed for me since then. I now shoot patched round balls with real goex black powder, and I went to traditional sights on my rifle. I now wear funny clothes from time to time, throw knives and tomahawks around in the woods, and I soon hope to start building a new rifle, and continue my addiction. If there is a cure I don't want to know what it is.

[bull frog]

Somewhere around 1956 or 57 I got hooked on the Davey Crocket series on TV.  That Christmas I got a plastic flintlock rifle and faux buckskin outfit compleat with coon skin cap with detachable tail.  The rifle was quite detailed, even had a lock that threw sparks when fired.  By age of seven I had actually learned to load one just from watching that series.  The only thing missing was the patch on the ball, and the loading of powder straight from the horn without a measure.  In 1963 while shooting .22 rifles a couple a young men came up to shoot with a 1860 army revolver and offered me a chance to shoot it.  I soon remembered my original facination with muzzle loaders and blackpowder.  A couple years later bought my first, a brass frame .44 cal revolver.  Pretty much learned on my own.  Lots of mistakes over the years but worth it.

[roundball]

Have hunted all my life, and seemed to have gone through a constant progression of different "manners of take" over the decades....lever actions, bolt actions, pumps, autos, shotguns, handguns, caplocks, and bow hunting...had a heart attack and 4X bypass surgery which cut my sternum open forcing me to lay off pulling a bow for a year, so I decided to see what a Flintlock was all about and haven't been able to put them down since.

I've had many good years of deer hunting, including some long shots on deer at 250-300 yards across some big soybean fields with Remington 700s & big Leupold scopes...and while I thought they were accomplishments at the time, they don't even come close to comparing to the satisfaction of "doing it just like the settlers did"...at 50 yards in the woods, in low light, with an open-sighted Flintlock, real blackpowder and a patched lead ball.

I've now hunted and shot Flintlocks exclusively year round for everything...rifles, and lately smoothbores a lot...different calibers / gauges...learned my way through load development for a .20ga Flint smoothbore and took a couple turkeys with it last year...a few crows, squirrels, doves...just great hunting experiences to learn to do things the way the settlers had to do it just to live every day and put food on the table.

[Chaffa Hosa]

Mississippi made them legal and set aside a special season in the late 70's so I got started in black powder hunting

[bull frog]

I own a large number of both cartridge and black powder guns, but get the most pleasure out of the black powder ones.  Always have, I left them many times but I always come back.............Bullfrog.

[slap happy]

Hi everyone! I was about12 when i had a broken ankle, layed up on the couch. I watched the movie the mountain men with charlten heston, thought that would be neat to live in those times. I watched daniel boone series, also grizzly adams series. I asked for a muzzleloader for my birthday, i got a cva kentucky rifle kit, i loved it. Then i worked all the next summer and bought a 36 cal navy cap and ball. I just like shooting blackpowder, i hunt with it, i load it up in my cowboy guns for the cowboy shoots. later happy

[SwampHunter]

Back in 1975 I bought a .58 (can not even remember the brand) and a T/C .54 Renegade. I could not hit a bull in the .....the rearend with the .58 but the .54 with Dupont 3F powder and a PRB was a differant story. It shot Goood. I got my deer with it the first primitive season. Started using my .54 for fur trappin and its been a love affair for sidelock percussions ever since. I love to shoot the .54's , .50's and .45's. I am looking forward to owning and of course shooting a .32 or 36 and a 12 or 16 gauge shotgun yet this year. Muzzleloaders are just plain fun to own and shoot and you will find that most of the people that own primitive original or replica's (thats me) fire arms are pretty interesting and fun folks to hang around with.
Safe and Fun Shootin Times for all,
Swamp

[Doug]

I also watched Daniel Boone, Davie Crockett, and all the others on TV as a kid.  One day I was visiting my cousin when he asked if I wanted to go snake hunting.  Well I don't like snakes but I wasn't about to act scared so I said "sure lets go".  He pulled out this gorgeous  but odd looking pistol , I asked what it was and he told me it was a cap and ball pistol.  We went snake hunting and didn't find anything,(thank goodness) but he let me shoot his pistol, I was hooked! big time!!  A year or so later I bought a .36 cal Remington revolver then 2 years later I bought a .45 flintlock Kentucky from a friend that I had met and as they say the rest is history.

[Ranger]

I went to the Great Trail Festival and Rendesvous in 1990. I was just curious and wanted to see what it was all about. Man, that did me in. All the folks were very helpful and forthcoming with information. My first rendesvous was in July of the next summer in Pa with my cousin, had a blast! Been doin it ever since...

[R.M.]

Back in the early 60s, my Dad started hunting with a guy that had an original full-stock .45 Kentucky rifle. There was an old beater hanging in a shed on the family farm, so Dad brought it home, and we completely stripped and refinished it. Many a good hour with my Dad was spent in the basement sanding and polishing that thing. It was an Austrian Lorenz, imported by both the north and south for use in the CW. I was about 11 or 12 at the time, and was it ever a hoot to shoot that thing. To say that it has snowballed from there is an understatement.
Over the years I started Olympic Pistol shooting, so obviously, my safe contains more BP pistols than rifles, but the long-guns are catching up. I'm still more of a paper puncher, but the "Vous" are calling me.

[fd-ems-emt]

I started black powder shooting in the 1970's..

I wanted to extent my hunting season..