We're fortunate that replicas of many black powder guns are available today, flintlock and cap lock rifles, single shot pistols and revolvers, long range muzzle loading black powder target rifles and black powder cartridge rifles.

Matches seem relaxed and without stress, with the shooters intent on having a good time without regard to how well they score.

Traditional Black Powder Muzzle Loaders

The old time round ball muzzle loaders in both flintlock and cap lock are shot in matches across the country. Rifles include the Pennsylvania and Kentucky rifles, most flintlocks; and the Hawken/Lyman Great Plains family of percussion cap round ball guns. Matches are held at ranges to 100 yards with these guns, both offhand and bench and sometimes from cross sticks.

Matches for single shot flintlock and cap lock pistols are sometimes seen.

Black Powder Cap Lock Revolvers

These include the Colt and Remington revolvers and the myriad of others that were produced from 1836 to 1873 or a little later. These are sometimes shot in matches at 25 yards, and are used in some of the Cowboy Action Shooting matches.

Long Range Muzzle Loaders

There is a small but dedicated contingent shooting these target rifles with either paper patched or "naked" grooved lubricated bullets to 1000 yards and beyond. The scores I've seen are impressive. Replicas and originals of the Gibbs and Whitworth rifles are frequently seen. This is a shooting sport that requires experience and patience and knowledge and access to a range going to 1000 yards.

Muzzle Loading Target Rifles And Slug Guns

In the 19th century shooting great big target rifles, commonly at 40 rods, (220 yards), was popular. These rifles shot either paper patched or naked grease grooved elongated bullets, and weighed as much as 40 pounds, with barrels to 4" in diameter. While some target rifles of 16 pounds or so could be shot offhand, this was primarily a benchrest-even machine rest-proposition. Original Brockway, Anschutz, Gove, Ferris et al rifles are shot today, as well as rifles made by contemporary gunsmiths.

I've watched these matches at Fort Ticonderoga and was interested but intimidated by the experience and knowledge of the shooters. I'd like to get a gun and try this some day.

Black Powder Schuetzen

Schuetzen shooting matches involve both offhand and bench rest shooting at 100 and (more often) 200 yards. There tends to be no time limitation, so a relaxed loading and shooting environment is most common.

Originally the Schuetzen shooters shot black powder-that's all there was. Now some Schuetzen shooters use black powder, but the number is small. I think because there are no matches or categories solely for black powder.

Such cartridges as the 32/40, 38/55, 25/20 SS, 28/30 and a lot more were originally loaded with black powder. They can be shot accurately with black powder today, either breech seated or as fixed ammunition. Developing a load is somewhat more complex with black powder than with smokeless. A complete regimen for loading and shooting is required. Here is an outline of the decision and loading/shooting process.

For any given rifle, cartridge, bullet combination:

Breech seat or fixed? Breech seating may be more accurate than shooting fixed ammunition. Breech seating means that there will be a gap between the powder and wad and the base of the bullet-a practice that some warn against. I have shot many breech seated bullets with a case of powder and wad/s on top, with the offending gap, and have had no trouble to date.

Cartridges for breech seating may be prepared ahead of time, with a cardboard or cork or plastic or grease wad, or some combination of these, in the case mouth. Cartridges may be prepared for shooting at the bench, however this turns into a labor intensive method of shooting. Cartridges for shooting fixed ammunition may and most often are prepared ahead of time.

Soft bullets? Black powder and duplex loads cause the bullet to "bump up" or "obturate". This means that a bore diameter bullet will, under the correct loading conditions, bump up to groove diameter. And it means that a smaller diameter bullet than expected can provide good to excellent accuracy in black powder loadings. For the dimensionally challenged chamber/bore/cartridge case situation, this characteristic can come in very handy.

Duplex or straight black? Many of the old timers and modern day shooters use duplex loads; a small quantity of smokeless powder in the case first, followed by the main charge of black powder. Again, some warn against duplex loading, but I have shot and seen others shoot many thousands of duplex loaded cases and cartridges-all without trouble.

Duplex loading makes the rifle shoot much cleaner than with straight black powder; however it offends the traditionalist. A common recipe for duplex loading is 5 grains or not-more-than-5% smokeless under a slightly reduced load of black powder. I have used SR4759 as the smokeless, as well as several other slower smokeless powders. I've read about folks who use about any of the slower powders, in the IMR4198, IMR4895, IMR4831, IMR4350 areas. I don't think it is a good practice to use the fast pistol powders for duplex loading-but that's just an opinion. I suspect that shooters use whatever they've got a little of left in the can.

Bullet lubricant? I use Darr lube pretty exclusively for most single shot shooting. Darr lube is half paraffin canning wax, half Vaseline, and a spoon of RCBS case lube. I leave out the case lube, put in a little Marvel Mystery Oil. The black powder shooters contend that the lube is of great importance, and maybe it is. Various home made concoctions have been devised, and SPG lube is quite popular as a bought lube. There is a lot of mention of the notion that no petroleum based lube ingredients should be used with black powder so that the tallow’ and natural waxes, (jojoba, carnauba, bayberry), and esoterics, (Crisco, Murphy's oil soap, lard, butter, sperm oil) are involved. Fiddling with bullet lubricants is one of the least expensive and least harmful avocations open to the black powder shooter.

Wads and compression? Here we get into the magic. Common wads can be of cork or cardboard (postcard or cereal box or ?) or plastic or felt or wax/lubricant; and are sometimes used in combinations. The powder/wad column may or may not be compressed, the powder may or may not be dropped through a drop tube, which makes the powder take up less room in the case. I have had reasonable luck dropping powder from a Lyman 55 measure, putting my finger on the mouth of the case and tapping the base a dozen or so times. This settles the powder in the case. Then a cork wad, and I'm ready to breech seat.

Cleaning-how and when?

With duplex loads I've never had to clean the barrel during shooting. With straight smokeless there's the blow tube, (blowing through a tube/cartridge case apparatus to put moisture in and soften the black powder fouling), wiping between shots or sets of shots, wiping with a damp patch and then a dry patch, or wiping with a wet patch and then shooting through the wet bore. With straight black powder loads I've settled on wiping with one wet patch between shots and shooting through the noticeably wet bore. This was recommended to me years ago, it works for me.

There are zillions of opportunities to experiment, and the use of truly traditional powder and loading techniques contributes to the satisfaction of these Schuetzen shooters.

The Black Powder Cartridge Rifle

Paul A. Matthews

The heyday of the black powder cartridge rifle lasted for a short thirty years – from the late 1860s to the mid-1890s. And during that time the greatest single shot actions ever designed for a metallic cartridge made their debut. These included the Sharps, Remington rolling block, Remington Hepburn, Winchester high wall, Ballard, Stevens and other lesser known actions. With these rifles, particularly the Sharps and rolling block, along with a host of finger-long black powder cartridges with their heavy lead alloy bullets, the Old Timers killed more game on the North American continent than has been taken with all the high powered, smokeless powder, jacketed bullet rifles in the years since.

Now, more than a hundred years later, there is a group of shooters who have turned the clock back that they might relive and feel and taste just a bit of that long bygone era. These shooters will belly-down behind cross-sticks with those old rifles equipped with precision iron sights or a barrel-length scope of the late 1800s and proceed to shoot at silhouette targets standing 200, 300, 385 and 500 meters (219, 328, 421 and 547 yards respectively) away. And they do this with cartridges carefully loaded with black powder topped by a lead alloy bullet most likely cast and lubricated by themselves.

Such skills demand the most of a rifleman. With these heavy, high trajectory, low velocity bullets, wind drift is a major component, and the shooter who pays attention and accommodates the wind and mirage soon finds himself hitting those few extra targets that puts him in the winner’s circle.

Casting a premium bullet is a major requirement of the black powder cartridge rifle shooter if he is to be competitive on the silhouettes or at long range. One can not cast a mediocre bullet and expect superior results, and to be competitive in the BPCR game requires at least minute and a half, or better, angle of accuracy for as far as you are required to shoot.

Casting bullets for the black powder cartridge rifle has its own set of requirements. The bullets are usually on the heavy side for the caliber involved, ranging from as much as 400 grains in .38-caliber to 650 or 700 grains in .50-caliber. Thus, in order to cast upwards of 175 or 200 bullets in a single session, the black powder cartridge rifle shooter often employs the use of a propane-fired turkey cooker and a cast iron melting pot holding forty to sixty pounds of molten bullet metal. Because the alloy is usually a high casting temperature lead-tin mixture of about 30 to 1, and because the bullets are usually on the heavy side, the experienced bullet caster works with a lead thermometer in the melt at all times and maintains a constant temperature of about 750 to 790 degrees, never letting it vary more than plus or minus ten degrees.

Keeping the temperature constant and casting with a continuous rhythm helps maintain a constant mould temperature so as to cast bullets that vary but little in weight. Even at that, most competitive BPCR shooters weigh their bullets and select those that are within plus or minus half a grain. When dealing with a 535 grain .45-caliber bullet, half a grain is a very small percentage.

Although virtually all black powder cartridge rifle shooters start out with a production mould from Lyman, Redding-SAECO or RCBS, many eventually obtain a custom mould for a bullet of their choice or design that will cast within half a thousandth of the desired diameter. This lets them shoot their bullets “as-cast”, thus providing the greatest potential for accuracy at the longer ranges. Bullets that are shot as-cast are usually pan-lubed or run through a slightly oversize die that applies the lubricant without sizing or distorting the bullet in any respect.

Speaking of bullet lubricants, although most BPCR shooters start the game with a good commercial bullet lubricant, most of them at one time or another concoct their own recipe in hopes of better accuracy with less leading. Some succeed and some don’t. But to a person, they all experience a certain pride in coming up with something new, something fashioned with their own hands, just as the old buffalo hunters did when they cast their bullets in a cast iron frying pan and lubricated their bullets with buffalo fat.

To the black powder cartridge rifle shooter of today, there is no greater sense of exhilaration than getting down behind the cross-sticks, bringing the hammer to full-cock, and sighting downrange 547 yards at a steel ram silhouette. In doing this, he is conscious of the fact that 140 years ago other shooters were doing the same with the great shaggy beasts that blackened the western plains. When the sight picture is exactly correct, he concentrates on holding in that precise spot while at the same time applying pressure to the trigger. The rifle rears back amid a belching blossom of smoke and cinders, and the shooter is dimly conscious of the target tipping from its stand. A second or two later the metallic clang of lead striking steel drifts back to the firing line while already the shooter is preparing for the next shot, another brief moment of reaching back into the distant past to share with those who went before us.

If you really want to see excellent shooting done with plain base cast bullets at ranges of 200 meters and beyond, you should attend an NRA approved black powder cartridge rifle silhouette match. You should watch these shooters using vintage rifles with vintage iron sights or, in some cases, barrel-length scopes from the late 1800s, systematically tip the steel silhouettes from their stand at distances that would impress even the old buffalo hunters. Bear in mind that these targets are not symmetrical as is the round bullseye target. They are in the shape of a chicken, Javelina, turkey and ram, and the chicken is shot at 200 meters off-hand. Further, these shooters are given two minutes to sight in on one target followed by five minutes to fire five shots for score in sequence (a target hit out of sequence is scored as a miss) on five similar targets. Just hitting the target does not count; you must knock the target from its stand in order to score. And knocking a 50-pound ram from its stand at 547 yards usually requires a rifle of fairly substantial recoil, especially if there is wind coming from behind the ram.

The black powder cartridge rifle shooter is one steeped in tradition. If this were not true, he would not be using black powder. Nor would he be using a single-shot rifle with exposed hammer – certainly not the Sharps or rolling block with their massive hammers.

The black powder cartridge rifle shooter is in a class that stands by itself. It embodies the skills, the techniques and the soul stirring emotions experienced by those great pioneers – our ancestors – who pushed our boundaries westward in the last half of the 19^th century. May the memory of those long-gone souls forever be imbedded in our minds, and may the black powder cartridge rifle shooter of today always and always be on hand to momentarily live and breathe and feel that which went before us.