Old Guns: A Trip Down Memory Lane
We
did it a different way “back in the day.” I’m talking about muzzleloading for
deer. You’ll notice (some of you) that I just made a verb out of a noun. Don’t
try that at home, kids. It’ll affect your ACT scores.
Yeah,
we’re taking a trip down Memory Lane, again, but with a purpose; a tip that
hopefully will affect your modern game in a positive way.
Here
it is: Do not, absolutely do not, approach a downed deer with an unloaded
muzzleloader. Deer downed with a bullet driven by the less powerful black
powder employed by the ancients, get up and run away, often, even with hits
that prove, later, to be mortal wounds. Ask me how I know. I am an ancient.
Hits
with modern smokeless powder almost always prove to be accompanied with total
bullet penetration. Not so with the ancient black powder said to have been
invented by the Chinese to accommodate their love of fireworks. Leave it to the
evil white man to see its potential use as a propellant for chunks of lead
fired down tubes of steel.
True
smokeless powder came on the scene in the late 1800’s when it was adopted for
bullet use overnight, as they say, its efficacy in the gun game being apparent
to anyone with half the brains God gave a goose. I am not going to bore you
with the relevant details.
Well,
yes I am. Here’s one: I once shot a deer, dead, with one roundball and 90
grains of FFG black powder shot from a Hawken replica made for me by Willie
Cochrane of Tulsa from museum drawing-specs from a museum in Nebraska. The 200-grain
bullet hit the deer right at the base of the neck. The distance was no more
than twenty yards.
When
I walked up to the deer (it seemed like only four long steps), I saw the entry
hole made by the bullet right where I had held the open sights at the base of
its neck; exactly there. When I looked again, I saw the bullet that killed the
deer lying right there on the ground half an inch from its entry hole.
I
still have the bullet in a desk drawer near where I sit writing this. Would you
like to see it? I take it out and look at it often, yea, these thirty-something
years later.
You
tell me: How does a bullet that penetrated no more than that, one that rolled
out of its entry hole, back out into the open air, kill anything? Anything at
all. It’s a mystery to me, still.
A
time or two (more than that), the thought has occurred to me that the deer was
still alive when I dressed it (a nice buck). If so, it did not complain. I can
assure you that, in any case, it went to a better place.
Reload,
reload, reload. Now.
Copyright © 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen
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