50 Caliber flintlock love

This is my Lyman 50 caliber flintlock Great Plains Rifle. It's beefy, but not so cumbersome that it can't spend the day at the range with you.


I like taking it out with a couple of others and just convert money to smoke and noise for a couple of hours. If I don't get out often enough, I'll spend a little time at the 25 yard line to get back into the groove before taking it down to the 50 or the 100 yard lines. If I don't shoot often, this is what the targets look like at 25 yards. Those days, I'll usually just park my butt at the 25 until things vastly improve...

Pretty close to a cartoon gun......

I like black powder guns, whether they are rifles, single shot muzzle loaded pistols or revolvers. I found a flintlock for crazy sale, and decided to spring for it. Hey, I could be a car guy, and spend $50K just to start the restoration of a clunker........This is not an extremely cheap passion, but it's not that expensive either. Figure I should get all my toys before I retire, since I probably won't have that kind of discretionary funds then.
So, here are the nearly cartoonlike features of my new bp pistol... 50 caliber patched ball flintlock with a standard trigger and a 16 1/2 inch barrel. This is a Pedersoli Bounty Hunter.

That's a manly sized bottle of Tabasco and a 20 oz mug for size comparison.
So I am eventually going to be shooting this exclusively on the 50 yard line, but want the flexibility to shoot at 25 when necessary. I figure at max powder charge for the 50 yard range, I can back it down to shoot the same point of aim at 25. First, I need to see where it is shooting, so I headed to the 25 yard range, loaded it to the max of 35 grains of 3f powder, and shot it off of bags. The first shot was so low that it almost hit the target frame. From there it was a matter of filing the front sight until the point of impact came up to where it was supposed to be

The last shot of the day was pretty close to where I want the gun to shoot, but more work will be necessary.
To get an idea of how much I had to file off the front sight, this picture shows that the 1/4 moon front blade is now really truncated.

After a couple more trips, I have this hitting where I want it to at the 25 yard line while shooting off hand. Next will be taking it to the 50 yard line and continue filing until it is dead on at 50. Then it will be back to the 25 to figure out what powder charge will give me the same point of impact. Damn, I love geeking out with this sort of thing......

New way for me to spend my kid's inheritance

So I just picked up my brand new CZ 527 American in 7.62x39. Why that caliber? Cheap, easy to obtain military surplus ammo, of which I have a bunch, and this rifle is actually made to shoot mil-surp ammo. Score...

Put a 3x9 variable scope with a 40mm objective on the CZ supplied scope rings...mainly because the American comes without sights.... and bore sighted it with the bolt removed. I put it on bags, looked through the barrel, lined it up on the target, then adjusted the scope to indicate at least close to the point of impact.

This is the first shot out of my new rifle with the bore sighted scope. Not bad, even if I say so myself....