How many---

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rdnck
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How many---

Post by rdnck »

I've been doing some thinking and wondering. With the recent emphasis on having a "period correct " buffalo rifle, how many here shoot their rifles with lead bullets they cast themselves and black powder? How many shoot barrel buck horn sights with a blade front? And lastly, how many can hit a gallon milk jug at 360 yards with that kind of a set up?

I have a couple of reasons for posing these questions, and am curious as to what the answers would be. Shoot straight, rdnck.
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GrumpyBear
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Re: How many---

Post by GrumpyBear »

I shoot my rifles with lead bullets I cast myself and use black powder?

I use Baldwin front globe sight, and his rear long range soule.

Never shot at a milk jug at 360 yards, but I hit the turkeys pretty regularly at 385 meters. Though not as often as I would like. :D

I'll have to give that a try, next time that I'm somewhere where I can shoot that far.
powderburnt
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Re: How many---

Post by powderburnt »

Give me enough shots and I might hit a chicken :P . Gallon jug with barrel sights would be tough at 360 yards. Fortunat'ly, I don't have a rifle with barrel sights. Aperture sights wouldn't be so tough on a calm day. Time to put my MVA sights on my Ballard, I'll give it a go next trip to the range.

HG
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Re: How many---

Post by Michael Johnson »

I have two Shilohs, a Hiwall, and a Roller. I cast my own bullets and load with Swiss BP. The semi buckhorn and blade works well enough for me to 200 yards but 360 would be a difficult stretch for these eyes. Only my 45-70 Shiloh has the semi-buckhorn barrel sight and it wears a Baldwin front. I have shot deer out to 200 yards with it, but was using a Soule rear at the widest aperture. My Roller has an Axtell combination front that I shoot with the brass blade up and Dave made his version of the Remington Rough and Ready barrel elevator peep sight mounted in front of the receiver. I have it marked out to 300 yards. I believe I can make that shot with that set-up. That 50-90 is my BP hunting rifle. On the other guns, the setup is an MVA soule rear with a Baldwin front. I could make that shot probably 66% of the time. When hunting, I limit my shot to 200 yards with iron sights when hunting. Some times you just need to get closer to avoid wounding the animal and losing it. That is my experience. The semi-buckhorn/ front blade worked well enough for me before I started wearing glasses 15 years ago. Not so much now that I am 62. Everyone's visual needs/ abilities are different making it difficult to generalize on this topic.Only my Roller was purposely built as a hunting rifle. The other three were built as target rifles.
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bpcr shooter
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Re: How many---

Post by bpcr shooter »

cast my own bullets, wrap my own bullets and after 6k rounds the gun has never seen white powder. I have shaver sights front and rear but also have the barrel sights....never used them....ever! I should try but then I would have to remove the front globe and install a silver blade :roll: :roll: maybe I try with the target sights
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Distant Thunder
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Re: How many---

Post by Distant Thunder »

I mostly shoot Creedmoor matches which is an entirely different game.

However I have my 1874 Sharps in .50-70 set up with a Beech front sight, a Shiloh semi-buckhorn rear sight and a reproduction of the original Sharps sporting tang sight. This has proven to be a good shooter with a 490 grain paper patch bullet over 78.0 grains of 2f out to 400 yards. Beyond that my eyes are no longer good enough to hit much of anything using simple iron sight such as these. I do believe I could hit a gallon jug at 360 yards using the pinhead Beech and the sporting tang sight. It would be fun to try hit or miss.

While not a buffalo rifle, I also have an original 1887 Danish rolling block (11.7 x 56mm) which has the issue military sights and I have shot it many times in gong matches to 500 yards and paper matches to 600 yards. It is not a target rifle and the coarse military sights are challenging to use at any distance. I don’t believe I could hit a gallon jug at 360 yards without a bit of luck, but I do believe I could come close many times! This too would be with cast bullets and gun powder.

I will be most interested in the reasons behind this question as well as what the answers will be!
Jim Kluskens
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Stephen Borud
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Re: How many---

Post by Stephen Borud »

I do all of what you mentioned all the time. That’s how I hunt and all my general shooting is done this way. Two days ago I ranged a new target I have never shot at before at 808 yards. In fact the target was new and had not had a bullet strike on it. The target was cut in the shape of a man from the waist up, and in actual size. I pulled out my first Shiloh, a 45 2 4/10th with ammo that I loaded over ten years ago. Stood my ladder sight (semi buckhorn) told my three boys to get there glasses on the target to let me know where I hit. I settled in and pulled the trigger. My oldest son who was using my good binocs said the target is swinging, then we heard the familiar ring. I asked where I hit the target, he said I think in the ribs. I grabbed the binocs, and sure enough he was right.

My oldest boy was now really interested in duplicating my shot. He shouldered the rifle up and took aim. After a couple seconds he said geez dad, the target is so small!

SB
rdnck
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Re: How many---

Post by rdnck »

O.K., here are the reasons for the question(s). A number of years ago, I was talking to Kirk Bryan, and he commented that the large majority of rifles that left the Shiloh factory were shot with jacketed bullets and smokeless powder. This really surprised me, and I have always wondered why this is the case, since lead bullets and black powder work so well.

I have always been fascinated with the marksmanship of the old buffalo hunters and how these rifles work on game at longer distances. I had heard and read tales of really remarkable shots at distance, and also read where many people felt that these tales were just that--tales. As I began to research, I realized that these were, in the main, not tall tales, but actual recounting of feats of marksmanship that were commonplace with buffalo rifles and barrel sights. One of the things that really got my attention was O.P. Hannah's account of Jim White killing blacktail deer nearly every shot at four to five hundred yards with a 50-90. You can read about it on page 142 of Miles Gilbert's book "Getting Stand". I have hunted and killed quite a few deer in my day, but SEEING a deer at that distance well enough to generate a quality sight picture seemed to me to make that difficult, if not impossible.

I went to Africa the first time in 2007, and carried a Shiloh Business rifle in 45-110. I practiced religiously and relentlessly on animal silhouettes at the 500 yard range I have in my back yard--and I was starting to understand how to use barrel sights and to get good with them. I had a really successful trip and killed kudu, black wildebeast, and springbuck at distances well in excess of 300 laser measured yards with the 45-110 and barrel sights. I came home, but O.P. Hanna and his 400 yard deer kept nagging at me.

I went back to Africa in 2009 with the intention of proving or disproving Hannah's assertion to my satisfaction. I had met Elmer Keith at Bill Jordan's house around 1980, and decided real quick that Elmer was not a B.S. artist. When Elmer wrote that as a boy he watched some of the old time buffalo hunters shoot, and that they could all hold a 4 inch group at 200 yards with their buffalo guns, I believed that. By now, I was doing pretty much the same thing on my gongs at my range at home.

One fine day on the Eastern Cape in South Africa , my PH, Andries Niesenberen, got me on a springbuck at 541 yards. Andries had seen the Sharps work on the previous trip, and I told him I wanted a long shot in the 400 to 600 yard range and he agreed to put me on the animal. Andries ran the Leica rangefinder and gave me the distance, and I hit the springbuck ram through both lungs on the first shot. Barrel buckhorn and blade front sight. O.P. Hannah was giving it to us straight.

Which brings us to the gallon milk jug at 360 yards. I was sitting on my firing line the other day, hoping for a coyote or some such to present himself for a target of opportunity. To my complete surprise, a really good white tail buck walked out on my range a ways behind my 300 meter pig berm. I don't see many deer on my place, and have never wanted to shoot one. But this is a really exceptional deer, and I lased him at 357 and set my sights and dry fired on him four times before he walked out of sight. I felt like I could have killed him had I wanted to, but my curiousity got me to wondering. So I set up a gallon milk jug at the place where the deer walked out and stood, and shot at it.

I learned a couple of things. A gallon milk jug is a hell of a lot harder to see than a pig or turkey silhouette at 360 yards--and I can hit one. Shoot straight, rdnck.
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Distant Thunder
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Re: How many---

Post by Distant Thunder »

Understanding your reasons for the question a little better now I'll relate the following;

A friend of mine and I often would go out to a local farm field and set up various silhouettes at various distances out 600 yards and knock them over with our Sharps rifles. The silhouettes were pretty easy to hit. So we decided to bring some gallon milk jugs filled with water as an added challenge. We set the jugs up at a distance of just over 500 yards, I don't recall the exact distance. I was using my Shiloh .45-70 loaded with a cast 500 grain RN over a mild load of Goex 2f. In those days this rifle had a brass blade front sight and an MVA #133 tang sight on the back. My friend had his Remington 700 in .270 Winchester besides his .45-110 Shiloh. I shot first with my Sharps, after 3 close misses I hit the jug on my 4th shot just about center. So my friend, not wanting to be out done, grabbed his scope sighted .270 and finally on his 3rd shot hit his jug! We concluded that the .270 was only one shot better than the .45-70.
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beltfed
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Re: How many---

Post by beltfed »

FWIW,
Here in WI. Brian D at Abbotsford club had been running BPCR Gong matches.
Ranges from 220yds up to 509 yards. He always set up "Quigley Buckets" as in
1# Powder cans painted white hung on shepherd's hooks at 400yds.
YOu got two shots at a can. If a hit, you got $5 off the entry fee.
Several people hit the can.
Mostly using usual Tang Peep and globe front sight.
Later, they hung a can at 509 in addition to the can at 400 yds since (some) guys were getting too good at the 400 can
I had a really good day on their last match before it was closed down:
One shot one kill at Both the 400 and the 509, with my 40-72W Ruger No 1/480 gr BFSS bullet.
I just could not believe it, because I had been having mixed results on the gongs with that rifle
as well as at Lodi Long range matches.
So, these small targets can be hit with our rifles, and I am sure there were some ODGs that were as good or
better than us.
beltfed/arnie
rdnck
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Re: How many---

Post by rdnck »

So Stephen Borud and I are the only two guys here that use their rifles with barrel buckhorn sights? rdnck.
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Don McDowell
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Re: How many---

Post by Don McDowell »

No you're the only ones with a zombie milk jug problem. :mrgreen:
AKA Donny Ray Rockslinger :?
Kurt
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Re: How many---

Post by Kurt »

Nope Bill, I use a Lowrance and Stephens Hartford front :D
Never put a milk jug up in the fence about 400 yds across the been field but a paper feed sack and managed to put holes through it :D
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Re: How many---

Post by sandhillcowboy1 »

rdnck wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 12:36 pm I've been doing some thinking and wondering. With the recent emphasis on having a "period correct " buffalo rifle, how many here shoot their rifles with lead bullets they cast themselves and black powder? How many shoot barrel buck horn sights with a blade front? And lastly, how many can hit a gallon milk jug at 360 yards with that kind of a set up?

I have a couple of reasons for posing these questions, and am curious as to what the answers would be. Shoot straight, rdnck.
Bill,

My Shiloh roughrider in .45-110 with the Loomer chamber, brass front blade that I modified, and buckhorn with flip up ladder is my designated buffalo gun using a KAL TGBS concave base, 550 gr paper patch. It has taken a number of buffalo and a deer, all one and dones. My Ped 40-65 has an ivory front blade and buckhorn rear. It has taken several deer and a buff using 350 gr. PP Hoch mold bullet. My first Sharps deer was with an ARMI 45-70 Billy Dixon model with barrel sights. All were black powder.

Never shot at a milk jug at 400 yards but either my 40-65 or 45-110 are Minute of Buffalo Heart at 400 yards with barrel sights.
This is 3 shots from my 45-110 Shiloh Roughrider in the set up above off sticks, first shot from cold, unfouled barrel. Wind was right to left with no allowance for it. This tells me what the exact hold is for wind. This was in prep the morning of a buffalo hunt. This pic was from the article "Buffalo Hunt Prep" I wrote for "The American Sharps Shooters". The three shots were sub MOA. That is as close as I have to shooting a milk jug at 400 yards :) Barrel sights are way more accurate than most people realize.
Rick

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Stephen Borud
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Re: How many---

Post by Stephen Borud »

Don McDowell wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 7:24 pm No you're the only ones with a zombie milk jug problem. :mrgreen:

Hahaha dammit there’s no zombie milk jugs Don in my world!

SB
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