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Hunting experience
JimmyJack
Member Posts: 5,398 ✭✭✭✭
I walked into my deer stand with the t/c unloaded. I forgot to snap a couple of caps off to clear the blow hole. At my stand I didnt want to snap them and scare everything off. Sure enough later a big doe came broadside 30 yards off. When I pulled the trigger, the two pellets of Pyrodex ignited, but flew out the barrel like a tracer bullet, one hitting deer in the chest and the other flying up through the trees like a July skyrocket. dont have a clue what happened to the bullet. I think the oil and grease had partially plugged the blow hole and I only got a partial ignition. A good lesson why you always should snap a couple of caps or primers.
Comments
I have shot quite a few deer while walking to the stand.
Sounds to me like the bullet was forgotten ... not just forgot to click off a couple primers. Shooting Muzzle loaders is a tinkerers sport. Better luck JJ, next time!
I suppose a person could buy another breech plug and use it after getting sighted in prior to the season. That way you'd be sure that it is fresh, dry and open when the moment of truth comes during the hunt!
Then more recently I had an interesting experience... I was sitting in a tower stand hoping to see a deer or a hog, when I spotted something moving in a clearing. It was a bobcat, and I just had time to pick up the rifle and get on him, and let him walk into the cross hairs. When I squeeze the trigger on the Marlin 45-70, I hit him perfectly through both shoulders with the hand loaded 300-grain Remington jacketed hollow point bullet, and he fell dead on the spot. Now that's the way it's supposed to happen!
About five minutes later, I looked over there again, and what do my wondering eyes behold? Another bobcat walking through the same opening, about eight feet away from the first one! Again I quickly shouldered the rifle, but this cat was moving a bit more quickly than the first and I hit him a bit too far back. He ran, and I heard him crash in the dry leaves and brush a time or two.
A friend and I tracked and found that cat, and he had gone an incredible forty to fifty yards before he'd expired. Among other tracking clues was one speck of blood and a piece of his liver! But there was no blood trail, even at that. Cats don't seem to bleed much, even when shot through-and-through - but they sure can keep going when any other animal would just lay down and die.