Olde Eynsford Fg In .44-2-1/4" Paper Patch

I had gotten 5 lbs of the new 1Fg grade Olde Eynsford powder at the Quigley to see how it would work with paper patch boolits. My first successes with paper patched all came with Swiss 1Fg, although, as mentioned in another thread, 1-1/2Fg is now showing some promise in the .45-70 cases. Similarly, OE 1-1/2Fg hasn't come up to speed with paper patch either, thus far.

My first trials of OE Fg in the .45-70 were complicated by difficulties in getting the scope adjustments right for the 300M range I started out on. I have some more rounds loaded up to begin again at shorter distances, but haven't tried them yet.

I also loaded up some of my .44-77s with the new powder, and tested them at 200 and 300M. Cases were Buffalo Arms modified .348 Winchester shells, fired and unsized, trimmed to 2.255" and necks annealed, Federal Gold Medal Match Large Pistol Primers with punched-out primer wads from old ASSRA targets (better paper than NRA targets), 1/8" cork wads, compression 0.200" from case mouth and the Red River Rick adjustable .44 mould set at 1.329" length. This gave a 0.431" slug of 457-458 gr weight, which I patched with Strathmore Tracing paper, 1.5 thousandths thick.

Powder charges were weighed out at 75.0, 80.0, 85.0 and 90.0 gr. In order to get an equivalent wad height below the case mouth before compression, I needed 3 wads for the 75-gr charge, 2 for the 80 gr, and 1 for the 85 and 90 gr, respectively, before compression.

The patched boolits slid easily into the unsized case mouths, and would have fallen out just as easily, so I gave the mouths a slight "squinch" in my home made shell mouth reducer die. The boolits can be turned and pulled out, but do not fall out by themselves.

The rifle and sights have been described elsewhere. The air for both days' testing was dead calm for starters, with a breeze coming up later on. At 200M, two shots with 75gr (all I had after getting on target) went into 2-3/8", five of 80.0gr were 3-3/8"V x 1-1/2"H (4 in 1-1/2"V x 3/4"H), 85.0gr went 1-1/2"V x 5-3/8"H (breeze started up) and 90.0gr gave 1-1/2"V x 4-1/2"H.

Moving out to 300M, I wasted some shots (as usual) getting on target, but 75gr gave 11-1/4"V x 7-3/4"H, with two minutes' elevation and 1/4 turn of windage changes in mid group, 80.0gr gave 4"V x 6-1/2"H, 85.0gr 6-1/2"V x 9-1/2"H with some holding problems, and 90.0gr gave 2-1/8"V x 4-1/2"H for 5 shots.

Allowing for my problems of getting on targets and holding problems afterwards, I can't say that any of these loads seemed to be bad ones. The OE is quite a bit coarser and less dense than Swiss, so 90.0gr is about all that fits in these thick modified cases after drop tubing. Haven't tried the Jamison cases yet, but did load up 50 more BAs with 90gr charges for longer range testing. Either because I finally settled in on the bench and got on with the sights, or because the loads actually get better as more powder goes in, I don't know. I did get photos of the 90-gr loading at 200 and 300M, respectively. For some reason, the 300M shot is 90 degrees counterclockwise.

Attachment 200021 Attachment 200022

The testing is still preliminary, and short range as these things go, but the 1Fg Olde Eynsford seems pretty promising in this bottleneck caliber.

Thanks for the info on that 1f. I have some that I intend to run in the 40-90 bn, and maybe try in the 44-77, but have been pretty happy with 2 and 1 1/2f.
How was the fouling with the 1f, when compared to the other powders?
It's possible the Jamison cases will give you a bit better groups. The BACO reformed brass seems to be awfully inconsistent in neck/mouth thickness, and annealing is a great benefit. I've also found that the best accuracy in the 44 2 1/4 with patched bullets comes from bullets .434 or larger before patching , and cast from 16-1. Looking forward to your further test results.

Don,

The fouling didn't seem much different. Since I've gone the bore-pigging route, the swabbing is so thorough that I don't get a feel for how hard or soft the fouling is any more. With wet/dry patches, I used to be able to sense that Swiss had slightly harder fouling ahead of the .44 bottleneck chamber than it did ahead of the .45 straight case chamber (confirming the old buffalo hunters' complaints), but now it's all gone with the excess water in the bore pigs. Any difference in powder brand feels the same. And good riddance to all of it.

I have a few .40-90 3-1/4" cases loaded with the OE 1F as well. Even with the coarser powder and lower density, I can still get 103gr into those Bertram cases, probably too much of a good thing. It will be interesting to see how your bottleneck .40-90 performs.

I made a modification of a Lee seating die so I can get a column of powder above the mouth of a .45-70 case and push it, and a cork wad, down to the case mouth with a rammer before moving to the compression die in my loading press. Kind of heroic, but I can get 85gr of OE 1F into the 2.1" case now, giving more latitude for whatever "sweet spot" there might be with the paper patch boolits.

Film at 11 :mrgreen:.

If and when I ever get all the lead out of the barrel of this original Borchardt military rifle I want to try the OE 1f in it. It's a 45-85, and I'm thinking with a 500 gr patched bullet that 1f might be just the ticket.
I tried Swiss and Schuetzen 1f in the 44-77 and that rifle absolutely hated both of them.
Hopefully I'll run that 40-90 a bit next week at 1000. Will let you know what happens. I have Bertram and RMC cases that came with the rifle, and ordered a batch of the BACO brass which is some really good stuff, so hopefully this thing shoots.
Keep us posted on your 44-77 adventures, I really don't think there's a better bpcr cartridge.

I took the Montana Roughrider out again last Thursday. Calm at first, and a breeze picked up later. This time I was trying two bullets from an Accurate Arms mould, 477gr (1.349" long) and 490gr (1.374" long) with Olde Eynsford 1F. This batch of modified WW .348 shells was full length sized, then annealed. The boolits slipped into the necks and I gave them a slight reduction with my home made die to keep them in.

Fed GMM Large Pistol primers, target paper punched primer wad as before. The boolits were 8BHN, patched with K&E or Strathmore Tracing paper (1.5 thou) and 1/8" cork wads. I had to use two for the 75.0 gr load to maintain the 0.200" seating depth, but the heavier loadings took 1 wad. All testing at 200M this time, iron sights. Five-shot groups off bench; pig&patch between shots.

75.0 gr OE 1F with the 477gr boolit was 3-1/4"V x 3-5/8"H, with 4 in 1-1/4"V. 80.0gr gave 1-1/2"V x 2-3/8"H (first picture). 85.0gr gave 2-3/4"V x 3-7/8"H (breeze coming up). 90.0gr 3"V x 2-7/8"H.

75.0 gr OE 1F with the 490gr boolit was 4-1/4"V x 2-3/4"H with 4 in 2"V x 2-1/2"H. 80.0gr gave 4-1/4"V x 3-1/2"H. 85.0gr gave 3-1/8"V x 5-5/8"H with 4 in 3/4"V (second picture). 90.0 gr gave 3-1/2"V x 3-1/8"H.

I fired five shot groups of the most promising previous loads with Swiss 1Fg The short AA boolit was 474gr; with 77.0gr Swiss 1F and one 1/8" and one 1/16" wad to get 0.200" seating, it gave 3-5/8"V x 6"H. The 490gr with 85gr Swiss 1F and one 1/8" wad gave 3-1/4"V x 5-3/4"H.

Attachment 201368 Attachment 201369

Most of these loadings were well within the 2MOA limit, given that the range is Metric rather than English, so, again, it doesn't appear, so far, that there are any particular "bad" loads with this powder. I was getting a little knocked around towards the end, and the wind was picking up, so the Swiss control loads didn't look as good as they normally do. It does appear that the longer boolit does better with heavier charges; but this is a rather light rifle so the recoil will no doubt affect grouping after a while. But one of our Club members uses a 480gr grease groove Money boolit in his stock Shiloh .44-77, and he says it shoots good to 1000 yards, so maybe that's good enough.

I didn't have enough of these two boolits loaded up to go out to the Pig line, and, for this rifle, the real hoodoo seems to be the Turkey line, where previously good groupings often seem to go to die. But, I'll get out there eventually, and see what happens.

The OE 1f shot really well in the 40-90 bn. Going to have to get a supply of it on hand.
I've found with my shiloh 44-77 that the longer bullets would shoot well to 1000 until the wind picked up, and then all bets were off. Shorting the bullet to 1.3 inches or 460ish gr, seems to of solved the wind problems.

I'd like to see some pics and/or details on your homemade shell squincher!

There's not a lot to it. Just the "reloading press" version of the hand reducer that used to be offered in the loading kits, I imagine. I took a piece of 7/8" x 14tpi threaded rod and drilled it out to fit the paper patched boolit, then set the boring tool at about a 1 degree angle and enlarged one end until the mouth of the shell would go in a ways.

Attachment 204377Attachment 204379

To use, I just thread it a turn or two into the top of my reloading press, put the patched boolit in the loaded shell, raise the ram, put my finger on the boolit to keep it straight and down on the wad, and feel for the slight step as the tiny bell on the shell mouth straightens out and then tightens on the boolit. Seems to work pretty good on the .45-70, too, although I made another for that round so I don't have to open multiple loading die boxes up for one cartridge.

Attachment 204382

Sorry for the bad background on the paper patch. If the shell is chamfered properly, the mouth just holds the patch and boolit in securely. You don't, of course, want anything resembling a "roll crimp" on a paper patch boolit. If the shell is the proper length, it blows out straight and lets the boolit out properly. I haven't seen a paper ring in quite a while.

After two long years, the announcement that the Matthew Quigley Blackpowder Shoot was on again for 2021 was welcome news. I reserved my room at the Westwind and started strategizing on what I’d shoot there this time.

I'd never taken my .44-77 Shiloh Montana Roughrider to the Quigley. Its absolute accuracy seemed as good as any other high-end replica I had, but the issue was user-friendliness. The barrel is rather light for competition; a light half-octagon version of the “heavy half” on my Shiloh No. 1. Barrel whip, bounce and recoil are exaggerated when firing the loads that worked best off the bench, so there would be no forgiveness for errors in leveling and careless holding when sitting with cross sticks. Approaching the bench or prone hit percentage with this rifle at sit-down gong shoots needs dedication, time, practice and concentration.

The stock drop made it difficult to get a good cheek weld at long ranges, but a Cabela’s leather cheekrest helped this problem, though it looks pretty ugly. I had decided as a matter of esthetics not to clutter the light barrel with blocks and telescope sight, instead sticking with the No. 108 MVA tang sight (with Hadley eyecup) and a Lee Shaver globe front with spirit level. Set up this way, I'd fired a number of Silhouette scores that were no worse than those with other rifles, and it had done surprisingly well at the Boulder City “Bragging Rights” shoot in April, giving me a First in the “Expert” Class, so I was curious to see how it might do up in Montana.

For the Chicken stage in BPCR silhouette shooting, I had settled on a 350-gr Rapine grease groove boolit, casting at a nominal 0.446” diameter, lubed with mutton tallow/beeswax. I departed from period purity here because the little platforms available for Offhand Silhouette don’t have room for the bore pigs, patches, rods and swabs needed for paper patch fouling management. A cartridge lever, ammunition box and blow tube fit with no trouble. This load gave good 300-M accuracy blow tubing for ten shots in the Tucson desert heat, indicating that it would do well on the 350-yd Quigley Bucket, since their Offhand platforms there are the same size. Accordingly, I loaded up a box of 50 for sight-in, practice and the Bucket stage.

Many of the misses at Boulder had been windage related. The MVA vernier lacks the Soule drum and its large windage range, so I wanted to recheck some loads to see if some wind advantage might be had at the longer ranges with heavier powder charges and/or boolits. (I resisted going with a Soule because it wasn’t “period;” no buffalo runner ever used a Soule sight.)

Olde Eynsford 1Fg is the only powder, to date, that this rifle seems to favor using paper patched boolits. Two “sweet spots” exist with charges of this powder: 80 and 90 gr. With grease groove bullets, charges of Swiss 1F in the 77-gr range seem to do well with a range of boolit weights.

Three other boolits were available, as mentioned in the previous posts. The one I had used most for Silhouette was the KAL .44-77 TGBS, nominally 0.431” diameter and adjusted to 1.329” length. An alloy of 16:1 lead/pewter cast around 457 grains. The patch was Strathmore Tracing paper, around 0.0015” thickness, 7/8” wide. Patches reached up the shank to the ogive, folded partway over the base, with the rim around the hollow base being the index for the extent of the fold. The boolits from the two-cavity Accurate aluminum mould, the short cavity 1.349” long and the long one 1.374”, were also available. These cast 0.430” diameter, and could be patched with either Strathmore Tracing, as above, or Strathmore Vellum, at about 0.0022” thickness. With these longer boolits, the patch was cut 1" wide.

So—“An experimental rifle, with experimental ammunition. Let’s experiment,” as Marston famously said.

The longest easily available distance at our home range now is the 500-M Ram line, and the only permanant targets are Ram swingers. The irregular shapes of these targets make it difficult to shoot for groups, for me at least, so what I do now is try for the maximum number of hits (hopefully in a cluster). If no cluster, the maximum number of hits in the same line of elevation, and, (if a miss) the dust puffs appearing along the same elevation line as the hits.

I bought a frame from S-4 Gear that holds a cell phone camera to the eyepiece of the spotting scope, allowing a video of the boolit impact. It is easy to compare the videos of the gray splashes on target and the dust puffs off, and relate them to wind conditions, hold variances, and, ideally, the vertical consistency of the loads. The old 36” circular and 40” square plates, with white centers, on the Ridgecrest range were much more satisfactory for load testing, but such targets would be Swiss-cheesed in a couple weeks by our local range commandos, with their magazines full of high-intensity and steel core ammunition. As it is, our swingers are 3" thick, and the surfaces resemble cheese graters, cratered from hits with these rounds.

Three paper-patch loads seemed to work equally well at this range, indicating that if the wind wasn’t too bad, all the targets out to (perhaps) the 600-yd Octagon, could be handled by 80 grains of powder, a 1/16” cork wad, no compression, and the KAL 457-gr boolit. If the wind was bad, there were two 90-gr loadings for the 805-yd Buffalo: one with the KAL boolit, 1/16” cork wad and slight compression, and one using the Accurate 1.349” boolit (weight 484 grains, this time) ahead of a 3/16” cork wad with more compression; enough in both cases to leave 1/16” of shell mouth to hold the boolit. The first got down there noticeably quicker; the second went about as fast as the 80-gr/KAL load, albeit with more recoil. I loaded 100 rounds of the 80-grain loading and 20 rounds apiece of the two 90-grain loadings; enough for sight-in, some practice, and the eight rounds necessary for the Buffalo and/or Octagon.

The cases were as described above: Buffalo Arms reformed Winchester .348, fired, cleaned, annealed, trimmed to 2.250” chamfered and unsized. Primers were Federal Gold Medal Match Large Pistol, over a primer wad from ASSRA target paper. Case necks were turned for chambering of the grease-groove loads and left as-is (slightly thick) for the paper-patched boolits. The insides of the necks, after compression and wad seating, were dusted with a mixture of one can of Imperial Graphite mixed with one jar of Midway Motor Mica to reduce the incidence of mouth lengthening that sometimes occurs with the paper-patched boolits. My homemade mouth reduction die secured the paper-patched boolits in the shells. The grease-groove boolits seated and remained in place with no further effort.

I loaded the trusty RAV4 with the paraphernalia necessary for the Quigley Experience and drove the 1500 miles to Forsyth, MT in a leisurely 3-1/2 days, visiting friends on the way up and back. It was nice to see green grass and trees again: three years of drought, and over a year of almost no traveling, kind of starved me for that color. Even the passage through Denver was a breeze; no traffic hassles. I got to Forsyth Wednesday after lunch, got my motel key and headed out to the Range.

There were already a fair number of campers and vendors there. I’d wondered if the Covid scare would reduce the attendance like the previous year’s bad weather had done in 2019, but this was not the case. The firing line was already populous, and more trailers and campers were arriving by the minute. I greeted some acquaintances and made arrangements with my shooting partner for the next day’s sight-in and practice. We registered and were told that the final squadding would be done on Friday. I went back to Forsyth, loaded up on supplies at the IGA, and retired to the motel room.

Next morning we were out at the firing line. It was already getting warm. The wind was about on the order of the Quigley of 2017, or maybe a little stronger, with dust getting everywhere. Testing the three loads at the 805-yd Buffalo showed an elevation difference with the KAL 80- and 90-grain loadings of about 7 MOA, and the difference between the KAL and Accurate boolits at the 90-grain loading around 2 MOA. When the crosswinds turned to headwinds, the heavier boolit required noticeably more elevation than that, and the recoil of the heavier boolit was noticeable. On the Octagon, the same story: 7 MOA between the KAL 80- and 90-grain loadings, and around 2 with the heavier boolit. Maybe because of the wind, both 90-grain loadings now got out to the targets noticeably faster than the 80-grain, although in the gusting and switching winds, it was difficult to tell whether any load had any windage advantage over any other.

I checked both KAL bullet loads on the Postage Stamp and noted a 3-MOA elevation difference between the 80- and 90-grain loads; however, the 80-grain appeared to hold windage well, so I decided to reserve the 90-grain loadings for the more distant targets. Data for the Diamond and the Rectangle was collected, and I noticed an occasional high shot, which was troubling. Or were those actually the correct elevations, and was I getting some even more troubling low shots? Maybe I was losing my concentration and the light rifle was bouncing on the sticks more than a heavier one would.

The rest of the day’s shooting was taken up with practice on the Offhand Bucket. I had hoped that the Roughrider’s lighter barrel would help in this respect (as I get older, it seems like holding heavy rifles offhand becomes more difficult), but the wind was blowing hard enough to throw me off badly. One hit in ten shots was typical, although the dust splashes did coincide with where the sights wobbled when the shot broke. The load's accuracy seemed adequate for hits on the Bucket, anyway, and the blow-tubing was working, even in the unprecedented (for Montana, anyway) temperature. The heat was pretty routine for Tucson, and maybe even a little chilly for Ridgecrest, but those places have covered firing lines. I was getting kind of fried out there.

Friday’s practice was basically a repeat of Thursday’s. Elevation changes generally varied only a minute or two from those of the previous day, except for the Rectangle, which, for some reason, seemed to require four minutes’ reduction from the previous day. The hit frequency on the Buffalo and the Octagon of the 484 grain boolit did not seem any better than that with the 457 grain, so the heavy boolit loading was dropped in the interest of reduced recoil. The heat and wind was pretty similar to that of the previous day, as was the offhand Bucket practice; no joy. But we had done what we could do, and the only option was to endeavor to persevere. We got squadded in the proper order, and were told that 568 shooters had registered. Less than some previous years, but good considering the absence of the entire global Quigley contingent, who were barred from international travel, whether masked, vaccinated or not. Refusal to consider a Quigley trip as "Essential Travel" is the height of bureaucratic arrogance, IMHO.

The first day of the Match dawned sunny, windy and hot. We were in Yellow E this time, starting at the Buffalo. Painting and squad seating was better randomized than previous years; the chances of getting a relatively clean target to shoot at were better than ever. My misses on the Buffalo were wind related; the four hits I got were at the same elevation as the previous day’s practice. My rear sight was cranked all the way to the left, and even then, I had to aim at the Buffalo’s head, or nose, or further forward, as the gusts swelled and switched.

The Octagon was next. Using the previous day’s elevation, I got six hits. Holding off was necessary here, too, even with the heavy powder charge. I was able to spot Gary, my shooting partner, into a Straight-8 pin on the Octagon, repaying him for his assistance in getting me mine two years previously.

Shooting at the Postage Stamp used the same elevation as the previous two days’ practice. I got a first shot hit, with the accompanying high hopes, but, alas, got a miss along the way, finishing with a 7. The miss was high, which was hard to account for, but, on the Diamond, which was next, all the misses were again windage related. There were plenty of them, too; only three hits registered. Ouch! The wind was strong, gusty and treacherous.

Those four targets comprised the first day of the Quigley; the last two would be shot on Sunday. It occurred to me that a possible cause for the high shots was the sunburn I’d gotten. I’d started wearing a light long-sleeved shirt over my leather recoil pad. I hadn’t covered the Roughrider’s slick plastic buttplate with that gritty stairstep tape, aggravating it's tendency to slip on my shoulder on firing. Misses can arise from anything. In the carload of Stuff I’d hauled up to Forsyth, the one thing missing was the large tube of SPF-15 Sunblock I’d forgotten to pack. Like the early Astronauts used to say, “You can blow at any seam.”

Sure enough, the next day the “average” elevation I’d selected from sight-in gave me a couple misses on the Rectangle before I cranked it down to the first practice day’s elevation, whereupon things settled in for a total of five hits. The light rifle needed constant attention to detail in order to score hits off the cross sticks, but when it was on, it was on. The weather had changed markedly; now the sky was partly cloudy, temperatures in the high 70s, and the wind occasionally dropped to a breeze as it switched around, then back to full strength. I could crank my rear sight back a little and there was no need to hold off.

And then it was on to the Bucket, where my hopes of being able to hold the lighter rifle steadier offhand had borne no fruit whatsoever thus far. But, when the chips were down, I somehow got a miraculous three hits with the Hadley opened up all the way and a Triumph of the Will expended in holding.

My total score was 28; not my best, but by no means my worst. I had gotten a 21 with my .45-70 and telescope sight, the first time I’d shot paper patched bullets at the 2016 Quigley, so it appeared that on its maiden voyage, the .44-77 could hold its own despite its handicaps of light weight, iron sights and slippery buttplate. I was pretty happy with the results overall. But the Quigley is always a hoot, high scores or low. I got a few rubber wristbands made for the canceled 2020 Quigley, to give to friends back home that keep telling me they're going to go one of these days. At least they can brag that they went to the one that never happened.

My only target-quality replica rifle that I haven’t found a paper patched load for is a Pedersoli Long Range Sharps, rechambered to .45-2.6”. I didn’t do well with it the first year I shot at the Quigley, using grease groove boolits, despite winning a bunch of local matches using that load. I think I’ll go over some paper-patch load development with the moulds and powders I’ve accumulated in the interval and see if I can’t get a good one to try at some future Quigley.

Nice write up.

It was nice meeting you up there, Bob. The Match was better than ever. Wish they’d get the scores out.

Ramrod, Don, thank you for your very informative strings of posts here in this forum, as I have decided to put a Green Mountain .44 barrel on my re-arsenaled Swedish rolling block and have it chambered to .44-77 classic. Your experiences with bullets and loads are of great value.

Dave,
This is a good report. The Q can be a very challenging match to shoot.
I made 17 of those matches and the conditions were interesting saying the least. :D Wind, Rain, Heat, Hail the only thing I have not seen is snow.
This year I should have pulled off the line and not shot because of a problem that developed with my eyes from the heat. Recoil tore the retina in both eyes.
The .44-77 is a great caliber. The only bad thing with the .44 is getting good brass. Don't give up on it.
Kurt

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Abert Rim

Ramrod, Don, thank you for your very informative strings of posts here in this forum, as I have decided to put a Green Mountain .44 barrel on my re-arsenaled Swedish rolling block and have it chambered to .44-77 classic. Your experiences with bullets and loads are of great value.

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That green mountain barrel and the 17 twist should shoot the .434470 bullet from BACO very well. I have that barrel on a 44-90 st, that shoots that 470 bullet very well to 1000, and the powder charge and velocity between the st case and the 44-77 is very slight.
Looking forward to reading your results when the rebarrel project is completed.

I took the .44 2-1/4” to the “Buffalo Hump” gong shoot in Las Vegas a week or so back and got first in Duffer (AA) Class. Used the KAL TGBS PP boolit and 80-gr OE 1Fg loading described above for all targets but the 220-yd offhand Shield and the 330-yd Buffalo Head. I had the sight settings for the Rapine 350-gr GG load for the offhand Bucket at the Quigley and the offhand Chickens at Silhouette, and I was worried about running short of loaded PP ammunition.

AFAIC, Offhand is the only area where GG has it over PP, and it’s only because the wiping is awkward with the tiny platform generally available (at best) when one is standing. The ammo, blow tube and seater lever are plenty to handle if, as is often the case, you’re holding the rifle in your other hand. The lighter boolit and powder charge (77 gr of OE 1-1/2Fg) doesn’t recoil as much, either.

I didn’t get skunked on a single target; my worst was 3 hits, and I cleaned the Running Buffalo at 588 yds. Even got 5 miraculous hits on the offhand Shield. 28 hits the first day, 29 the second. Wind ranged from dead calm to a howling gale and back and forth, throughout the match. It was not uncommon to see the wind flags all pointing in different directions, at various levels of unfurling, over the distances. Nevada desert winds make Quigley winds seem like mild, steady zephyrs by comparison.

Sitting, it seemed that my non-windage misses were associated with a sense that somehow my position wasn’t right; strained somehow. I tried to get the cross sticks so the recoil came straight back, but other things wouldn’t be quite On, and I noticed a tendency to tense up as the shots mounted, particularly when I wasn’t hitting much.

The light little 44 is great for offhand work as I get more elderly and feeble, but it is harder to control on a rest than the heavier rifles. On the other hand, a halfway decent level of control with this rifle seems to help the control of the heavier target-weight rifles, when I switch back to them.

At my level of expertise, I know when I’m On, and can frequently sense that I’m Off, but getting from Off to On is an elusive endeavor. Still, I couldn’t fault the ammunition, and I had a ball. Wally Pinjuv, who ran the Match, won it with a .38-50. The targets went out to 870 yd, a challenge for “small bores,” especially in the winds we had.

I socked away another 10 lb of OE 1Fg after Goex announced their closure, so should be spared another round of load development for a while. It seemed to work the best for me in this bottleneck shell.

Sorry to hear about your eye problems, Kurt. I’m shooting lefthanded now courtesy of a detached retina in my right eye that wasn’t tacked down until after it had reached the center of vision. There’s a permanent crinkle there, and the view is distorted. I could still shoot Scope right-handed, but I went to the sinister side just so I could continue to shoot everything I have. Except for pistols, which I can still hold right handed while aiming left-eyed.

The 110-degree weather at the Quigley this year was routine summer conditions for Tucson, except that our firing lines are covered. And, of course, the one thing I forgot to bring was that big tube of SPF 11 sun blocker in the medicine cabinet. I really got fried out there, even with long sleeves.

A dual diameter patched bullet, and even a straight sided or tapered bullet, can be treated right and shoot accurately enough to get thru most gong shoots without wiping.
But it takes a bit of trial and error to get it to that point.

A cupel friends of mine shot that match with you and I just about came and shot it myself. That sure sounds like a fun match from the reports I been getting.

Yes if one is recoil sensitive the targets get hard to make contact with. I'm pushing 82 and I just about retired my .50-90 Shiloh that was my go with rifle for the long range Gong shoots and picked up the .45-90 and the .44-77 for those as well as the silhouette but those two calibers are more then enough for silhouettes so I'm having a .38-50 Hepburn build. The silhouette matches are a lot closer, 6-7 hrs from home and I really like shooing those matches. Very friendly folks at that match.

I lost a lot of my center vision last June. When I woke up in the early morning dawn I looked up at the skylight in the camper and it disappeared as I past over it. All I saw a red halo around a black spot that covered a 16" square skylight. When I got on line at the Quigley I kept rubbing my eye because it looked like I had a film over them made it almost impossible to see through the apertures getting a sight picture with the targets in the shadows in the morning.
Guess it's time to get used to using a scope that I been fighting with for a couple years now.

I took the Montana Roughrider again to the Buffalo Hump Match in Las Vegas this last weekend.

There was a slight overcast, at worst, and the air was, as close as it can be in the desert, almost totally still. It was uncanny, but welcome. Every once in a while, a 5 mph breeze would spring up for a relay or less, and then it would go back to near zero.

The loads for the sit-down targets were in modified Winchester .348 cases, unsized, trimmed to 2.250" and primer pockets uniformed; CCI-BR-2 Large Rifle primers; a newsprint primer wad dropped into the case; 80 gr Olde Eynsford 1F through a drop tube; a 1/16" cork wad with no compression; the insides of the necks dusted with Motor Mica/Imperial Graphite mixture; the Red River Rick 455-456gr boolit of 16:1 lead/pewter, patched dry with Strathmore Tracing paper, 1.5 thousandths. A slight mouth reduction with my homemade die. One somewhat worn bore pig and one dry patch after every shot for fouling control generally allowed thumb seating of the cartridge with no resistance. Once in a while, something was left in there somewhere and I needed my Arizona Sharpshooter lever to cam the shell in the last little bit. Oddly, this didn't seem to diminish the accuracy of the shot, at least for the targets we shot at.

The Offhand Shield load was the same cases, treated the same except for neck turning and no primer pocket uniforming, Remington 9-1/2 Large Rifle primers, newsprint wad, 77gr Olde Eynsford 1-1/2 Fg, a Walters 0.454" wad; compression QS to seat a boolit resembling the Ideal 446109 of 418 gr to cover all grease grooves; 20:1 lead/pewter with beeswax/mutton tallow lubricant. Once seated, the boolits stayed in the cases with no mouth reduction necessary. These cartridges needed the lever to seat the shells so the front band could be engraved and the block closed. I used a blow tube for fouling control here.

Sighting in and practice was on Thursday and Friday. I got provisional iron-sight settings for vertical and fired about 40 paper-patched shots and a dozen or so grease groove loads for practice. Some of the targets seemed pretty elusive windage wise; not uncommon in "windless" conditions. I got several offhand hits in a row, which delighted me. I was trying the method one of our National Champions uses, balancing the forend on his outstretched fingers and thumb. I had tried this with my heavier Shiloh Sharps #1 at the Quigley one year and it had gotten me a zero on the Bucket as I struggled to keep the rifle from collapsing my fingers or slipping off, but it was at least doable with this lighter rifle, and I need the altitude increase. My offhand "natural point of aim" is always about 15 feet short of the targets at the Chicken line when I hold the forend in my palm.

I drew first honors, so got three fresh-painted targets to start with and sat down to the fray. I took a WAG on the windage change from the previous afternoon, set the sight and flung the first one at the Running Buffalo, 588 yards. "That's a hit," Craig, my spotter, said, and almost simultaneously Jim, down the line, roared, "HIT!!!" I was absolutely delighted at this, and stayed delighted and increasingly amazed as shot after shot hit, and I wound up cleaning the thing.

Then it was the Walking Bear, 550 yards. One of these I missed ("MISS!!!" roared Jim), but I hit it the other seven times, and got 6 hits on the Big Buffalo at 797 yards. "Wow; this rifle is on fire today," I said, delightedly to Craig.

After lunch, I sat down to three targets well shot-up by previous competitors. It didn't seem to matter to me as the shooter; the white dot in the center of mass was equally visible in the iron sight apertures, although the spotters were sometimes hard pressed to figure out exactly where a hit might be. (My spotter got the clean targets for his relay this time, so I had an easier time spotting for him.) I got 7 hits on the Diamond, 797 yards; 6 hits on the Howling Coyote, 420 yards (a tricky, unforgiving target as it's isosceles triangle shaped and a hit that would get it at the bottom would miss right or left a few inches higher up), and 7 hits on the Buffalo Head at 330 yards. I finished as the winner for the first day, with a cumulative 41.

I was astounded. The last time I'd taken this rifle and loads to this match, I was getting 28 or so after the day was done. What was I doing?

Well, for one thing, the hold felt right, somehow. I was sitting cross-legged, hunched over on the stock slightly, with the barrel on the cross sticks pointed so the sight was on the target, with my trigger hand pulling the buttstock into my shoulder tightly, but not too tightly, and my cheek pressed against the stock, firmly but not too firmly. My left hand held the forend lightly, just enough to support the weight and allow it to slide back straight, pushing me straight back when it fired. I'd hold the white center in the aperture, tilt the gun to get the level bubble even, reset the center, relevel the rifle, over and over, until it was finally holding steady and then I'd try for the classic "surprise break." I made sure to keep my face on the stock and keep looking forward into the smoke, until I heard Jim roar "HIT!!!" or "MISS!!!" (When Jim calls a shot, it is called, for fair. You could hear it down in the camper area, and it also had the proper amount of vibrato in there, so it was no mistake.)

So I resolved to reproduce the stance as best I could the second day. At the shooters' meeting, Wally asked, "Who's _____?" I held up my hand. "Well, (bleep) you," he said, to the laughter of the shooting contingent. "You put your class down as an "A" and you won the "AA" Class last time. You're going into "AAA" for that 41, and if you do well today, we're bumping you up to Master Class."

This was ominous. I'd put my downgraded Silhouette class down (the only one I could remember) and I rarely get an "A" score at Silhouette any more. It seemed like as soon as they moved me to "AA" in Silhouette, I couldn't hit much beyond "B" Class. I seldom get even 5 Pigs or Rams in a row any more, let alone 10. Rummaging through my increasingly spotty memory, I remembered that I did win "AA" Class here last time. But that was because my shooting partner had gotten the same Official Recognition as a sandbagger that I had received after the first day, and had been moved into the "AAA" Class for the second day, after which he couldn't hit much of anything. So he got no hardware in the "AAA" Class and I took his place in "AA" Class, getting the trophies he would have gotten. Changing Class in mid-shoot like renaming a ship after its christening; sort of a curse. But Gong Shooting is like that; Luck plays a big part.

So I took my place on the line with much trepidation. The first target was the 220 yard Offhand Shield, and I'd evidently shot up most of my hits in practice earlier, only getting 3 hits when it really counted. The next target was the Big Bear, at 870 yards, and I missed and missed and missed some more, getting hits on only the last 2 shots. The Curse was in full flower, doing its fell evil office!

The Walking Coyote was next, at 420 yards. I adjusted and readjusted the cross sticks until I was hunched over the stock and holding the rifle as closely as I could recall from the previous day. I cleaned the target with 8 hits.

After lunch, it was on to the Kite at 583 yards. I hunched down, pulled butt to shoulder, got the white in the aperture, tilted the rifle to level the bubble, got the white in the aperture again, tilted again, etc, and cleaned the target. I couldn't believe it!

Then it was the Standing Bear at 780 yards. I was at pains to get into exactly the same position again. I took another WAG at the windage, got a first-shot hit, and cleaned the target with the other 7. I thought of nothing but the hunched over position, the pressure of butt to shoulder, the pressure of cheek to stock, the sliding left-hand contact on the forestock, and that white dot in the aperture and the level bubble underneath. A touch on the set trigger and the looking at the smoke until the judgement calls. I as astounded that they were all "Hit," (or "HIT!!!", depending). It was like being in a state of grace, or achieving Nirvana, or something. I could do no wrong. I remember times like that when I was on a Bowling League; once in a while I'd stand on the deck and just know I was going to get a strike or a spare. I'd wind up in the low 200s for each of the three games, and then the next week, I was back in the low-to-mid 100s that was my normal average performance.

Finally it was the Circle at 550 yards. I had the position and got 7 hits; the one miss was when I took too long juggling the white in the aperture and tilting the bubble into the center. I knew I had looked too long and held my breath too long, but I fired anyway. Dumb move, and totally needless, since everybody waits for everybody. I could have paused, caught my breath, and went back through the routine again, but I didn't.

"Why don't you do it like this at the Quigley?" Gary hectored me. (He'd finally been induced by me to come to this match, and was doing very well and having a ball. Like I told him he would.) "Yeah; I guess I'll have to, next time," I said. I sure hope I can reproduce that scrunched position again next Silhouette match. This is the first time in memory I've been able to be in a good position, then drift out of it, and then get back into it again. Before, being in there was purely a matter of chance, and once I went out, I was out for keeps. So maybe I learned something this time.

It didn't matter that the rifle was lighter than target weight; it seemed as controllable as was needed for the job, and the loads were unimpeachable. I wound up first "AAA" and match winner for the first day; second "AAA" the second day (got a 36 total), and Match Winner, "AAA" for the two days. These are the highest scores I've gotten in any Gong Match; I hope it wasn't just a bit of sheer outhouse luck. I hadn't shot the Roughrider for over a year, having gone back to the #3 Shiloh in .45-70 once I'd fixed the lever spring. Guess I'd gotten back to being used to it in the practice and sight-in days.

Altogether, a nice trip, a luxurious stay, and a fantastic shoot. Thanks and a wave of the Bent Ramrod to Wally Pinjuv and his helpers (and Jim) for putting it on. The only sad part was that I seemed to be the only paper-patch shooter there. Maybe it's just a passing fad, after all? :cry:

Nice shooting Bent Ramrod! That must have felt pretty good :-)

Chris.

Great tale, congratulations!