by James C. Fulmer Past President, NMLRA
Competitors preparing for the Turkey shoot on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
Hunting and target shooting go hand in hand. I’ve hunted with muzzleloaders most of my life and I’ve hunted every game animal in Pennsylvania with a muzzleloader of one type or another from muzzleloading flint or percussion pistol, rifle or shotgun.
I started hunting doves when I was about fourteen with an original 10-gauge double-barrel percussion shotgun. In the fall I hunted doves; through the winter I hunted crows. In the summer I hunted groundhogs with a .58 caliber reproduction Remington Zouave. Other than working up a shot pattern, I didn’t do much practicing with my shotgun, I just went out hunting.
I started hunting groundhogs with a muzzleloading rifle. That’s when target shooting became important. When I first started I figured if I could hit a playing card every time at 25 yards offhand I would be good enough.
Because of my interest in muzzleloaders, Dad took me to Blue Mountain Muzzle Loaders for a February shoot. Here I learned hitting a playing card at 25 yards offhand didn’t make me a target shooter. Also Minie balls weren’t allowed so I was introduced to roundball shooting. Forty-five years later I still shoot at Blue Mountain and I still hunt with muzzleloaders. Many clubs who used to shoot targets through the winter now end their shooting season with a turkey shoot in November and start shooting with a ham shoot in March or April.
A .32 cal. rifle, thin blade knife and small hatchet—plus squirrel—makes a meal.
The fall turkey shoots are where you can get tuned up for either your squirrel or deer hunting, depending on what muzzleloading hunting rifle you compete with on the paper targets. The turkey shoots consist of paper targets shot at ranges from 25 yards to 100 yards, depending on the club.
Like I said, hitting a playing card at 25 yards doesn’t make a winner any more. This year one of the new matches that was shot at Altoona Rifle and Pistol Club was the closest single shot to the X out of 5 shots using a table rest shooting at 25 yards. I can’t thank Don Blazier enough for scoring the targets at the shoot and especially this one. The shot was measured from center of X to center of ball in thousandths of an inch. The winner was .023 off center, 2nd place was .038 and third with .046. Wow, this little fun match with hunting rifles was pretty impressive.
Club shoots are the best place to learn how to get the most accuracy out of your muzzleloading rifle. Here is where you can talk to old timers about powder, patch, and ball combinations, how they clean their gun, and what they do to make their gun work so successfully.
This past fall was one of the most successful falls I had for squirrel hunting. At our 36th Annual Squirrel Hunt, 18 squirrels made it into the pot. They were all shot with muzzleloaders from double-barrel percussion shotguns or single-barrel flintlock smoothbore muskets and fowlers. This year I used a .32 caliber flintlock rifle made by Buddy Townsend with a Charlie Burton barrel, using 30 grains of FFG black powder and a .32 round ball. I used a single O Buckshot which measures .32 and works great. I was able to add two squirrels to the pot with one being shot at 50 yards.
This year we decided to make the fire pit bigger because of the number of people who were starting to attend the event. It was decided to build a raised hearth just for the coffee pots. It worked out so well that much of the actual cooking was done on the raised hearth. Many of the older hunters appreciated not having to bend over to cook and be able to stand and move out of the way of the smoke easily. The squirrel pot would eventually move from the main fire to the raised hearth. The pot filled quickly this year with almost everybody getting a squirrel or two by noon the first day. The key word is almost. You can practice all you want and you can have a gun that patterns great or shoots dead center, but you need to know how to hunt squirrels.
Raised hearth built at Pennsylvania squirrel camp this year. The older guys liked it especially.
Squirrel hunting is not as simple as it looks. Every year at the primitive squirrel camp, some of the hunters come with high hopes and enthusiasm. Every year it usually is the same hunters who come up empty handed and get discouraged. The way I hunt is I move slowly and as quietly as I can, moving only 10 to 15 yards when I am in known squirrel territory waiting 15 minutes between movements. Once I see or hear a squirrel, I stop and wait in that spot. When I disturb a squirrel moving slowly like this, usually they will just slip around to the opposite side of a tree and wait for me to leave. Squirrels will sit tight up to about 30 minutes if they don’t know where you are located. Just wait, you are not going to sneak up on them once they have been spooked. They will move and usually more squirrels will come out and move into the area if it has a food source of acorns, hickory or beech nuts. Squirrels are rodents; they are fast, alert, and can quickly disappear.
They are also tough little critters. A poorly shot squirrel will get away by crawling into a hole or a hollow depression and disappear. That is the reason many of the squirrel hunters I hunt with choose the double-barrel percussion shotgun—for that second shot. When hunting with muzzleloaders, if you wound a squirrel do not wait for it to die—shoot again immediately. I always carry a small belt axe or tomahawk in case I am not loaded and the squirrel needs a little more of a nudge to get in the stew pot.
There are many tricks to encourage squirrels to come out. If you are sitting underneath oak trees or hickory trees take your hand or ramrod and stir the leaves on the forest’s floor at random intervals. By moving the leaves around you are imitating a squirrel starting to feed and this encourages the others to come out of hiding.
There are many tricks to squirrel hunting, but the biggest trick is just getting out hunting. If you only get out squirrel hunting once or twice a year you are testing your odds. Squirrels are not active every minute of every day. Weather, temperature, wind and predators can keep them in hiding for hours if not all day. The more you are in the woods the better your chances of getting squirrels. The more time you spend at the range the better your chances of getting a squirrel. Practice makes perfect. So, practice and go hunting my friends!
