bublewis
Senior Member
Back in the 80's, our deer camp was full of a bunch of ignorant black powder hunters. When one guy mentioned the new wonder of Pyrodex, the rest of us were skeptical and figured we'd just stick with black - Pyrodex hadn't even been approved in SC, yet from what we were told. Pretty much all of us were using black powder and patched round balls, still. I remember one day we were target shooting by camp with that Goex black powder (man that stuff is dirty), and it was hard to even load the second shot with that stuff. So my uncle decided that he needed to clean his 50 cal. real good, and he did! He used his Hoppe's cleaning kit and oiled it up real good, especially down the bore then loaded up for the hunt. We had found some real good buck sign that he was hunting on, so he was ready to get a good'un. Well, after the next morning hunt, he came by my stand to get me, and I figured that he hadn't seen anything until he told me his story. We assumed that oil in the bbl. got the powder wet, and when a big 8pt. came out, his rifle just said, "poof." He said he actually saw the ball shoot out and bounce off of the deer, and the deer turned and licked where it hit, then proceeded to walk away. In the meantime, in his haste to reload, he poured the powder straight from his powder cannister without measuring and tamped a ball down the pipe, but the buck was out of sight before he got the gun primed. After all of this we had to borrow a ball puller back at camp to pull the load, which according to the ramrod was well overcharged. Isn't it fun to learn the hard way?
