Made the flight reservations last night.:D
 
Most bestest old time buddy, My Love and me going up to Coffeyville Kansas on a little pretty chicken hunt for opening weekend in November. That is the 11, 12, 13 of November. :) :)
 
Don't know about the rest of the group but Jimbo and I are dedicated to BP only on this one. I will be carrying Beulah (12 SxS CVA with cylinder tubes) and have Betty Boop (10 SxS Pedersoli with Full and Imp Cyl LxR) along for a backup. Jimbo has the twin sister to Beulah and anther 12BP he got in trade not long ago. Not sure if that is a single or SxS as I have not seen it yet.:D
 
My Love is too be official photographer, we are flying so I have put in the order for 2F powder and #11 caps with the owner. I will be carrying lead #5's and Bismuth #6's so no matter what we are good to go with the state and tree huggers.
 
Did I mention I am excited.
 
Will be plenty of pictures, you bet. Will post here and Upland game I guess, just fits into too many categories.:D :D
 
Did I mention I am excited.

Alboy,

Sure glad you are going to Coffeyville with those stinking smokepoles. Sure wouldn't want that extra pollution here in Western Kansas to spoil our natural odors(feedyards and packing plants). :D
 
Hey, good luck to you there in Coffeyville and take lots of photos and give us a good story too. Some time you need to wander through SW Kansas and scare my birds.
 
Oh, by the way, muzzleloader deer is open here at the moment. Unfortunately, I am so busy with my mother's 90th birthday party coming up that I haven't gone out hunting at the ranch, but believe me the muzzle is ready, should I happen on to a big boy. We have been seeing some very nice whitetail bucks. I have outfitters on two sides and I have really noticed an increase in their scouting activity. Earlier there had been five really nice bucks in a bachelor group.
 
Do have a good time in Kansas.
 
God Bless,
Maynard

Good luck on your hunt Alboy. If your powder and caps deal falls through...I'll personally drive over and deliver some. Only a good rock throw away. :)

Quote from: Alboy[/color][/size]
Did I mention I am excited.  Did I mention I am excited.

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Welllll...not so's you'd notice.

Sure am proud to know someone who will go blackpowder all the way and not backslide if things get tough.
 
Lookin' forward to your 'report'.

Short on time this morning but thought I would post one quick picture and promiss to tell the whole story later.

NICE picture!
 
More! More!
 
Paul

Outstanding Shot, that's a good photo, What kind of black powder shotgun?

Now that is a cool shot.  Look fwd to the rest.  KD

BSR
 
That is Beulah. She is about 25 years old now built out of a CVA kit. 12 gauge, SxS, cylinder bores. My first BP I ever owned. By Christmas this year she should have a white tail on her credit and Next year maybe an elk if I can get up to about 60 yards of one.

Great pic!

This will be in at least 3 installments.
 
We flew out of Houston Friday morning for Tulsa Ok. Reminding me once again why I dread dealing with under educated over authorized security personel. During the flight our soap mixture and oil for the shotguns was confiscated. No questions or explanations from anyone just was not there when we unpacked in the lodge.
 
Then the lodge folks professed no knowledge that we had planned to hunt BP and had no provisions for powder or caps. Even though I had supplied detailed e-mails with picture of our weapons and proposed load columns at least two weeks earlier.
 
That was the end of the down hill as things looked up very rapidly after that.
 
Jimbo and I went into a huddle with their safety instructor Kim and Ron the owner. The safety man Kim is an accomplished BP hunter although not on birds. That helped tremendously. They were mainly concerned about fires from smouldering wadding, after we explained our column stack with hard over shot and over powder carboard cards but no fibrous wadding or cloth patching that calmed the fire scares a great deal. Runners were dispachted to town in search of powder and caps.
 
Kim located a lb can of 2F and a tin each of #10 and #11 caps in his gear so we could get started. Friday afternoon was spent shooting hunting clays from three positions with Kim and Ron acting as fire marshalls. Approximately 60 shots later no problem with fire. I want to state here that thiers was not an invalid worry as the area had been very dry for weeks and those who know understand how easily prairie grass imitates gasoline.
 
On the funny side was that at best Jimbo and I were hitting maybe 10-15% on the clays and were taking some well deserved ribbing about our shooting prowess. Neither of us have ever been very good on thrown clays any way. Out of the modern gun shooters the lowest percentages were running near 50% with several shooting in the high 80's. Part of jimbo's problem was he was trying to use #10 caps and they were just not working on the nipples on these guns, 1/3 misfire or so. I was having no failure to fire with the #11's and finally confinced him to switch completely.
 
That evening the runners came up with a can of 2F and a can of 777 from town with 4 more tins of #11 caps, all that was available. I opted to shoot with the 777 for a little to check performance and liked it. A little sharper kick and report but general performance seemed ok. That night we cleaned guns with a little tide desolved in hot water and oiled out with a spray lube/cleaner the lodge had on hand for their weapons. Worked pretty good in my estimation. We set up for the next morning with me carrying 777 and Jimbo the Goex. There would not have been enough of either for both of us to hunt the weekend with just one.
 
The first picture is Jimbo on the left, Shayne our guide and owner of Libby and Belle our dogs, then me on the right. Pretty much how we hunted out for the day.
 
Second is a picture of LIbby working
 
Third is Jim on point for a shot. Just above the first clump of green on the left is a blur against the background of trees which I believe is a chuker about to meet his end.
 
Fourth is Jimbo with Libby on one of her retrieves. Shayne had done a lot of work with these dogs and they were really a pleasure to hunt over. Although I do not like shock collars we soon learned that these doubled as locators and Shayne was not a shock happy trainer, good news. I remember only one pop when belle did not want to stay with us very early in the morning.
 
Fifth is a bird that was smart enough to fly right back over My Love the photographer and live. Landed in the nearby woods and was never seen again.
 
Sixth is a going away shot.
 
All the birds we were hunting were pen raised so everything we jumped in the field was legal. There were pheasants in different phases of color and chuker. Hens or cocks did not matter.
 
I will tell the next part tomorrow.

:)Hey, that must be someting to hunt like that using black powder shotguns, I like to bird hunt, but never  try'd that.
 
Avery fine post, I'll be look'n for part 2,and 3.

QuoteThen the lodge folks professed no knowledge that we had planned to hunt BP

I would have taken that on face value if they had not followed it with paranoia about fires. Personally, it sounds to me like they simply lied to you. When they found out you were 'for real', they were "OK".
 
What was this outfit's name again?
 
Paul

Alboy,
Nice photos, "boss lady" did a fine job. Nothing better than smokin' them in the air and frying in the pan. Just to jump ahead, how did you rate the 777 for overall performance. Did you use the same volumetric measurements as with Goex or did you change something? Did you try a patterning board or just hope it would be okay?
 
Waiting for next installment.
 
Smokepole

Gitano

Having been a volunteer fireman in ranch country and Jimbo still very active in that same line we believed them about the fire worries. We have both experienced smoldering wadding out of both rifle and shotgun. Right here I want to thank Smokepole for the education on load stacks with shotguns, his solutions are somuch simpler than printed suggestions out of Lyman and other sources it is almost laughable. I have arrived at a well patterned load using 90 grains 2F, 1 thin overshot card, 1 1/4 oz by volume of shot and 1 thin over shot card. This works with all charges I have patterned at #4 shot down to #8 shot. As yet I have not worked the pattern board with heavier shot sizes but expect it to be suitable there also.
 
In short we proved ourselves and our weapons on Friday afternoon. Once the management saw we were serious they got on the band wagon big time. Thier full prior experience had been with rifle hunters, they even offer deer hunting in BP and throw in a rifle on the weekend that the hunter keeps. All in thier web site just Key Word Lil Toledo, near Cahnute Kansas. It did not hurt our stance when we politely refused to cross over to modern to shoot the Friday afternoon games either.
 
We had come to hunt pheasant not shoot clays. We did have enough 7 1/2's to shoot about 60 to 70 rounds Friday in 71/2's but that completely expended the shot coffer in that size. We both then opted to stop shooting saving the #5's for me and Jimbos #6's for the hunt.
 
Smokepole
 
No I did not pattern the load. No patterning board around that I could see. I did shoot several clays the first day 10-15 rounds and felt the pattern was ok. My percentage of breaks went up to maybe 20%. A big part of the low clay hits for us both was in adapting safety rules for the modern guns to our shooting with hammered guns. The riginal rule was that safety does not go off until the weapon is shouldered, we adapted this to the hammer is cocked with weapon shouldered. This significantly slows sight alignment when before I was used to cocking while bringing the gun up from carry, as was Jimbo. All of our clay shooting was really spent on getting that motion into muscle memory and we were not worried on breking a lot of clays.
 
With the 777 I used exactly the same loading as I had with 2F for my shotgun. 90 grains powder, 1 1/4 oz of shot. The report and kick seemed a little more substantial but not greatly so. Ignition was fast and reliable unlike Pyrodex which I have found to be slow in shotguns. The boom was more half way between modern and BP in sound, noticeable but not distracting or worrysome. The smoke ran a little more to the gray but was still thick and satisfying.
 
We met Shayne, our guide, and his dogs Belle (about 4) and Libby (3) about 8am. Belle was a little headstrong about wandering off into other rows or even 2-3 over and got repremanded once with the collar. I was thinking oh-boy a shock happy handler. As we haunted we visited and learned his approach and watched as the dogs demonstrated their love and attention to Shayne. By lunch it was obvious he spent a great deal of love and time with those pups. The collar was used only that once to the best of my knowledge.
 
First Libby and Belle. Libby is wearing green and Belle is in orange, on point and honoring the point.
 
Second pretty chicken tail feathers
 
Third field reload. Some on this. As we were shooting SxS's the lodge wanted us to alway decap when reloading. Our procedure is too hunt the gun empty then reload. With two hunters there were always at least 2 hot barrels on each flush. Then when ever a gun was empty every one stopped while reloading was done. Shayne soon became an enthusiastic partner as this generally slow the hunt some and rest his dogs through out the hunt. A fact he rapidly came to appreciate. The young man was very verbal about his surprise and appreciation of the pace of the hunt, our exceeding care of how we shot over his dogs, and to him the surprising percentage of shots fired to down birds as opposed to what he was used to with modern hunters. In the field we easily shot in excess of 50% shots fired to down birds.
 
Fourth Jimbo on a bird.
 
Fifth Jimbo and Libby on close up
 
Sixth Libby on point.
 
Oh and thanks on the complments on the photographer I think she did a great job.