Woods Journal

There is something to be said about hunting by the most primitive means possible. There are many out there who will say that this is bow hunting, but there are also those who still hunt with spears and atlatls. Around every corner there will be another person who will say “I don’t rifle hunt because it’s cheating.” Well, looking back in history, it’s very clear how those who hunted with bows and arrows felt about the “newfangled” smoke poles. The Native Americans, once they discovered the legendary firearm, could not get enough of them. In fact, often they became better marksmen, especially on horseback, than the white men who invented the gun as it was at the time. At the end of the day, most people will agree, whatever puts meat on the table is the thing to use.

For those who want a challenge, however, there will always exist the means to stretch one’s abilities. For those who become more devoted and puristic hunters, there will always be another step towards that ultimate feeling of accomplishment. For me, this stage is black powder “still hunting.” The beginning of the gun draws its lineage back to a day where one shot was all a person had, and the ammunition was something the shooter had to understand completely. Today, anyone can put a self-contained cartridge into a breach and pull the trigger. The mountain men and natives of old would be jealous. It takes true skill and cool headedness to take the right amount of powder and slide it down the barrel, take a patch and put it over the bore and then place a ball over it and ram it down over top of the charge.

Remembering and following all these steps in order, and under duress, can be especially challenging. Especially once you’ve done all that work of sneaking up on an animal, while knowing that there may be a high possibility of that rifle going click instead of pow. However, this kind of hunting can also be incredibly rewarding.

I use a percussion 54 caliber Uberti Hawken, a little more advanced than the traditional flintlock, however with the way I was hunting the other day, “still” hunting in the rain and sleet and gross, that percussion was all that kept that rifle from resounding that horrible click. Keeping the powder in the pan, or in the breach, dry can be a big differentiator between a billow of smoke and a clack with a couple sparks and no boom.

“Still” hunting is a very old way of pursuing game. It involves moving slowly through the bush, taking one’s time and reading the land and tracking the animals on it. A still hunter will take only one or two steps before halting and standing still for a time. This is where the name comes from. The process can cause a hunter to take hours to travel just a few hundred yards. Doing this with a black powder rifle can mean that that final shot must be taken far within 100 yards. This implies that the closer the hunter can get within range of the game, the better.

With iron sights, and adrenaline pumping, along with the lag time of the shot going off due to the “lock time” (time taken for the hammer to come down and the powder to smolder and ignite), black powder still hunting can bring great adventure and challenge to the hunter. This method is the way the mountain men and Native Americans would have hunted and can have several benefits over hunting in a blind or in a tree stand. While one hunter might sit in a single place for hours in a stand, a still hunter can cover a lot of ground in that time. This travel, combined with the knowledge of game movements and trails, and a good dash of stealth, can be a recipe for great success.

A practiced still hunter can get out in the morning, follow the game via sign, get up close and pull the trigger, all while feeling as though they are making progress. For a hunter in a blind, the hours can go by very slowly and it is easy to get discouraged. With a stand, unless the hunter has pre planned the hunting area, and knows the game will pass by, this method can be a gamble. The still hunter, on the other hand, can be dropped anywhere and pull success from the wilderness.

Besides nostalgia, there are several benefits to hunting with a black powder weapon over a modern one. First, black powder has less kick. It can be more comfortable for newer shooters to fire as well as feeling different in the way the recoil acts. It can feel like more of a push than a hard jerk. Second, smoke poles take an animal by a different means. Modern bullets travel at far higher velocities and are often lighter projectile weights. This combination means a high penetration, getting that bullet into the deep sweet spots easier. This can be far more beneficial on exceptionally large and dangerous game. However, black powder, with the heavier projectile and slower movement, can hit and cause internal shock damage taking the animal immediately, and with less pain. This can often mean a more humane kill with less mess. Black powder can also be far cheaper to shoot than modern cartridge guns. By far the cheapest way to shoot any firearm is by reloading one’s own ammunition, but with a black powder firearm, every shot is a reload and the base components are extremely affordable.

It is hard to compare that moment when a person has practiced for months getting their shooting consistent and accurate with a muzzleloader and then takes that skill into the woods and finds success. Hours of practice, then hours of looking for game, then hours of stalking an animal, then putting it all together can look like a choreographed dance. One shot, one kill and meat on the dinner table for the family. It does not get much better than that.