Loyalist Dave
Member
So my son is a "black rifle aficionado" 
He built himself an AR-10, and now since dad just brought home a large doe with dad's flinter, he wants to finally, go hunting deer...but with the rifle HE built. Well I can't fault him for wanting to put his handiwork to "the test".
So no rifles in my county nor the surrounding counties, and I want some space between me and my son and the next yahoo out there with a .308, .270, or a 6.5 Creedmoore, etc.
So my flintlocking buddy Steve and I drove out to Green Ridge State Forest in Maryland's pan handle last Monday, to "scout". 46,000 acres. My son works a lot of hours and has to put in way ahead of time to get time off, and prior planning yadda yadda...hey it was an excuse for me and Steve to see some "new woods",
It's public hunting area, and I did a Google Map & Satellite scout before driving up. I noted two areas that might be just the place, IF the hunting pressure does what I've seen elsewhere...pushes the deer into corners of the public lands and/or just off the public lands, and they will wander back just a bit when the pressure dies down...say the middle of the first week.
Steve and I took our 20 gauge tradeguns, OF COURSE...., silly to be out in squirrel season in a hunting area and not have them.....
Scouted a lot of areas, and the "primitive" camping spots (they have a designated fire ring and a picnic table...the rest is on the camper). Found three that are likely spots near the areas that I computer-scouted. Also bought topo maps of the terrain, since this is up in the pan-handle and in the Appalachians.
WOW so Early ML season had closed two days before. The log books showed all of the first-come-first-served camping sites had been taken. So the whole forest is a prime hunting area. We began our scout. Drove to an area, dismounted, and crept around for a few hours, then off to the next spot.
So we saw...deer, squirrel (didn't get a shot), wood ducks (that was a surprise for me...and startled Steve near half to death when then lifted off from a creek about five feet from him) and TURKEY. Five Turkey, one with a huge beard, and in one of the two areas that I'd scouted by computer. OF course, we didn't realize that turkey WERE IN SEASON. DUH....I felt like such a goober, since we coulda been turkey hunting, and they wandered away after having walked up on us, and didn't seem to care.
So what's the point of this being in the Black Powder section, other than my buddy and I finding a prime area for Spring Turkey vs. Flintlocks?
Well..., I figure that my son and I might get him a deer when we go with his AR-10...we will have a good time, regardless. BUT if we don't...HA..., THEN he will have to hunt locally the following week, and that means BLACK POWDER baby! (Same scenario of all the camping sites get saved for the full week...back to the home place and black powder!)
I gave him a New Englander for his graduation. Too low tech for him (well it was for me back when I was 19) ...well BP won't be too low tech when it is the only authorized tech, eh? After that is a break then two weeks of ML only season.
So I'm going to require him to sight in his graduation gift this weekend. Just in case....,
I figure if he gets a deer with the New Englander, he will suddenly appreciate the advantages of "holy black", with the main one that it's available when he gets off from work during hunting season. Not to mention the accuracy and the stopping power of a .530 round ball
LD
He built himself an AR-10, and now since dad just brought home a large doe with dad's flinter, he wants to finally, go hunting deer...but with the rifle HE built. Well I can't fault him for wanting to put his handiwork to "the test".
So no rifles in my county nor the surrounding counties, and I want some space between me and my son and the next yahoo out there with a .308, .270, or a 6.5 Creedmoore, etc.
So my flintlocking buddy Steve and I drove out to Green Ridge State Forest in Maryland's pan handle last Monday, to "scout". 46,000 acres. My son works a lot of hours and has to put in way ahead of time to get time off, and prior planning yadda yadda...hey it was an excuse for me and Steve to see some "new woods",
It's public hunting area, and I did a Google Map & Satellite scout before driving up. I noted two areas that might be just the place, IF the hunting pressure does what I've seen elsewhere...pushes the deer into corners of the public lands and/or just off the public lands, and they will wander back just a bit when the pressure dies down...say the middle of the first week.
Steve and I took our 20 gauge tradeguns, OF COURSE...., silly to be out in squirrel season in a hunting area and not have them.....
Scouted a lot of areas, and the "primitive" camping spots (they have a designated fire ring and a picnic table...the rest is on the camper). Found three that are likely spots near the areas that I computer-scouted. Also bought topo maps of the terrain, since this is up in the pan-handle and in the Appalachians.
WOW so Early ML season had closed two days before. The log books showed all of the first-come-first-served camping sites had been taken. So the whole forest is a prime hunting area. We began our scout. Drove to an area, dismounted, and crept around for a few hours, then off to the next spot.
So we saw...deer, squirrel (didn't get a shot), wood ducks (that was a surprise for me...and startled Steve near half to death when then lifted off from a creek about five feet from him) and TURKEY. Five Turkey, one with a huge beard, and in one of the two areas that I'd scouted by computer. OF course, we didn't realize that turkey WERE IN SEASON
. DUH....I felt like such a goober, since we coulda been turkey hunting, and they wandered away after having walked up on us, and didn't seem to care.So what's the point of this being in the Black Powder section, other than my buddy and I finding a prime area for Spring Turkey vs. Flintlocks?
Well..., I figure that my son and I might get him a deer when we go with his AR-10...we will have a good time, regardless. BUT if we don't...HA..., THEN he will have to hunt locally the following week, and that means BLACK POWDER baby! (Same scenario of all the camping sites get saved for the full week...back to the home place and black powder!)
I gave him a New Englander for his graduation. Too low tech for him (well it was for me back when I was 19) ...well BP won't be too low tech when it is the only authorized tech, eh?
After that is a break then two weeks of ML only season.So I'm going to require him to sight in his graduation gift this weekend. Just in case....,
I figure if he gets a deer with the New Englander, he will suddenly appreciate the advantages of "holy black", with the main one that it's available when he gets off from work during hunting season. Not to mention the accuracy and the stopping power of a .530 round ball
LD
Last edited:
