I went out to Don’s parents home yesterday along with Don to check out my muzzle loader. After some misfires and a couple ‘what the hells?’, it worked out pretty good. After firing a percussion cap, we loaded it up and gave it a try. We got the snap, but nothing followed it, no boom. “Great” I thought, “What the hell do we do now”. We used three more caps without any luck and Don decided to do it the B.B. way. He took off the nipple and poured some powder in that little hole and tried it again. This time there was a snap, followed by nothing, followed by a BOOM! I’d heard that you have to hold it very still inbetween the snap and the ignition of the powder, but the delay was more than a second. One second in time would seem to be a short period, but when your holding a bead on a target, it felt like an eternity. At least it worked this time so we re-loaded it. The next shot fired was instantanious, and my sight picture was good, so we tried it again. He increased the charge some, from 80 grains to 90 and I could feel the difference in it’s recoil. My sight picture was good once again, so we walked down range and had a look. Both shots were at 6 o’clock and 6″ low. We were shooting at 75 yards so Don was pretty happy with the results. Most of our shots won’t be that far when we get to Eckerman so it looks like I’m in business. If I get a shot at 75 yards or farther, I’ll just put the post a little high in it’s shoulder area and I should have me my deer!
Archive for December, 2006
05 Dec ‘06
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006It’s a girl!
Monday, December 4th, 2006This afternoon at 5:14 our son Matthew and his fiancee’ Hoa, gave birth to a 7lb 8oz girl. Mia Dao Elaine Kamradt is 20 1/2″ long and all are doing well. That’s number 5 for us, and we get as excited about the last one as we did about the first. I love ‘em all, and wish I could have a hundred more…so get busy kids, turn off the t.v., and have at it!
02 Dec ‘06
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006Well, it’s started. When I drove Jan to work yesterday, the grass was semi-green and the rest of the world was semi-brown. Around 11:20am it started to snow, and it snowed, and snowed, and snowed. By 5:20 it was over and we had 10″ of snow on the ground. I watched the weather channel this morning and the forecast calls for snow every day for the next week, and temperatures never getting above freezing. I’m hoping that we can score a couple nights where it gets real cold and no wind. If that happens, we could be ice fishing by Christmas, if it continues to snow, it’ll be mid January before we can get on the ice. It snows up here so hard most years that the snow doesn’t melt as it hits the lakes, and we end up with white ice. A couple years ago, Doug got me out on the crap for some fishing, and the ice bounced as we walked on it. I’m a big fan of ice fishing, hell, I’d rather do that than sit in a boat, but it’s a little un-nerving when we have to be roped together to walk out there.
This weekend Don, B.B., Jamie, Doug and myself are going up to Eckerman for some deer hunting using the muzzle loaders. Doug’s taking up a couple deer blinds so we don’t have to set under some Hemlock and freeze our butts off. Back in the day, I could sit out there all day long and watch the snow pile up over me, but not anymore. I don’t think the U.P. got as much snow as we did, so we stand a chance of getting back to the runways. Two years ago, the guys went up and were treated to a day of “Winter wonderland”. They didn’t have any problems at all getting back into the woods but there was some doubt whether they were going to get out or not. Doug told me that the visiblity was down to 3′ for most of the day, but wouldn’t trade it for all the venison in the world. Don ended up taking a shot at a nice buck but it snowed so hard the blood trail was covered within minutes. B.B. took his GPS unit and a radio off into the bush trying to track it, but after a couple hours and crossing two rivers, he gave up. Don told me yesterday that a friend of his was there for the last couple days of the regular rifle season, but all he saw were moose. What a sight that would have been!
Today, I’m going out to Doug’s and see if he can show me how to operate one of these muzzle loaders, and maybe I can make ammends of not getting a bear this year. I’ll let ya know how it goes.
