I've had a stray bit of flint catch my check now and then (depending on what chips off the flint on impact). Nothing more than that.
My brother is a left-handed shooter and just always shoot right handed firearms because that's what my father had for us to use. He did likewise with flintlocks, which put his face on the same side of the rifle as the lock. SxS flintlock shotguns do that to the shooter regardless of which way the hold the gun.
Anyway, my brother doesn't hunt anymore, but he killed several deer with right handed flintlocks just fine, and to my knowledge he never had any problems shooting that way, and he had his face awful close to that lock.
The flintlocks look like there's a lot of fuss and bother going on there, but it's a fairly small flash overall.
I had someone at the range tell me my flintlock was making a "huge fireball" at the pan each time I fired it. My rifle is a custom long rifle using a Davis Colonial (i.e. BIG) lock. So, having never really seen the thing discharge from any perspective other than as the shooter, I set up my iphone and took some slo-mo video of the rifle going off.
The flash is NOT what that guy described to me. In slo-mo I can see the flint hit the steel, see the sparks fall, the pan light, and the ignition of both the pan and main charge. Not near what he made it out to be, and not near what folks think it is.
The hard thing for people with a flintlock is "tuning out" all that commotion and realizing that it's not gonna hurt you, so just ignore it. Took me YEARS to do that well.
