Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Great Muzzleloading Mishaps

One way to insure that classic ML events we'd prefer to forget continue is having your mind elsewhere when you load. One way to put them to rest is remove yourself from the distractions when loading and focus on what you're doing, one step at a time. If you can't do that, don't load. Such interference is common at rifle ranges, neophytes and old pharts tending to cluster around such goings on. They will not think you're speaking to them when you ask they let you shoot unmolested. Sit down, chat, drink a coke or coffee, but do not load or shoot. They'll get bored in time and go away.

OTOH, if you like being the star of an internet post on ML malfeasance, disregard the above. Your celebrity is assured.

About 4 or 5 years ago during muzzleloader season one of the hunters at our camp shot a doe off below deer camp That was about the steepest terrain on our lease property. I was nearby hunting and decided to help him drag the deer out. I took the primer off of my T/C Black Diamond and slung my rifle over my left shoulder. As we were dragging the deer through some brush my rifle got caught in some small bushes. I pulled it free and continued on not thinking anything else about it.

The next morning I am up in my climbing stand watching an area near a persimmon tree. A doe comes in from behind me on the right side and walks to the persimmon tree. She stops at about 15 yards away and I think alright there is some good eating. I put the safety on the fire position and put the cross hairs and her shoulder. I squeeze the trigger and nothing happens. I think to myself, you idiot did you take the safety off. I looked at the safety and it is in the fire position beside of the little red mark. I switch the safety back to safe then to fire again. I try again to squeeze off the shot and the trigger does not move like something is stuck. By now I am really getting pissed and the doe is starting to notice my frustrations. She runs off and I aim at her butt and jerk the trigger out of frustration. Still no trigger movement. At that point I am thinking that could have been the buck of a lifetime, what the heck has happened to my T/C Black Diamond, .50 CAL., blankity, blankity, blank, smoke pole.

It is about 9 AM and I climb down out of the tree and march about 200 yards down to deer camp. I get my tools out and tear down the T/C and start looking at the trigger area. I oiled the trigger parts and started looking at the parts. I think back about the day before when we were dragging out the deer and remember the muzzle loader getting caught in the small bush. At that point I figure that a tip of the limbs got caught in around the trigger. I did not actually see the any particles near the trigger area, but something could have fell out when I tore it down. That was the only explanation I could think of. I put the muzzleloader back together and the trigger worked just fine from then on. I later sold that muzzleloader and bought a T/C Omega.

while its always a good idea to pay attention to your loading around here that will get you a reputation with a name .
You also get folks watching even more closely from afar . One questionable round and your integrity will be questioned .
So while you maybe alive , your can end up having more fun shooting at a range all alone .
If you�re the serious type yet have so short of attention span you cant load properly while chewing gum , its best to pick a group of 3 or more folks that are like minded . Shoot with them

just saying

I've had several "mishaps" when hunting with muzzleloaders.

The first deer I ever killed with a muzzleloading firearm was a comedy of errors. I had just completed the build of my first muzzleloading rifle that year and REALLY wanted to use it on a deer. However, I was just a bit nervous about that black powder after a misfire at the range when it was misting rain.

I finally decided to carry the rifle one bright sunny afternoon. I arrived at my "stand", which was actually a brush blind built in a downed tree top, about 2 PM. I crawled inside the blind and decided to replace the cap on the nipple (just in case).

I removed the old cap and settled in to wait for a deer to arrive when I discovered a "problem". The inside opening where I was sitting was pretty tight and I discovered that a 42" barrel wasn't quite as easy to manuver inside the blind as the cartridge rifles I'd planned on when I built it. No problem, it would be a while before any deer showed up, so I stood the rifle against a limb and began trimming offending branches.

A "crunch" in the leaves made me turn to see a very curious doe watching me from 20 yards away. I was "caught", but slooooowly reached to retrieve my rifle as the doe just stood and watched. I got the sights lined up and squeezed off the shot.

At the sound of the hammer striking the nipple, I realized I'd removed, but not yet replaced the cap. The doe, quite cooperatively, took a step forward and stretched her neck to get a look at what I was doing as I frantically searched for the caps in a leather holder around my neck.

I finnaly get the new cap in place and once again lined up the shot. Apparently, in my haste, I didn't get the cap on the nipple properly and when the hammer fell it simply mashed the cap flat without setting it off. I quickly cocked the hammer and placed another cap on the nipple (the doe was still staring and stretching her neck).

For the third time I lined up the shot (did I mention that my nerves were pretty much frazzled by now) and at the drop of the hammer....the cap finally fired. However, the "cap" was all that went off.....not the main powder charge. The doe jumped back a couple of steps, then started doing the "head bob" again and actually stepped toward me (that was a VERY cooperative deer).

I don't know to this day what went wrong (maybe a piece of cap from the former failed shot was jammed in the nipple), but I was about ready to go after the deer with my knife. I jammed another cap on the nipple and threw the rifle up again....not really expecting anything to happpen....and pulled the trigger.

Success.....smoke, fire, muzzle blast. Did I mention SMOKE? I'd never fired black powder at a live target and wasn't expecting the to hang in the moist air so thick. I jumped through the limbs in front of me, through the smoke....and actually tripped on the dead doe laying just where she'd been standing when I fired.

That night at camp, my father joked that it was a good thing I'd aimed for the shoulder instead of trying a head shot.....because...."That would not have hurt her any, She didn't have a brain".

Other "mishaps" while muzzleloading involved unloading at the end of the day. I know some will leave a charge in the barrel overnight, but I always like a fresh charge every morning. I find it easier to "shoot out" the charge at camp and clean the barrel rather than pull the ball.

One evening, just at dusky dark I walked into camp and took aim at the 8" pine tree just across the road from our camp shed. At the shot, there was a loud breaking of brush and out of the hanging cloud of smoke came a coyote at full gallop toward me. Apparently the coyote had been laying in the brush pile under the tree I'd shot.

He was NOT happy.....or thinking very clearly. He ran past me and skidded to a stop about 25 yards away. Unfortunately for him, I was wearing a .44 caliber black powder revolver and shot him in the head. I will NOT pretend I was actually "aiming" for his head.....I was too busy pawing the pistol out of the holster and getting it pointed in his general direction.

My father was walking into camp about the time all of this fiasco started. He looked at me and said, "You know you don't HAVE to fire a warning shot before you kill 'em".

That same tree played a part in another "mishap" later in the season. My father and I (and sometimes my mother and brothers) were doing a LOT of hunting that season with the smokepoles. That tree got a pretty good working over each evening.

One evening we were on stand when we heard a vehicle pull into camp just before dark. When we came out of the woods we found several of our hunting friends had come by to visit and see how we'd done.....Camp Hopping!

We sat around the fire and were visiting when I decided to "unload" my rifle. At the shot there was a LOT of interest in the rifles. These guys had never seen a black powder rifle fired and the resulting smoke, noise and flame (particularly in the dark) were pretty impressive to them. We explained about "shooting out" the old load each evening.

They were quite impressed with the "huge" .54 caliber hole in the barrel (compared to the .27-30 caliber holes they were used to) and my father offered to let one of them shoot it. "Just take aim at the skin't spot on that pine tree across the road".

A careful aim and squeeze and a second shot was turned loose toward the "target" with more smoke and flame. There was silence for a moment, then a load crack and the 25 foot tall tree sloooooowly fell through the smoke cloud......right across our friend's parked Jeep. Apparently the season long shooting sessions had weakened it to the point that all it took was one more shot to cut it down.

Our friend took a drink, then calmly said, "Do you have anything left to eat after you use that on 'em?"

^ great story

Let me preface this by saying I am new to muzzleloading (4 days of hunting with them to be exact) . I only get to hunt with it 2 days a year. Last year I killed a doe at 105 yards with it and thought this is just like rifle hunting . The very next day completely missed one at 135. After I came home I totally cleaned the gun because my buddy beat it into my head on how corrosive and dirty these things are. I agree with him. I also commented to he on how hard it was to get reloaded after I missed snapped the tip off my starter and nearly bent the rod. He says put a little bore butter in it next time . So after I get is all clean I put a very tiny amount of butter on it just to lube it. Got up to camp this weekend and he says ok not take a cap and just pop it off it will blow out anything that settled in the barrel so I do so . Get out saturday morning loaded up and go to where I wanted to sit for the morning and 5 minutes later I have 20 doe in front of me . Pull the trigger the cap goes but no bullet, did that 4 times and they never spooked. I let them walk away , they never figured out what it was. I know something is not right so I go back to camp , thinking either my camps went bad or I'm plugged at the breach hole. Sure a snot some of the butter must have run down the barrel and solidified badly in the hole. Took me the better part of a half hour to get the hole clean. Went back on stand at 1 after doing a few drives with my buddies kids. After an hour here come the does again 25 yards out . Shot the first one in the noggin and she fell, the rest just stood there not knowing what happened. I slowly and quietly reloaded and dropped another. I was able to drive the truck right to them in the field to load em up it was great. First lesson learned don't listen to my buddy he's just as dumb as I am when it comes to the ML, second don't lube the BBL till just before the hunt , third touching off a cap tells you nothing other than you just wasted a cap,fourth store the gun after the season with the breach plug out so nothing can run into it , fifth buy another breach plug and keep it in your box of goodies so you can just switch it out and clean the other one after you hunt for the day.

I was a good weekend all said and done, It pizzed me off that I didn't think of that beforehand its totally not my norm, but valuable lessons were learned and laughs were had.

After a extended session of sighting my muzzleloader in I finally had it dialed in to where I wanted it. I figured one more shot for [bleep] and giggles. I reloaded aimed and fired. The gun kicked so hard it gave me a case of scope eye. I figured I must have accidentally put a double measure of powder down the barrel. At that point I had enough of that, so I started packing up my gear. When I picked up my muzzleloader I noticed the ramrod was missing. I started searching around and couldn't find it any where. I didn't double load the gun I left the ramrod in the barrel. Never found it.

Reminds me of the time my father and I were "hunting" rabbits by driving through the club and shooting any bunnies that happened to appaer on the side of the road.....with black powder guns.

My father had just finished completing a double barrel muzzle loading shotgun. The barrels were 12 Ga., but the literature that came with the kit said it was rated for..."All 12 ga., 10 ga. and light 8 ga. loads". My father was always of the "bigger hammer" school of thought, so naturally he was shooting 8 ga. loads......something like 5 drams of powder behind 2 1/2 oz. of shot.

We'd killed 7-or-3 rabbits and the new shotgun was really doing a number on them. Another rabbit sat just inside the road ditch so we stopped and he stepped out of the truck and rolled that one too. He got out his "fixin's" and got ready to reload the fired barrel when a second rabbit hopped into the road ditch.

The rabbit wasn't spooked so my father completed reloading the shotgun, then drew a bead on this new target. When he pulled the trigger.....only the cap fired. No problem....this was a double shotgun.....so the other hammer went back. At the shot there was a noise like a bomb had gone off. The firball from the barrel was at least 10 feet across and the gun recoiled up so hard it struck him in the forehead....and drove him back a step or two.

Seems in his haste to reload....and all the time watching the rabbit instead of the loading....he'd let the gun "turn" and inadvertantly sent a second 8 ga. load down the same barrel that was already charged. After we figured out what had happened he said, "Well at least we proof tested it and know any "normal" load should be safe".

By the way.....the rabbit died.

I figured out the hard way that Barnes Expander MZ's don't go down the barrel too easy in cold weather. I was hunting in NW Iowa during the late muzzleloader season at the end of December and missed a shot at a doe at about 150 yards. I was hiding behind a big oak tree and the deer had no idea I was there. I proceeded to pour in another powder charge and tried to ram the sabot/bullet down the barrel. Those Barnes sabots always fit rather snug in my DISC but apparently when the temperature is in the teens they don't want to go down at all.
The deer in their confusion started walking towards me as I struggled to get the bullet down the barrel. I was bearing down with all my strength and occasionally peeking out from behind the tree. The does ended up walking past me broadside at about 30 yards and I was never able to get the bullet all the way down the barrel before they were out of sight. The next morning my abdominal and arm muscles felt like I'd done a really hard weightlifting session.
I still have some of those MZ's left over and I load them for my initial shot rather than throwing them away but I keep Barnes T-EZ's in the blue sabot for my quick loads since they shoot in the same group. Hard lesson learned.

I want to see some pictures. SHOW ME SOME PICTURES......

After many, many years of walking the woods with a muzzleloader, I can't think of any hunting mishaps, but I've seen ramrods fly downrange twice while sighting in rifles. Always good for a laugh at someone else's expense.

Back in the early 1980s, when I was briefly living back in Texas, one of the guys that worked for me hunted deer and elk every year in the San Mateo Mountains here in New Mexico. He convinced me to go with him. It was a primitive weapons only unit, so I bought a Lyman Great Plains Rifle and mounted a Lyman 57 tang sight. From the bench, that sucker would put 3 T/C Maxi-balls in 3" or so at 100 yards every time.

We camped up in West Red Canyon and you could hear elk bugling all around us, night and day. However, the remnants of a hurricane blew in from Baja California two days before our hunt and the damned thing stalled over us drenching us and all our equipment. Opening morning, I was under dressed a bit and, by the time we finished breakfast, the overcast had cleared and the temperature was dropping. I decided to change clothes. By the time I finished dressing again, my friend was sitting in the Jeep with engine running and hollering at me to hurry. I grabbed my rifle (which I had already loaded for the day), my powder horn and my possibles bag and ran for the vehicle. He dropped me off at a side canyon which I was to hunt up and then over the ridge where he would meet me on the other side.

Slipping along just under the top, I heard a bull bugling close by. He kept bugling and I inched along, getting closer. Finally, I saw him about 35-40 yards ahead. He was facing directly away from me and all that I could see was I was his butt and his antlers sticking up above his back. I was hesitant to try putting a Maxi-ball up his rectum, not because I didn't think that it wouldn't be fatal, but because I thought that it would make a mess. At that point in time, I had never shot anything except paper targets and some empty coffee cans with my rifle and really had no idea what the terminal ballistics were like. It seemed like forever, but he finally turned his head to the side and looked back at me. I decided to take a neck shot, as I had already taken hundreds of whitetails with center-fire rifles and neck shots. His neck was swollen and looked huge, and I really had no idea where the spine was located, so I held right in the middle about 1/3 of the way down from the head and touched it off.

When the smoke cleared, I expected to see him laying on the ground, perhaps needing a finishing shot. Instead, he was standing there shaking his head. I quickly dumped a pre-measured load of powder in the barrel and rammed another Maxi-ball home. I reached for the caps that I kept in a piece of leather on a thong around my neck and they weren't there. I frantically searched through all of my pockets. The bull then slowly ambled into a small patch of Gambel oaks and stood there, still shaking his head and sounding like he was trying to clear his throat. He was now standing, quartering away from me at about 50 yards, looking back every now and then like he was surprised that I was still there. I whipped off my jacket and dumped the contents of my possibles bag on it, still hoping to find a stray primer cap, but there were none. I went through all of my pockets a couple more times, thinking that there had to be a cap somewhere.

I got up and walked to within about twenty yards of him, still not quite believing that I had a loaded rifle and no way to fire it. I briefly considered taking out my trusty Buck 110 and using it to try and finish him off, but common sense won out. I sat down and watched him for another 22 minutes until he finally wandered off and vanished up the slope above me. I practically ran down the mountain and back to camp where I found my caps and my leather holder laying on my bedroll where I had dropped them as I changed clothes.

God these stories make me feel better!

I'd purchased my first muzzle-loading rifle (a Traditions .50 caliber "Shenandoah" flintlock) three Summers ago and shot about 400-500 rounds outta it during that first Summer and Autumn. Then Winter came and that ended my shooting until the following Spring when the Ohio weather warmed up once again.

The next Summer, I wasn't particularly looking for another black powder rifle to buy when the opportunity came along to buy an inexpensive model of the CVA Hawken percussion cap rifle, also in .50 caliber, but with a skim of surface rust over the outside of the whole barrel and a very dirty wooden stock which made it look pretty "bad"... even for just $25.

I checked the bore and it was clean and good, so I "pony-ed up" the $25 bucks and took the cheapie 28" barreled, double-set-triggered, rusty cap-lock home.

A fast application of 0000 steel wool soaked with WD40 (an old gunsmith's trick) and a little "elbow-grease" removed all the rust and left the blued barrel looking like "new".

Unfortunately, I found another "maybe" problem when I went to put the rifle back together.

After I removed the nipple and barrel... and gave the rifle a thorough cleaning with lightly soapy, but VERY hot water, rinsed it with HOT, HOT clear water and dried it out with compressed air from my smallish portable air-compressor bought specifically for the purpose of drying out the moisture in my BP rifles... everything was "good" so far.

However, when I went to re-install the nipple, I found it tended to cross-thread and was really difficult to get the nipple "started" without it being cross-threaded.

The real problem was that the original owner must have been a "bubba" because he had carelessly cross-threaded the nipple and tore up several of the top threads in the rifle into which the nipple screwed thus making it "difficult" to get the nipple started and screwed in the past 2 or 3 damaged threads to the point where the nipple SEEMED to "grab" 3 or so threads and "lock" down tight into it's regular position.

After I finally got the nipple screw back in, then I cleaned up the wood and found it was nicely figured and actually in very good condition.

I took the now-gleaming, old Hawken down to the rifle range near my home and found to my delight that the old rifle was very accurate with a variety of different loads of my Swiss FFFg powder behind my .490 Hornady swagged rifle balls sparked by standard #11 CCI percussion caps... making one ragged hole with 5 rifle balls shooting with iron sights at 50 yards off the bench rest.

I shot the Hawken for almost 2� years in that condition, removing the barrel, removing the clean-out screw out of the drum and removing the nipple each time after I went shooting to give the rifle a thorough cleaning... and I also continued to struggle with the ill-fitting threads in the rifle where the nipple screwed in.

Then, during the middle of this past summer, I went to the range and began shooting a "target" load (47 grains of Swiss FFFg) in the Hawken when, on 2nd or 3rd shot, THE NIPPLE BLEW OUT OF THE RIFLE!!!!!!

I was LUCKY !~!~! The hammer must have protected STUPID me from ending up with the stainless steel nipple embedding itself in my forehead as it departed the rifle!!! The "Great Spirit" must have been with me on that occasion because neither me nor anyone else was hurt by the "flying" piece of stainless steel!

Upon checking the partially-threaded nipple's hole in the rifle, I realized that the force of the powder load must have caused the nipple to rip the remaining threats out of the nipple's hole in the rifle and which then allowed the stainless steel nipple to fly 'past my head and over my shoulder into the area behind the shooting line.

Thank goodness no one was standing directly behind me! TALK ABOUT "DUMB LUCK" !~!~! WHEW !!!

Fortunately, the older gentleman who started the repair shop which is open during rendezvous down at Friendship lives only about 20 minutes from me and I was able to take the Hawken up to him at his farm and have him re-thread the nipple's hole with the next larger thread size with no problem at all.

So now the Spanish-made CVA Hawken rifle has a standard American thread-sized hole into which the nipple can screw solidly into the rifle.

I thought the 3 or 4 "turns" of the nipple as I threaded it into the rifle's damaged/worn nipple hole was sufficient to safely hold the nipple in position... and it did for a good many firings of the Hawken, but I found out you don't take ANY chances with something like that.

The "bottom line" was I never found the nipple... it must have went quite a distance after it stripped the rest of the threads outta the rifle's nipple-holding hole.

That "situation" could have been a life-changing incident (brain damage) or even caused my death.

LESSON LEARNED... !!!


Strength & Honor...

Ron T.

Just about the time inlines started becoming all the buzz, the guys at camp and myself were all still using our side locks. We didn't need no stinking new inline contraption to kill deer That season I had one of the best bucks I've seen in that area broad side at a mere 15yds. It was a gravy shot, no way could I mess it up. I pull the trigger and nothing happened, except for the buck turning inside out and getting the heck out of Dodge. I head back to camp down in the dumps. I put another cap on her, set an empty milk jug in the yard about 40yds out, and blew a hole right through the middle of the jug. I seriously thought about putting that old rig in the bottom of the pond that day.

I went out and bought an inline. Haven't used anything but an inline since and don't regret the change one bit.

One day many years ago after a "skirmish", our drummer boy discovered a neat round .69 caliber hole in his drum, through and through. It passed through the drum and out between his legs. We figure a hungover re-ennactor on the other side forgot to take the tompion out of his muzzle. Rammers were "verboten" on the field for many years prior to that, so it would have been unlikely that someone had rammed a ball cartridge down the barrel of his musket, but who knows. It was pretty sobering. (We often used wooden plugs, or "tompions", in our muzzles to retard rust formation in bores when living under canvas during rainy weekends.)

Another acquaintance of mine set his beautiful waxed handle bar mustache on fire from the flash of a right handed flintlock he fired left handed. He was known as "Flash" for a long time after that!

My personal goofs haven't amounted to anything more than dry-balling, losing cleaning patches down at the breech, and leaving my shot flask at home when dove hunting with a percussion double gun.

Hey Wildone - just a quick note: When you touch off a cap before loading it's best to hold the muzzle near something that'll move like a tuft of grass or some leaves or a dust bunny (your significant other is right out though!) The idea is that if the channel's open the grass/leaves or whatever will move from the force of the hot gasses in the barrel. Thus you know it's clear and can load with confidence.

I guess we've all had at least one mishap we can tell. The year after I bought my inline - a Knight Original DISC - I took it hunting using 240-grain Dead Centers with 100 grains of 777. Drew a bead on a nice big doe about 70-yards away. She went down, the smoke cleared, and then a terrible noise started. Turns out that there was a yearling doe behind the one that I shot at that I didn't see. The round went through the big doe, and then proceeded to shatter both shoulder blades of the smaller and exit. That's what was making all the sound; all she could do was kick. So I rapidly reloaded. Had to get closer to make a finishing shot though.

Fortunately, I had two tags. They were both very good eating. The yearling was particularly good.

I've had a pretty healthy respect for the power of that inline ever since.