I'm headed to the pig killin' fields in Llano county this morning. Our 34th annual Spring Break hunt. Aka Coal Creek Ministries hog slaughter.
I'm actually hauling a flintlock this year. I may even get farther than 100 yards from the camp kitchen! (Fried chicken tonight!!!).
If I shoulder shoot a porcine creature with a .490 RB I'll get a photo. (Depends on just how ambitious I get) They've all gone down pretty quick in the past. Hell I'll take a photo of something anyway and post it. Been my experience you can eat all the way up to the hole!
Those old flinters were something in their day, nothing to sneeze at now.
I remember the British account of the Battle of New Orleans. The Redcoats were in a dense fog several hundred yds. advancing on Andy Jackson's lines. Officers were mounted and could be seen above the fog, foot soldiers pretty well obscured. Rules of warfare in that day frowned on shooting officers.
A British officer reported the following: Standing on a cotton bale at around 300 yds. was a rifleman. He was handed a loaded Kentucky rifle, following a puff of smoke an officer would fall out of his saddle. This kept up, a mounted officer falling at every shot. They couldn't dismount, they couldn't turn back, they had to move forward with the famous British stiff upper lip. That's the way they were trained, that's the way they fought.
I alway found that interesting. Asymmetric warfare, effective tactic, small force battling a larger force, changing tactics to one's advantage. The British didn't like it, they lost. Andy, his Tennessee volunteers, Jean Lafite's pirates, a rag tag band whipped the finest army on the face of the earth. Those old flinters played a major role. Dominique You, Lafites master gunner with his ship's cannons didn't hurt...
DF
