The Origins

What's up everybody! Welcome to the inaugural post of Idaho Rifleman. There's alot of ways I thought about starting all of this off, but I decided to start at the beginning from as close to the beginning as I could get: The Muzzleloader.

In this post, I'm going to be talking specifically about the Thompson Center "Caplock". This rifle is a Thompson Center caliber of .54 caplock rifle. It loads from the muzzle using black powder (different from modern rifle powders), a piece of cloth "patch", and a solid lead ball. Powder, patch, ball. Then you load a persussion cap onto the "nipple" of the drum. This acts as the primer and sets the charge of powder off, discharging the lead ball. 

Check out Idaho Rifleman on YouTube, I have a video for all of you demo'ing this rifle with some ballistics shooting. 

This rifle is a blast to shoot, but you will definitely hear your shot hit before you see it because of the amount of smoke the black powder produces. There are alot of traditionalists out there that use these rifles for hunting, and sport shooting. You have to be accurate on the first shot because if you miss, by the time the smoke clears, and you reload, any game you're hunting will be long gone. At my fastest, it took me 27 seconds to reload. 

For the caliber that this rifle is, I expected alot more recoil. Maybe it's the weight of the gun, maybe it's the methodology of ignition, but the recoil is pretty moderate and more of a push than a kick. It makes firing this rifle very enjoyable and you can go quite awhile before you get sore. The trigger pull is a bit stiff, but this rifle comes with a featured "set trigger" that lessens the trigger pull to a true "hair trigger". Seriously. It doesn't feel like your finger even gets to the trigger before it goes off. It makes longer range shots alot more precise once you get used to it. I've shot this rifle out to 115 yards with ease on a range and I would be pretty confidant taking down a deer. 

Clean up of this rifle is actually pretty intensive. The black powder is pretty nasty. I use Hodgedon "FF" Black Rifle powder with my shots. I tried Pyrodex "RS" Synthetic Black Rifle powder, but it smells awful and was actually harder to clean. 

To clean the rifle, you can remove the barrel from the stock by just removing the ramrod and a pin. You'll pour solvent into the barrel; I filled the barrel full and let it start draining out the nipple. If it doesn't drain, you'll need a "nipple pick" tool to clear it. Once the solvent is draining, I took a cleaning rod with cleaning patches and started pushing it down into the barrel and started scrubbing the inside. Do it slow or the solvent will shoot out the top of the barrel. I kept running patches through until they stopped coming out black. Then I used "bore butter" to condition the inside of the barrel and keep it clean. 

You'll have to use solvent around the nipple and drum on the outside of the barrel as well to clean the powder residue from the persussion caps. 

I really enjoyed demo'ing this rifle for y'all. It's really alot of fun to shoot, and bonus: you can actually find lead ball ammo right now! I don't know about black powder, it's a pretty specialty item, but I know of a muzzleloader supply shop here locally that usually has it. 

Again, head over to YouTube to watch the inaugural video of Idaho Rifleman where you can watch me demo this rifle and do some ballistics shooting with the lead ball and I've even got some "sabot" rounds to try out. 

Thank you so much for checking out the page, and I look forward to many more posts and videos to come! I have some pretty cool firearms that I want to show you if I can get my hands on them and the ammo. 

Also: even though this is Idaho Rifleman, we won't just be talking about rifles. I'll have rifles, handguns, and shotguns. I'll even throw in some fishing, and hiking posts. I might even share some Dutch oven and smoker recipes. 

Stay tuned for more, please like and subscribe to Idaho Rifleman on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram!

God bless,

Idaho Rifleman

**UPDATE**

So we made our video and tried out 3 different types of ammo:

1) Kootenai Cartridge 224gr lead ball

2) Thompson Center 250gr Sabot 

3) Kootenai Cartridge 300gr R.E.A.L. Bullet

We caught the lead ball and the Sabot round, but we failed to catch the R.E.A.L. bullet. 

The lead ball maintained its shape ok, but did flatten on the impact side. Not alot of expansion. It passed through 4, 1 gallon, buckets of water, through a layer of ice and stopped in our 5 gallon bucket of water. 

The Sabot round was an impressive chunk of lead. It also had moderate expansion under the same parameters. It again passed through 4 gallons of water, a layer of ice, and stopped in a 5 gallon bucket of water. 

The R.E.A.L. bullet... we tried twice; the first time, I hit low and we didn't catch the bullet; the second time, we passed through all of the water jugs, hit a solid chunk of ice and left a small crater, but we couldn't find the round. We'll make another video later with the R.E.A.L. bullets and try to get better results. 

The claim to fame of the R.E.A.L. bullet is that it's design allows the round to be centered in the bore during loading where a lead ball can be mis-shapened. They are also designed to scrape the powder residue from your previous shot out of the barrel to make reloading easier. I can't say I really noticed a difference in 4 shots, so we'll have to really put this to the test in another video and put a few more rounds through this rifle!

Thanks for watching the video, if you haven't seen it, here's the link: https://youtu.be/PzAYyxQ20vA