Josh First's Blog

If you are going to hunt flintlock, you must practice, practice, practice

Flintlock hunting season ended in southeastern Pennsylvania two weeks ago, and for those hunters who had either not yet harvested a deer or, who, in the alternative, are usually highly successful, it was a last ditch chance to fill a doe tag or the unused buck tag. I know full well from my own feeling, as well as from hearing from other hunters similar to me, that despite having a good season (I killed four deer in two counties. One with a percussion rifle in October, two in rifle season with an open sight 308 Ruger RSI, and one with a flintlock in January), that sense of lost opportunity hangs pretty heavy. Perversely, the more successful a hunter is, the more successful he feels he must be with all remaining tags and opportunities.

In the old days (of my youth and long before then) that lost opportunity was called the “horse collar,” and however we might describe this nagging feeling, it can be a pretty tough driver. Guys (definitely guys only; women are too smart or doing too much real, important work to act this way) will just throw themselves into the late flintlock season hard. That unused tag weighs heavier and heavier as the season winds down, the deer get so much more skittish, and we feel the last opportunities to prove ourselves slipping through our cold gloved fingers.

On top of the usual limitations listed above, I unnecessarily handicapped myself badly before flintlock season started: I failed to practice shooting with my flintlock ahead of time. If there is one hard fact chiseled in granite about flintlocks that everyone knows, it is that they require regular practice in order to shoot them half decently. Especially before hunting big game with one. Not just because they require lots of little pieces of metal and a rock to all quickly and seamlessly work together to make the barrel go BOOM, but because a big flash of flame and smoke goes off right in the shooter’s face.

And that big flash in the powder pan in your face makes those people who have not practiced and become used to the flash flinch badly. It is natural to flinch your face away from a fiery explosion. And when you flinch, you are sure as shootin’ gonna miss. Hence the moniker “flinchlock.”

And flinch-miss I did this past late December and early January. A lot. Missed a deer in Lycoming County, missed a whole bunch of times in Dauphin County, including a dandy buck. In fact there was one doe I missed three times on three days in one week with two different flintlock rifles, all from close range. All because I had not practiced before the season.

When I finally did take a deer in the late season, it was because I had patterned him, a huge buck, all year, and I had just encountered his tracks and knew where he was likely to come in to investigate the smell of a late season doe in heat. And in fact he did show up, right where he should have come. At first he was just a faint shadow within many shadows in the big forest’s early morning half light.

I wasn’t even sure he was a deer when he first showed up. He just appeared, then stood behind trees, then behind a bush, looking around intently, never offering a good shot on his vitals. When he finally stepped into a shooting lane, I knew it was him only because of his enormous body and the improved daylight that let me take in the steer-like curves of his shoulders and hindquarters.

His huge 150 inch class antlers had prematurely dropped (which this year seemed to be the rule across northern and even parts of southern Pennsylvania), and then he, too, dropped. The round ball hit him square on the ribs and took out his lungs and the very top of his heart. After a late season of many misses, it is OK to admit that I only hit him because I had the rifle on a solid rest and I was seated. And that by that time I was not surprised when the flash went off with the BOOM of the rifle, but rather I was cool as hell and stayed looking straight down the barrel with good hold-through, watching him kick a few times through the smoke cloud that enveloped us both.

I do not name bucks, because it does not appeal to me to do so. But I still knew who this buck was from having encountered him several times over the past eight years. Several years ago I saw him twice in bear season, and his rack was good. In 2021 he came in to investigate some doe pee on a remote hillside, alongside a smaller deer with an unbelievably symmetrical ten point rack. I took the perfect rack and watched the bigger one run off. By January 2023 he had not an ounce of fat on his entire brute body whose hide will square twelve feet. He also had a huge rotting hole in one hoof (his hooves were each the size of my hand), and no teeth left on his jaw. This sagacious deer, whatever his name was, had attained the rarity of great grandfather status in the woods, and regardless of how cagey he was, his days were numbered. One way or another, he was destined to die soon.

Despite looking several times in the right places for his shed antlers, they did not show themselves. Possibly because a utility line right-of-way clearing crew had come through ahead of me. But who cares about finding his big antlers, right? His immense estimated ninety pounds of meat is right now feeding two families, and I shook off the horse collar from all the prior missing I had done.

Learn from my mistake: Practice, practice, practice with your flintlock before the season. And then the day before season opens, snap a couple of pans of priming powder on an empty barrel while aiming at a picture on the wall. Just to keep from flinching and missing.

And one more thing: Flintlock hunting attracts me intensely because it requires all of the skills a real hunter must have to be successful. Open sights, hold through, stealth and good wood craft, patience, etc. This is real hunting. There are no unethical lazy long range assassinations of unsuspecting wild game with a flintlock.

Oh, and one more thing: Apparently the Super Bowl starts soon. Super Bowl? Never heard of it. The NFL lost me a long time ago, in 2016 to be exact, with all of the anti America kneeling crap. And apparently tonight there is supposed to be yet another woke racial song sung at halftime. My time is worth much more to me than to spend it on and with such useless people as this. Instead of watching this game played by spoiled brats, I will be building a new work table.

Huge old deer, taken fairly

Huge old deer had weirdly rounded hooves and this big rotting hole in one hoof. His entire leg above this was enlarged, probably infected. All of his teeth were gone, completely worn down. His belly was full of grass, because he was unable to browse brush any longer.