On May 8th, Burbank Muzzleloaders held its annual musket match, hosted by Eric Blakely. It was certainly an ideal day for such a match, for there was no wind- nothing to blame shots off the paper on! The match consisted of three rounds [10 shots (five standing and five at the bench) at 100 yards, five shots at 50, and five at 25] followed by a bonus round of three shots standing at the 200-yard ram. The match was close; Lee Bowman scored first place with 164 (100x), meaning that he scored an x-ring shot at 100 yards while Sam Baseman came in second with 164 (50x), which was an x-ring shot at 50 yards. Sorry, Sam, but an x-ring shot at a hundred yards is more impressive than one at fifty. It just is, and that’s that! Eric Blakely scored third; however, he managed to come in first in the bonus round and Steve Whitt second (both having hit the ram once) following the tradition that ties are broken by first hits. Club members were kind to donate prizes for the match to go along with the overpriced reloading supplies Eric provided. All in all, everyone seemed happy- more so that the match was over and that they would not have to fuss with those hard-to-control muskets for another year. Lastly, Eric is pondering that perhaps a paper match is not ideal for muskets and that a musket walkthrough using paper cartridges may be a more authentic format for such a match. He will be interested to hear the opinions of all in regard to that.

Don’t forget that May is not over for matches as it has five Sundays, so start getting ready for another trail walk to be held on May 29th. It will be the third of 2022 so far and will be counted in the final tally of walkthroughs for 2022, which will culminate with a prize, graciously offered by Burbank Muzzleloaders’ president, Tom Trevor.
June’s match, to be held on the 12th, will be silhouettes with the usual targets at our usual yardages. We’ll see you there!

Well, that’s all for now folks, so don’t forget about Burbank Muzzleloaders, the place to shoot!