got a muzzleloader for all the wrongreasons.

Twenty years ago, my passion was amateurrocketry. “Propellant” was a mixture of powdered

sugar, saltpeter and sulfur, packed tightly behind a nozzle.Black powder was just used to pop out a parachute.

Then 9/11 happened, and black powder became superexpensive, if you could find it at all. This was a problem:Alternative propellants like Pyrodex don't have the pop topush a parachute out of a fat cardboard tube. So, because Ihad a stash of saltpeter and sulfur on hand anyway, I set outto make my own black powder. There were two problemswith this. First, turns out making gunpowder involves a lotmore than measuring and mixing saltpeter, charcoal andsulfur. There are supersaturated solutions involved. Makinggood charcoal takes some doing. And there's a trick togetting a Fg granulation.

Moreover, you have to learn all this without losing ahand or setting your house on fire. Second, after 9/11, itbecame illegal to transport real black powder unless, either:you get a federal permit, which is complicated; or you owna muzzleloader.

Lost in translationSo when a smoke pole of unknown pedigree came up

during during a charity auction, and the bidding stalled at$160, I saw a cheap way to stay legal. I raised my hand, andbecame the not-so-proud owner of a gun with “Shang Dong1st Factory, China,” stamped on the barrel. If that weren'tdubious enough, the other side of the barrel is stamped,“Use smokeless black powder only.” I’m not sure what

I

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smokeless black powder is, but the owner's manual says,“Never, ever, use smokeless powder.”

The silly thing sat on my gun rack for several years,tasked only with rendering my black powder experimentslegal, and decorating my man cave.

Then I got hungry.You see, we normally hunt deer in Northern Wisconsin.

And unlike the state’s central farmland, where deer arerunning around everywhere, whitetails are harder to comeby Up North. We hunt Up North as a matter of religioustradition, which is to say my posse has been going to aparticular cabin, well off the grid deep in the North Woods,since we were old enough to carry BB guns. We're thereevery year for the opening weekend of the regular deer gunseason, going on 40 years now, because for us deer huntingis about life-long friendships and the cabin experience.Harvesting a deer is an intermittent bonus.

Hunting where the deer areOn the other hand, I do like venison. So one year, when

we got skunked Up North, I thought hard about a choicepiece of property near my Central Wisconsin home town,where I’d bow hunted years back. Of course, I had nointention of missing the Up North cabin ritual. Nor did Ithink the Central Wisconsin property owner would want methere during the regular gun season. The Wisconsinmuzzleloader season – which runs the week immediatelyfollowing the regular gun season – fit very nicely aroundboth of those issues.

So I took the Chinese wonder off my wall and took itUp North to figure out how to work the dang thing. I shot itwith Pyrodex to keep things simple.

Once I got used to it, I came to like it. Less of an ass-whupping kick than the Winchester 12 gauge pump Inormally use for deer hunting, and a nice light trigger pull.Pretty accurate, too. Plus, it smelled good. At one point, alug used to mount the stock to the barrel broke at the weld.No worries – JB Weld to the rescue.

Why DIY?Now, a lot of us boomers – and especially muzzleloader

hunters – have a Jeremiah Johnson complex. For us, goingone-on-one with nature to get food is at the core of theAmerican hunting experience.

By this time, after a lot of failures, I'd refined myprocess to produce good, hot black powder for myparachute ejection charges. So hunting with my ownpowder seemed like a natural way to take the challenge ofself-reli-ance to the next level. I poured some into my gunexpecting results somewhere between a deadly explosionand getting the bullet stuck in the barrel. When I musteredmy courage and pulled the trigger, by golly, the bullet cameflying out with an impressive report and a cloud of smoke.

I was encouraged, but I really had no idea how muchpower was behind the conical I was shooting. So I devised alow-tech test: With 90 grains of my powder behind acopper-jacketed Hornady 240 grain sabotted hollow point, Iwould shoot into four plastic milk jugs full of water, placed

side by side, from about 10 yards away. The first two jugsexploded convincingly, and the bullet went through all four.Truth told, I had planned to do the same test with my 12gauge using a regular slug, to compare. But, well, I nevergot around to it.

Still, I was confident that my homemade powder wouldkill a deer humanely, and I sighted in my gun using 90grains of it. I'd read somewhere that “Buffalo” Bill Codyshot all those bison using 60 grains.

A very lousy startLast year I took my muzzleloader to the central

Wisconsin property with my brother for the mid-Decemberfreezer filling season – commonly known as “herd control”season: bag limit, three; does only; breech-loaders welcome.With his Blaser R93 in .300 Win. Mag., my brother picked

December, 2019 The American Hunting Experience |27|

off a couple nice does mid-afternoon. I didn't get ashooting opportunity, and atdark, as we dragged his deerback to my car with all thegun seasons behind us, Iunloaded by firing my guninto the dirt. That JB Weldrepair gave way, as did theother lug holding the stockon. I walked the rest of theway out with the pieces of mygun gathered in my arms, asmy brother ribbed me aboutmy cheapskate ways.

Undeterred, I took thebarrel to a local guy who doesside welding jobs. Iunderstood that hitting thebarrel with a 15,000-degreewelding arc might warp it,but all I had to lose was his$25 charge. I sighted the gunin again, and it shot as well asever. I'd try again.

The regular 2019 seasonwas a great time Up North.The old gang partied down asalways. On day two I eventook the opportunity to headinto the forest with mymuzzleloader. The deer,however, didn't show. Not aone. Now I was hungry asever, and I set my sights onmuzzleloader season in thecentral farmland.

Waiting, waiting, until …December's dawn

illuminated five inches ofthree-day-old snow on theground, and clinging tobranches and bushes, withdeer tracks everywhere.Strong swirling winds mighthave kept the deer away fromme for my three-hour

morning sit on a snowy log. Guided by lessons learned inmy bow hunting here, I eventually moved to a ladder standthat apparently had been there for years. The stand was atthe crest of a steep ridge, 250 vertical feet above a vast areaof bottom land just to the north. Here the wind was steadyfrom the west, and nasty. It was noon and I ate a sandwichand drank last of the coffee from my Thermos. I wished itwas hotter, and that there was more of it.

At 12:30 a buck appeared, 200 yards upwind. He wasrunning silently, then stopped and looked back where he’d

come from, then ran again. A big beast like that, leapingthrough the thick, snowy brush effortlessly, is always a thrillto watch, even if it’s too far away to shoot. He stoppedagain behind some snow-caked bushes. I put the scope onthe spot where he’d disappeared. After a few seconds hecame out, again running. He angled toward me now, flyingwith high bounds over a thick patch of blackberry bushes.With my scope on him, I gave a bleat. He froze 70 yardsout. I squeezed. The Chinese wonder lit up. Through a cloudof smoke, I saw him bound off in the same athletic lopingway he had arrived.

I could find no blood nor hair at first, even though Icould see his tracks – among many older ones – in the snow.I started cozying up to the idea that I'd missed completely.But then I found three specks of blood. Not drops, butspecks, as if someone had dipped their finger in blood andflicked it at the snow. I sat down and ate my last sandwich,to fight off the urge to push the thing.

Wishing for a bigger holeHalf an hour later I started following the tracks through

the snow, down the steep hillside. It was slow going: Therewas no more blood, and my deer’s tracks weredistinguishable from the many others crisscrossing all overthe place only in that they showed the force of a runningdeer. For more than 100 yards this went on, down and downsome more. Still no blood. It occurred to me then that thejugs of water might not have been a great test of mypowder’s strength. I thought about giving up. I felt sickabout the prospect of abandoning a wounded deer in thedeep swamp. Sicker still that this was the result of my dumbidea to hunt with homemade gunpowder. On the other hand,I had nothing else to do, and there was the possibilityanother deer would appear if I went along quietly, so Icontinued on the trail.

A minute later I found a small pink spot on the snow.Not a drop of blood, but a tiny smudge. Looking closely, Isaw the bloody fur of the deer had rubbed against the snowon the steep hillside. Five feet beyond that, another tinyspeck of blood. I stood up straight and scanned the area tosee where the tracks would lead next. To my left, crimsoncaught my eye. Thirty feet to below me, a huge smear ofblood, a foot wide, extended down the hillside. It took myeyes a few milliseconds to follow the smear and understandwhat I was seeing. At the bottom of it was my buck, dead.

All in all, the buck had gone about 200 yards, andapparently keeled over in mid-stride.

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It had been slightly turned toward me when I shot, andI hit a bit far back. The butcher table autopsy showed thebullet glanced off a rib, and at least a fragment of the lead,if not the whole bullet, deflected back even more than astraight-line path would have taken it. So it went through alung, then hit the liver and the stomach and exited through asmall hole mid-belly.

It’s said that a bullet that goes all the way through adeer is wasting its energy, but a little bit bigger exit holewould have saved me a lot of anxiety.

Regardless, I spent the next two hours dragging a beefybuck with an eight-point basket rack back up, and up, andup that hill. The workout was made happy by theknowledge that every extra pound was another great futuremeal. And that I’d achieved success while steppingbackwards in shooting technology.

Making quality black powder is not easy. Neither isharvesting a deer with a muzzleloader. Connecting the twobrings a person closer than ever to the bedrock of theAmerican hunting experience.

© 2019 Jonathan E. Drayna

The American Hunting Experience is a mock publication created to showcase the author’s work.