That's what my wife calls it. I do a lot of shooting off my back porch, but that is almost exclusively rimfire. Centerfires are usually shot from my bench, built a couple hundred yards from the house and behind a screen of trees. But each year, as BP season approaches, I do some plinking off the back porch with whatever BP gun I want to use for the upcoming season.
I live in a single-tag any-deer area, but within about 10 minutes of my home a friend lives in a unit that allows the use of a second tag. I'll be going out there to hopefully kill a doe for meat as soon as the BP season opens, leaving my own land untouched and ready for the general rifle season that opens three weeks later.
Here's this year's hopeful meat getter; a 54-cal T/C Hawken, shooting a light 70gr load of FFg black behind a patched round ball. Not a barnburner load, but it is completely effective in the 50 to 75 yard range at which I use it. I've had this smokepole for a bunch of years, and it's sort of the go-to no-hassle BP in my safe. I have a couple others that always seem to need this adjustment or that mod or the other fix; this gun was sighted-in before I moved to Manitoba 15 years ago and has never needed to be touched in any way since then. Each year I fire a couple of test shots, and each year it performs as beautifully as always. It's a keeper.
I live in a single-tag any-deer area, but within about 10 minutes of my home a friend lives in a unit that allows the use of a second tag. I'll be going out there to hopefully kill a doe for meat as soon as the BP season opens, leaving my own land untouched and ready for the general rifle season that opens three weeks later.
Here's this year's hopeful meat getter; a 54-cal T/C Hawken, shooting a light 70gr load of FFg black behind a patched round ball. Not a barnburner load, but it is completely effective in the 50 to 75 yard range at which I use it. I've had this smokepole for a bunch of years, and it's sort of the go-to no-hassle BP in my safe. I have a couple others that always seem to need this adjustment or that mod or the other fix; this gun was sighted-in before I moved to Manitoba 15 years ago and has never needed to be touched in any way since then. Each year I fire a couple of test shots, and each year it performs as beautifully as always. It's a keeper.
