The opinion was first published on July 7, 2019 and is now posted here with new updates.
Written by Hobey Smith
Guns come and go on the replica market, but two that have maintained some staying power are the Traditions .32 caliber muzzleloading squirrel rifle.
These two guns differ in style and price, but are similar in effectiveness.
Traditions black powder percussion rifle
Both guns are side-lock percussion rifles that use relatively small No. 10 or 11 percussion caps for ignition. Traditions Crockett .32 caliber percussion rifle is a more traditional design with a half stock, set trigger, brass fittings, relatively long octagonal barrel, and maple stock.
Over the past few years, Traditions has produced a variety of black powder and muzzleloading tools that are perfect for shooting black powder rifles.
The .32 caliber version of the Traditions Deer Hunter Flintlock Muzzleloader features a modern design and a shorter, larger diameter barrel. This unusually large barrel is the result of drilling a .32 caliber hole into a .50 caliber barrel blank. This convenient gun manufacturing method allows the same wooden stocks, triggers, sights, furniture, etc. used in large caliber deer rifles to be used in the production of new small caliber squirrel guns. Ta.
The rifle is attached and the stock is complete. Next is the metal finish.
Small caliber rifles in .32 and .36 caliber have a lot of nostalgic appeal. They conjure images of burly riflemen from Tennessee and West Virginia who go out to collect bags of squirrels or pot rabbits for family dinners. In many cases, this may be the only rifle a family owns.
If they had larger .40 or .45 caliber rifles, and of course .50 caliber rifles, these would be useful for deer and bear hunting because they wouldn’t have to waste hard-to-find gunpowder and lead on small game. It was reserved for use. . Over the past three centuries, .32 caliber lead balls propelled by about 20 grains of whatever black powder was available have been used to destroy wagonloads of squirrels, wild turkeys, grouse, rabbits, raccoons, and occasionally deer, bears, Even humans were killed. The closest modern equivalent to the .32 muzzleloading rifle is probably the .22 Magnum rimfire cartridge. In reality, the .32 caliber works very efficiently against small game, with a relatively low noise load sufficient to kill if the bullet is well placed.
Live stock price checker
The problem with muzzle-loading rifles was that they were much smaller than the .32 caliber. For one, small-caliber guns with barrels as long as rifles used wooden ramrods, making them more difficult to service and clean. If you were out in the middle of nowhere and had to make a replacement ramrod, it would have been helpful to have a gun that could whittle a piece of wood into a ramrod strong enough for practical use. Another issue I’ve heard of but not confirmed is that if you start using enough powder behind a .25 caliber ball or smaller caliber ball to really be effective; This means that the ball could melt inside the hole, resulting in droplets being ejected. The molten metal is expelled from the hole.
rifle
Crockett rifles are offered as both complete rifles and kit guns. I decided to build this kit gun as one of the guns featured in my upcoming book, Building or Restoring Your Own Muzzleloader. The Crockett rifle cost $469 for a new gun and $419 for a kit. There’s no denying that there’s a certain satisfaction in competing with a gun you’ve built yourself, but many people think the $50 savings isn’t worth the trouble. In the process of building the gun, I also created five YouTube videos. These start with the Assembly Traditions Crockett .32 Squirrel Rifle Kit, progress to stock finishes, metal finishes, shooting, and now end with Tree Lounge Hunting with the Traditions Crockett .32. squirrel rifle kit
I don’t usually hunt squirrels from tree lounge treestands, but this time I gave this stand a try before using it on a deer and bear hunt later this year. I wasn’t actually able to photograph the squirrel from this stand, but I did take two shots while walking up there. The last video in this series is squirrel hunting with a .32 Caliber Traditions muzzleloading rifle. This can be seen in the following video.
Crockett’s Rifle is truer in spirit than in reality in that it resembles David Crockett’s “Betsy” or “Old Betsy.” The last rifle survives and is a fully loaded flintlock. Once upon a time, 100 replicas of one of Crockett’s rifles were made and sold on a semi-custom basis to commemorate the anniversary. These guns still occasionally appear at used gun auctions. The rifles made by Traditions are similar to the later small-bore half-stock Hawken rifles, and from the 1850s to the 1870s, when this style achieved its greatest popularity, many manufacturers made half-stock small hunting rifles. I sold a rifle.
Dimensionally, the Crockett rifle has a barrel of 32 inches (24 inches for the Deer Hunter), a length of 49 inches (40 inches for the Deer Hunter), and a weight of 6.75 pounds (6 pounds for the Deer Hunter). The Croquet fits comfortably in your arm, but the shorter Deer Hunter is more comfortable on your back. The Crockett’s long barrel also got in the way when trying to twist through tight spots, and it always seemed to rattle the deer stand every time I moved for a shot.
The solution is to leave the gun in the rack until you are in position and ready to aim at the animal. Then calmly pick up your gun and shoot.
I also felt that the shape of the Deer Hunter stock had a more natural feel when shooting almost straight into a tree, and its weight distribution was better when shooting offhand. I had good luck taking off-shoulder shots with the Croquet, but it was always better to secure the gun in a tree or other convenient resting place.
Both guns had user modifications. As usual, I smoothed out both locks and trigger pulls. Another problem with the Deer Hunter was that the front sight was too low for close-range shooting. I happened to have a South African coin that was about the right size, so I trimmed it to the right height and made a replacement sight. Some degree of fitting was expected for a Crockett kit gun. I had to fit a piece of wood between the rear of the barrel and the stock, bend the hammer so it would hit the nipple, and fit a deer antler cylinder around the sear bar so it would hit the set trigger. Drop the hammer and fire the gun. Both guns come with an aluminum ramrod, eliminating the possibility of breaking the weak wooden rod in the barrel.
As far as accuracy goes, I couldn’t detect any major differences between the two guns.
Indeed, the squirrels couldn’t tell the difference. To hit a squirrel with either gun, the squirrel must be sitting or moving very slowly. With just one shot and a long reload time, I didn’t shoot until the animal was still and clearly visible behind the leaves.
One might fire into a heavily swinging branch that a squirrel is working on with a shotgun and hope to kill the animal, but I prefer to shoot so that I can put the ball in the front of the animal. , a well-defined target was needed. He also liked to catch balls on tree trunks, riverbanks, and hillsides. These constraints limited shooting opportunities.
This may seem incredible to people who actually have to chase fearless squirrels out of the way on college campuses or public parks.
As I showed in the video on how to make squirrel dumplings, these balls almost always completely penetrate the squirrel, and I have only occasionally retrieved them. The shot raked the Animals from front to back and the ball found itself under the skin on the offside. A round ball of .310 weighs only 50 grains, but typically penetrates about 2 inches through green wood. A typical load of 20 grains of FFFg will send out of the Crockett barrel at about 1400 fps. That’s 218 ft/lbs. of energy. This load is appropriate for the 1:48-inch twist barrels of these guns. The charge can be increased to 25 grains, but using a hotter charge can cause the relatively fast-twisting barrels of these guns to flake off a patch, which is not necessary for small game.
My wild squirrels are very aware that they are being hunted, and as soon as I leave the house they run for cover or freeze in the tops of trees. Sometimes you find areas where squirrels haven’t been hunted for generations, and in those places, a limit of five squirrels is a much easier task. At my house, we are lucky to bring one or two with us on every trip. On full moon nights, squirrels will feed as much as they want at night, so they don’t need to be exposed during the day.
Simply put, of the two guns, the Deerhunter is more expensive ($469 vs. $299), looks better, and handles better than the Croquet despite having additional features. , I think you can kill more squirrels using Deer Hunter. . If you would like to see a video of me using the “Deer Hunter”, it can be found at Backyard Squirrel Hunting Vampire Video ( youtu.be/Jjwn4CDyI9M ). This video explains a little about the rifle and cleaning squirrels.
We also publish videos about cooking squirrels, such as “Squirrel Dumplings” (youtu.be/nOfhw1ZqTIw) for the BBC. There, it is proposed to cook a large quantity of squirrels for the royal family. The British Isles are full of gray squirrels, and cooking and eating them is one way to reduce the problem. No response has been received so far.
The Royals often serve wild game, but I don’t know if they’ve ever had squirrels at a national or social event.
Is the tradition of squirrel hunting dying out?
About William Havey Smith:
As a professional geologist and outdoors writer, Hovey has had the opportunity to live and hunt throughout much of North America. He has always been interested in outdoor writing, sold his first article in the 1970s, and has continued writing for newspapers, magazines, and books ever since. Hovey has been a beat reporter for local newspapers, has been published in over 80 different publications, has produced 15 books, and most recently produced both film and stage productions. Access: www.hoveysmith.com
