Steel meat: rifles for black powder cartridge rifle silhoutte

In my first "Montana Musings" column in the January 2005 issue, I extolled the virtues of the NRA's Black Powder Cartridge Rifle Silhouette game. As said therein this game encompasses so much of the gun world of which I am so fond. Namely big-bore, black-powder cartridge rifles, long-range precision shooting, handloading and bullet casting. It's no wonder it has remained my primary shooting passion for 20 years now.

That said, it must be a bewildering game for the novice or uninitiated. What with the talk of all those dual-digit cartridges, vernier tang sights, cast bullet alloys, sizes and diameters, card wads, and black powders with their several "Fg" ratings. Also, universally the first thing a new spectator at one of our matches says upon looking over the course of fire is, "How in the world can you hit those things way out there with one of those old smokepoles and iron sights?"

The Animals

Those "things" are metallic silhouettes of chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rams placed at 200, 300, 385 and 500 meters respectively. And they are hard to hit--never doubt that. The chickens are about the size of a dinner plate. That doesn't sound overly difficult, does it? Well consider this. Chickens are the only BPCR Silhouette targets fired at offhand, which makes them extra difficult. For all other targets the shooter is allowed to sit or lay down behind his rifle and rest it over a set of crossed sticks. That's much easier than offhand but to put things in perspective be aware that the 385 meter distant turkeys are just a few yards shy of being a full 1/4 mile away, and that a circle drawn inside their body is only 11" in diameter. Hits on the turkey neck and head or its leg can only be considered a bonus. To reliably take down a row of turkeys, the rifle and shooter must be able to group the shots inside an 11" circle at a 1/4 mile.

The rams are even more difficult. They are 24" from butt to breast, but only about 12" deep from belly to backbone. Five hundred meters is 547 yards, so a rifle must group within two minutes of angle minimum to be able to stay on them. Figure in changing wind and light conditions and the fact that if the rifle's muzzle wobbles only 1/100" during firing that bullet will [and about 6" from where intended at 500 meters. Take my word for it, rams are hard to hit.

A normal course of fire in BPCR Silhouette is I0 shots each at the four metal cutouts at their respective distances. Nowadays, sometimes a competitor will hit all 30 of the "lay-down" targets as we call them plus a few of the offhand chickens. In fact for 2005 the NRA raised the level for a master class score to 31 in a 40-shot match. In my entire 20 years of BPCR Silhouette competition I've only been able to shoot four scores of 31. To even reach the AAA class level now a score must be 26 or better. I've attended matches here in Montana with several former national champions in attendance where no one's score even reached the new AAA class level, not to mention master class.

Too Hard?

If all this sounds like BPCR Silhouette is a difficult game, that's the impression I wanted to give. I'll bet many of you are thinking, "Well, if the game is that hard it must require extra expensive rifles to be competitive, and there's no way I can afford something like that." If you are thinking such you are dead wrong. Just a couple of weeks ago I fired in a two-day match at Boise, Idaho. My good friend, Darryl Smithson, of Helena, Montana, tied for second place overall with a two-day score of 30 and 31. He was shooting a Cimarron Arms-imported Pedersoli-manufactured Sharps 1874 replica in .45-70.

Certainly many BPCR Silhouette shooters show up at matches packing rifles with $4,000 or higher price tags, but the simple fact of the matter is that you can't buy your wins in this sport. Often those big-price rifles are whipped shamelessly by Italian replicas costing a traction as much. (The hefty price tags on some rifles come from cosmetic extras put on for pride of ownership such as fancy woods, or engraving. It usually has nothing to do with shootability of the rifle.) As I see it from my 20-year vantage point in the game, for a shooter to do well in BPCR Silhouette requires three things. His rifle must have a fine-quality barrel. He must be a very good bullet caster and handloader. Lastly, he must have a great spotter.

I've listened at matches where some competitors pontificate to new shooters that for them to become "competitive" they must have a rifle built on a "high wall" type of action. What they say goes like this, "Since it was the last of the great single-shot actions of the late 1800s it naturally must be best. After all, it has a centrally located hammer with fast lock time." All that is so much horse-pucky. Just as many shooters are winning matches with Sharps Model 1874s with their huge side mounted hammers as with any version of "high wall" or any other rifle type for that matter.