English Lock Fishtail Musket

I took my English Lock Fishtail stock musket for a spin. I did some target shooting and hunting with it over thanksgiving and was really pleased with it. It's an Indian made musket, and I bought it mainly for re-enacting King Phillip War scenarios, but was pleasantly suprised by its shooting performance.

Nominally it is a 12 guage gun, but .715 round balls were very loose even after 15-20 shots. .010 patches did not produce a tight fit and I didn't have any .015 patching so I mostly shot bare ball and also divoted ball. I loaded it with 60 grains 2f and primed with 2f. The divoted balls were very accurate, that is a neat trick. I also used 80 grains 2f and 80 grains worth of birdshot for squirrel hunting

At 25 yards it was very accurate even after fouling a lot it reliabley pegged the target. I learned from another more experienced shooter that all guns shoot high when they are fouled so when I made the adjustment by aiming lower, I was right on again. I didnt try 50 yards. Suprisingly the fishtail stock is very effective and ergonomic. It is a weird shape but very functional.

The main drawback is the English Lock needs some tweaking for reliable sparking. The flints in India must be a funny shape, or this was an exact copy or something because it does not work well with the standard flints available to shooters in America. A more experienced shooter showed me the main issue was the typical gunflint struck the frizzen in the middle and by raising up the flint in the jaws of the cock making it hit in the top 1/3 of the frizzen would fix it...and it did ...sort of. Of course the lead shims I use to jack it up are liable to get lost in the field and it still seems to eat gunflints...long story short is that when it is tweeked by raising the flint it gets about 15-20 shots per flint. Well maybe I'll just knap some myself.

Deer Tail Processing

Today it was revealed to me how to easily skin out a deer tail for use in regalia. As everyone knows as you move down the tail gets smaller and the skin is thinner and it tears at the end. The solution was easy, just use the back of the knife to loosen the skin from the tail as you get to the bottom of the tail and the skin doesn't slip easily. Rub the back of the knife down between the tail and the skin sort of like whittling with the blunt end. Then you get a nice tail you can use to make roaches or cones, one that you got yourself!