Shiloh Rifle Forums

For all of us here there was a pivotal moment where we became interested in BPCR shooting.
Was it seeing someone at the range doing it?
Was it a relative?
Was it a friend or neighbor?
Was it an intrest in history?

Or was it this??????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRKUMUPcR7k

Just curious.
For me, it was the above

45bpcr

I started by buying a Marlin "guide gun" as I wanted something for big bear protection at my cabin. That was how I discovered the joy of the .45-70. Then as I read about the cartridge I learned about black powder single shots. My levers rarely make it out of the safe these days.

Chris.

My dad & his friends all had antique guns they hunted & shot with so I saw them early in life. Plus most of those guys had an interest in history especially the Civil War so much of waht a read & heard about was bp guns used in combat. So my facination with bp guns proabably started when I was a young kid.

But the bpcr Sharps pivitol moment for me was when I saw "Valdez is Coming" with Burt Lanchaster........."what was it, Sharps? My own load".....Those long range shots, even though just a movie stuck with me.
Rob Drummond

Reading history in the early to mid 1960s and my granddad.

I've always wanted to shoot stuff farther than normal ever since a I was teenager taking pot shots at groundhogs with a .22. In college a friend had a trapdoor with a buffington sight and we went to shoot it one day. I had to have one. Then I got a Ruger #3 in 45/70. My oldest brother became friends with Frank Garrett who was importing some Italian made Sharps rifles. He got a mid-range model from Frank with a 28" barrel in 45/70 for me.

I've always read Mike Venturino's articles. Whatever magazine he wrote for is the one I would buy. He started writing about BPCR and the likes of Ron Long, Steve Garbe, Dan Pharris and himself. I was jealous because all that shooting was west of the Mississippi and I was on the East coast. Finally I read in Shooting Sports that There was a BPCR match in Shippensburg, PA about an hour and half from home. I went in April 1992 for my first match. I hit the 1st ram that I ever shot at in competition. I was hooked! I got 7 hits that day and made some friends that have lasted 20 years. That's my story in a nutshell.

Just fell in love with the 1874 Sharps rifle is all........
It's a "shooters" gun
Gary

Stationed at San Antonio, Texas in 1960 and shooting with the 4th Army Rifle Team I was highly interested in anything to do with shooting; especially long range. One day I was walking the streets in San Antone and I happened to see a sign out front with an old advertisement about a guy named Adolph Topperwein, The Wests Greatest Marksman! It was in this shop that I had a rifle catch my eye, wasn't for sale as it was on a nail rack on the wall and the owner told me it was his and it was a M1874 Sharps rifle! He took it down and let me handle it and it had great balance; remember that it was heavy...but I like heavy rifles! Don't recall the caliber but I do remember it was in good shape but one could tell that it hadn't always been a wall hanger as there were dents in the stock and the forearm had some wear underneath and on the sides. That rifle struck my fancy right off the bat and other than seeing them in several magazines and books I had read over the years...I never got to see another in person until a 'scoundrel' named Bill Bagwell knocked on my door! At the time Bill had a Pedersoli M1874 with him and being able to handle that rifle took me back some 35 years! Now...at times...I realize that on that day I should have made a eunuch out of the Rdnck because that visit has cost me many $$$$$ over the years!! But I must add also....many hours of untold enjoyment with the acquaintance of many forum friends! So in the final analysis I guess I need to thank Ole Rdnck...for knocking on my door that day!!

I pulled an elk tag for a select area just west of Chama NM. A guy couldn't go on his first rifle elk hunt and in a place like that with a bolt rifle (which I didn't own), or even the Belgian Browning BLR .308 I had (=junk). Got a Shiloh out of SSE and never looked back.

In 1999 I wrote a friend in Utah I had not seen in years to see how he was doing. He called and told me about a shooting sport in which he had become involved. He asked if I wanted to drive up to see him and go to his next match. He owned two Axtells and said I could borrow one. He loaded me some ammunition. And so, I attended the BPCR match at Ten Sleep that year and shot my friend's .40-70 SS, miserably I might add. At the match, I had a chance to handle some other rifles and shoot several, including a Shiloh Quigley in .45-110. When I got home, I ordered my 2.6" Sharps from Shiloh, through Goodman, and the rest as they say is history. As it turned out, the Quigley I shot at Ten Sleep was for sale. I mentioned it to a friend in California who bought it. My friend passed away in 2003 and his widow sold it to another shooter, and so it goes..........

Back in the early eighties I was into the buckskinning thing, sleeping in a tipi on hunting trips and tearing the woods up with a 58 and a 62 caliber Hawken. I had learned how to load the rifles and use them to the extent that killing deer at 200 yards was more or less commonplace.

One day shooting buddy that worked at a pawn shop in Arkansas came by the house with a Navy Arms roller with a bull barrel in 45-70. He had loaded some ammo with a Govt. bullet and smokeless and handed me the rifle and said "Here, shoot this". When I discovered that I could hit a gallon milk jug at a quarter of a mile with iron sights and cast bullets, I was both astounded and hooked. I gave away the tipi, started selling muzzleloaders, and found a Farmingdale Shiloh in 45-70 at a gunshop. I have never looked back. There is quite simply no rifle like a 1874 Sharps. Shoot straight, rdnck.

[quote="rdnck"]Back in the early eighties I was into the buckskinning thing, sleeping in a tipi on hunting trips and tearing the woods up with a 58 and a 62 caliber Hawken. I had learned how to load the rifles and use them to the extent that killing deer at 200 yards was more or less commonplace.

One day shooting buddy that worked at a pawn shop in Arkansas came by the house with a Navy Arms roller with a bull barrel in 45-70. He had loaded some ammo with a Govt. bullet and smokeless and handed me the rifle and said "Here, shoot this". When I discovered that I could hit a gallon milk jug at a quarter of a mile with iron sights and cast bullets, I was both astounded and hooked. I gave away the tipi, started selling muzzleloaders, and found a Farmingdale Shiloh in 45-70 at a gunshop. I have never looked back. There is quite simply no rifle like a 1874 Sharps. Shoot straight, rdnck.[/quote]

... and said to self, "now I'm going to go pour some gotta have it on Mulhern."

Good post 45. For me it was a relative. I had grown up shooting at least a .22 since age 6 or 7. Would spend alot of the summers up in the MS delta shooting on the Tallahatchie river and some here in central MS. Even back then I would enjoy a particular bend in the river where one could fire a .22 half a mile down the river and "see" the trajectory and how the wind would affect the path. The only 3 rules were-don't shoot myself, don't shoot toward the cows, don't shoot toward the house. I was primarily a hunter and never shot anything competitve until 2004 when I shot my first competitive match in silhouette. I saw my first Shiloh Sharps in Jan 2003 when my brother-in-law finally got one after somewhere around a 2 yr wait. I thought it was one of the neatest rifles I've ever seen and paid a bit extra not long afterwards and got one from Bill Goodman initally planning to plink and hunt with it. I found this site not long afterwards and devoured all of the past posts and found that I enjoyed more than anything finding out what makes these guns tick. I found out too I had a bit of a knack for (sometimes) shooting small groups and kept keeping what works and throwing away what doesn't at each match I shot in. I also find I enjoy being around "old" friends and making new ones as much as all of the above. Have met alot of interesting people I would never had known if not for this sport.
Keith Lay

An interest in history and "this".

My teen years (early 60's) during the summer were spent on a farm in North Dakota, straight across from Ft. Yates on the MO river. I got interested in Native American history then. UND had an archaeological "dig" in progress one summer on the east shore of the river and had a big old military wall tent set-up tables and grids and boxes of collected samples, artifacts, etc. That started my off-and-on interest in that subject. I read books about Sitting Bull and others. I visited the site where he was killed along the banks of the Grand River in central northern SD in 1998 while on a prairie dog shooting trip to the area. I have also visited the Slim Buttes Battle site (western SD) and of course the Little Big Horn area. (I have way too many books on this subject as well as WW II.)

Then after seeing "this" (opening post above) for about the 10th time, I convinced myself I had to have one. I started scheming the budget, sold my PD rifle and few others and ordered one in Oct. 2008. I started shooting IHMSA events in 1979 so that "silhouette disease" was well in place when I started shooting my new toy. Did I forget to mention that I'm addicted to western movies?

Tom

45bpcr wrote:Or was it this??????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRKUMUPcR7k
45bpcr

Close,

The NRA Magazine that had Tom Selleck on the cover with the quote "Win My Quigley Rifle" first got my attention.
After eyeing that cover for almost a year and then poking around on the internet and discovering this forum among other things, I decided I had to get one. Went to the SHOT Show in 2006 to visit Kirk at his booth and then ordered my rifle in May. The rest is history.....


Kevin

What got me interested was MLV's book Shooting Buffalo Rifles of the Old West
That $30 book sure was expensive in the end.............

John