BLACK POWDER: CALL IT QUIGLEY LIGHT

BLACK POWDER

Washington state black powder cartridge shooter Allen Cunniff won his club’s buffalo rifle competition with this C. Sharps Arms in .45-70.

CALL IT QUIGLEY LIGHT

A black powder club's buffalo rifle competition includes targets styled after famed Montana match.

STORY AND PHOTOS BY MIKE NESBITT

Another “Buffalo Camp” of the Black River Buffalo Runners has come and gone. This is the event where we compete with black powder cartridges in the 1870s-style buffalo rifles, as well as with smaller lever-actions and revolvers.

Our main shooting event is called the Little Quigley Match because it uses targets shaped and patterned after those targets used at the Matthew Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match, which is held annually near Forsyth, Montana. While our targets are the same shape as those at the Quigley match, they are not nearly the same size. We use scaled-down targets, and fire at them from much shorter distances. But shooting our black powder cartridge rifles at those reduced-sized targets – from the sitting position while using cross-sticks – still takes care and concentration because the challenge isn’t reduced at all.

A quick rundown of the rifles used this year might be of interest. The .45-70 certainly ruled the roost, and those were all Sharps rifles with the exception of one old Springfield. On the firing line and booming with their own identifying sound were three Sharps .50-70s. Only one .44-77 Sharps was in the competition – which was said to be the loudest rifle in the lineup – and as you might guess, that was mine. OUR TOP SHOOTER in the Little Quigley Match this year was Allen Cunniff, who also won the match last year. This time he beat his old score of 17 hits out of 20 by getting 19 hits – a new record for the Little Quigley Match. Allen used his favorite Model 1874 Sharps sporting rifle in .45-70 again, but with different

Mike Moran fires a shot with a 34-inchbarreled Sharps.

loads. This year he was using paperpatched bullets and wiping his rifle’s barrel between shots. I’m just guessing that he will use that same load while cleaning between shots at the big Quigley match this year.

Following Allen was a new shooter to this match, Mike Moran, who used another .45-70 in a Model 1874 C. Sharps Arms rifle to hit the silhouettes 15 times with his 20 shots. Mike used grease-groove bullets from Lyman’s No. 457124 mold, weighing about 400 grains, over 65 grains of Olde Eynsford 1½F powder. Placing third in the match was Jerry Mayo, who, like Allen, was using paper-patched bullets in his .45-70. Mike and Jerry were tied with 15 hits each but the tie was broken in Mike’s favor because he had more hits with his offhand shooting at the “bucket” target.

In fourth place we come to yours truly. I got 13 hits with my heavybarreled .44-77 Sharps. No excuses, but I did miss my first two shots at the buffalo. In practice I was hitting rather well and had my sight-setting figured to ½ minute for elevation. However, I had practiced my shooting from a benchrest, while we shot the match from a sitting position. That might action that looks like it was stocked and barreled by J. P. Gemmer, giving the rifle a Hawken style) at Buffalo Camp. Joel was our only shooter to use open sights, the buckhorn that rode atop his rifle’s barrel.

THE NEXT EVENT at Buffalo Camp to get the shooters’ attention is called the Meat Hunt. This is a match that is shot on the trail at animal-shaped silhouettes that are hanging at various distances, so encountering your target is much like it might be while hunting, and all shots are taken from the offhand position. This is another interesting and challenging match.

The rifle I used for the Meat Hunt this time was my Model 1866 Short Rifle by Uberti in .44-40 caliber. When I wrote about this rifle last month, I mentioned how I had already gotten a Lyman tang sight to fit to it but decided to use the open sights because they seemed to be working so well.

Maybe I should have said “working so well in certain light conditions” because my score on this Meat Hunt

Author Mike Nesbitt fires his .44-77, reputedly the “loudest rifle in the lineup.”

make a difference and, like I often say, any difference can make a difference.

Our fifth-place shooter in the Little Quigley Match was Joel Miles, who came from Idaho to use his .45-70 Sharps Gemmer (a Model 1874 Sharps

Buffalo gun shooters, back row (from left to right): Phil Wiebe, Ed Lagergren, Jerry Mayo, Joel Miles, Kenny Witt, Allen Witt and “Loco” Jeff Ritter; front row: Mike Moran, Mark Davis, Bob DeLisle, Allen Cunniff, Tom Witt and Mike Nesbitt.

was so poor that this child would have had very little to take back to camp for dinner. I just could not see those open sights. That didn’t seem to bother most of the other shooters and some fine scores were turned in.

The winner of the Meat Hunt, shooting an iron-framed Henry rifle in .44-40 caliber, with 34 grains of powder under the 205-grain bullets, was Allen Cunniff again. He was followed (also again) by Mike Moran, who was using a Uberti copy of the Winchester Model 1873 carbine chambered for the .45 Colt cartridge, loaded with 35 grains of black powder under a 260-grain cast bullet. Those two guys are simply good rifle shots and they tied with 14 hits each! Allen had the better tiebreaker, a shot on an X on the scorecard.

Only one shot down from Allen and Mike were Bob DeLisle (shooting a Winchester Model ’92 Short Rifle in .32-20) and Jerry Mayo (with a Uberti 1866 in .44-40). They both had 13 hits and the tiebreaker had to be used again. Following Bob and Jerry was Kenny Witt, a first-timer at Buffalo Camp, who got a good score of 12 hits.

That completes the top five shooters on the Meat Hunt and, no, I’m not among them. I’ll take that as a good sport and just try again next year. Let me say that the Lyman tang sight for my Model 1866 (which, sadly, Lyman has discontinued) was added to my rifle the very next day. That will make a big difference.

THERE WAS ONE more record broken at this year’s Buffalo Camp, a new high score shot with a revolver using black powder loads in our pistol match. That was on our Revolver Trail, which also uses hanging gongs for targets, from 10 to 80 yards. Previously the high score for this match, where we fire just 10 shots with those sixguns, was eight good hits. That record was shared by me and Cody Mehr (who competed while using a muzzleloading pistol).

This year Kenny Witt borrowed a Colt .44 replica revolver from his brother and scored nine hits; that new record will be hard to beat. I took second place with my S&W No. 3 New Model copy shooting .44 Russians with eight hits, and Allen Cunniff trailed just one point behind me for third place with seven hits while using his Colt flat-top by Uberti in .44-40.

To complete the top five shooters, in fourth place with six hits was Mike Moran shooting a .45 Colt, and in fifth place with five hits was Jerry Mayo with another .45 Colt. (I know that Jerry was using Schofield brass with 25 grains of 2Fg GOEX powder under a 235-grain bullet, to come close to the old .45 Schofield loading.) The Revolver Trail is tough and getting half of the hits has to be considered good doin’s.

Those were the top five shooters in each of the shooting events at Buffalo Camp this year. Now we’re all going to practice for next year’s competitions with hopes of improving our scores. In my case, my Meat Hunt score should certainly improve but I obviously have room for improvement in all of the events.

The next Buffalo Camp will be held in May 2023 at the Capitol City Rifle & Pistol Club just south of Olympia, Washington. Maybe you can gather your guns and gear with black powder loads and join us. 