I’ve enjoyed shooting muzzleloaders for years. Back in the day, I spent untold hours cleaning black powder residue from the barrels of my 50 caliber Hawken after shooting and hunting with these rifles of yesteryear. Then the black powder substitutes came along and I tried them all. I still found myself spending much more time than I desired scrubbing residue from my rifles. When I took up bow hunting a little over 2 decades ago, my smokepoles seldom were taken from the gun cabinet.
Thanks to a tip from my friend Larry Weishuhn I am again enjoying shooting muzzleloaders and the good part is that I don’t have to wonder if they will go BANG when the hammer falls and clean up takes about 10 minutes.
Larry introduced me to the folks at LHR Sporting Arms and to an innovative new muzzleloader that has revolutionized the sport of shooting front stuffing rifles. The Redemption is like no muzzleloader on the market. It won Field and Stream’s Best Muzzleloader of the Year award for 2013. On a recent hunt at Ranger Creek Ranch in Knox County, Texas, I met Canadian Brad Fenson who was on the team at Field and Stream that evaluated the muzzleloaders and actually learned a lot more about the workings of my new rifle from Brad who was obviously as impressed with it as I.
With breech plug threads on the outside of the barrel, cleaning is a breeze. Rifling lands and grooves go all the way to the end of barrel. There are no more threads inside the barrel to catch and retain fouling. Cleaning is as easy as unscrewing the breech plug and swabbing the barrel. The Redemption sports a 24 inch Green Mountain Cloverleaf precision barrel and an FT2 Match trigger that breaks crisp and clean. To sum it up, my new muzzleloader made shooting smoke poles fun again. During my first shooting session, I shot 3 shot groups that measured 1.5 inches. I also discovered a new propellant (new to me, anyway) called Blackhorn 209. It is, hands down, the cleanest burning black powder substitute I’ve used. When sighting in my Redemption, I fired 12 rounds without swabbing the barrel and noticed no change in accuracy or in difficulty of loading.
ON TO THE HUNT - Ranger Creek Ranch is situated on the edge of the famous Cedar Breaks County of North Texas in Knox County. The terrain on the ranch goes from gently sloping farmland that is planted in wheat during the cold weather months to the rugged Cedar Breaks. The transition from gentle to rugged is abrupt. One minute you are walking through lush winter wheat, the next you step off into what is some of the most rugged terrain in the Lone Star State. With deep canyons, rock outcroppings and areas that I am sure are visited only by javelina, wild hogs and aoudad sheep, the Cedar Breaks is a hunter’s paradise. Ranch roads have been bull dozed through this awesome country, which opens it up to hunting. Without the roads, gaining access to “the breaks” would be difficult at best. I am told that Indians frequented this country. How they negotiated this vast “moonscape” is beyond me but our Native Americans knew things that have been lost to modern day man.
I returned just two days before setting down to relate the details of this hunt to you from Ranger Creek Ranch where I joined a group of outdoors writers for a few days of hunting. Larry Weishuhn and I hosted the hunt and although these days Mr. Whitetail shoots his Ruger rifles and pistols, he spent many years shooting front stuffing rifles. Larry and the other writers were shooting pistols while I opted for my new Redemption. A weather system moved through the area with rain and high winds the first couple days of our hunt, making deer movement tough.
Friends have kidded me that I could turn a hunt for cape buffalo into a hog hunt and I must admit they are correct. Armed with my 50 caliber smoke pole, after a couple month of hunting strictly with my Darton Bows, I was feeling pretty confident that I would put meat in the freezer. You might know the feeling of picking up a ‘long shooting’ weapon after spending time bow hunting. I dearly love shooting and hunting with my Darton compounds but its fun to rifle hunt occasionally. My muzzleloader bridges the gap perfectly.
Holly Clabaugh guides at Ranger Creek with her able associate Cody Holub. Holly knows the ranch probably almost as well as Ranell Walker, the ranch owner who grew up on the place. Holly shares our passion for hunting hogs and she has a very good handle on where to find the heaviest concentrations throughout the year. During the winter, the porkers habits are pretty predictable. They bed in the thick cover of the Cedar Breaks, often along water courses that cut through the property thanks to several year around springs.
On our recent hunt, I heard several guys make comments such as, “how in the world do wild hogs make a living in this country”, or “it must be next impossible to shoot one in this heavy cover.” Holly explained that hogs enjoy thousand of acres of a virtual salad bar in the form of agricultural crops and even if this ‘man made’ food supply wasn’t available, there’s plenty of mesquite beans and prickly pear to eat!
Ranger Creeks has a multitude of stands with corn feeders well dispersed throughout the ranch. Bait holes are also set up several yards from the feeders where shallow holes are dug and corn and snow cone syrup are placed. For the past year, I’ve been using a product called Buck Natural, which you’ve probably read about here in articles from both Weishuhn and I. This attractant is comprised of a corn that is way sweeter than normal corn. I’m told the strain was sixty years in development. The Buck Natural folks decided to refine their attractant a bit and make it an even better wild hog attractant. I took some of their brand new Hog Natural along as did Weishuhn.
While stand hunting, I poured out a string of the attractant about ten yards from the baited holes. On several occasions, I watched hogs first hit the corn feeder, and then head toward the hole which is kept baited, my string of Hog Natural stopped them in there tracks! This stuff works!
I devoted an afternoon hunt to collecting some pork and set up on the side of a canyon, overlooking a well used pit trail. I placed a liberal amount of Hog Natural along the trail in an area that afforded good visibility from my perch on the edge of the canyon, about seventy yards away. As all we hog hunters know, it’s often possible to hear traveling hogs before we see them. Such was the case on this hunt. From the deepest recesses of this canyon, I hear hogs squealing and some deep guttural grunts made by older animals. The first hog to appear out of the brush was a BIG sow. If I had to place money on a bet on her weight, I would say 290 pounds. She was steel gray in color and twice as big as next biggest hog in the sounder.
I settled the crosshairs on her neck and took a millisecond too long deciding whether or not I wanted to deal with all that pork down in such a inaccessible spot. She made my mind up for me when she stepped behind a bunch of cactus. Behind her came the sounder. I watched several 100 to 125 pounders follow her along the trail. They did not stop and I decided to shoot the first hog that gave me a standing broadside shot. Enter my 40 pound spotted pig, the little hog that was cause for some much good natured ribbing back at camp. The instant piglet little stopped, I dropped the hammer on the Redemption and the 250 grain TC Saboted bullet took the hog just behind the shoulder, through the ribs. A perfect ‘meat’ shot that destroyed none of what I consider to be some of the best eating to be had from the wild.
I’m planning a spot and stalk hunt with Holly in the very near future. Holly likes to get down into the drainages in the canyons and still hunt into the wind.
“When you bust a big sounder of hogs down in there, it’s common to get one shot off on a standing hog and then its gets pretty wild with hogs running in all directions in the thick cover," says Holly. "We often shoot several animals from the same group.”
Javelina numbers are also high on Ranger Creek, thanks to a stocking of the animals on the adjacent Wagoner Ranch back in the fifties. I am eagerly anticipating my return trip to Ranger Creek. For more information on hunting here, visit www.RangerCreekRanch.com or call Ranell Walker, ranch owner at 940-888-2478.