Well the big news of a new Pennsylvania State Record was found to be a little short during the official measurement this past week.

Fayette County hunter Jeff Lenzi’s Allegheny County buck ended up with a net score of 166 which was good enough to put him in 13th place in the all time trophy deer book in PA for a typical archery deer.

The state record still hangs in there at 175 2/8” which is a pretty impressive buck. Jeff shouldn’t feel too bad as he is in a pretty exclusive deer hunting club.

Which brings up a deer club that I have seemed to join this year…the No Deer Club? I would have bet money on my odds to have a deer bagged and in the freezer by this time.

It has been just a plain old tough season for me, I admit that I did pass on some smaller deer but I didn’t want to take a deer that wasn’t really a fully mature animal or a challenge.

Several years ago I hunted the same period and was able to harvest five bucks in three states, strange how things work out.

There is always late season muzzleloader hunting after Christmas and more than one of my contemporaries will be joining me in the woodlands.

Sometimes it is hard to round up more than a few guys to go on a flintlock hunt after Christmas. This year appears to be an exception as more than one of my cronies ended up without a buck or a doe.

There has been opportunity to take a deer in my hunting forays but one thing or another interfered and tags went unfilled. We began to pull out the flintlocks this past weekend and started checking the flints, frizzens and sparking capabilities. No spark…no deer…it’s the elementary rule of flintlock hunting.

Have a good spark, dry powder; clear weep hole, a good load and steady aim when the flash pan powder goes off!

The main enemy of the black powder hunter is dampness, the phrase keep your powder dry meant that exactly!

Wet powder or even a damp powder is useless to the hunter and can be very dangerous as a phenomenon known as a hang fire can take place. This occurs when a slow burning ember finally sets off the main charge in the barrel seconds later then booms off the round ball.

Over the years I have learned some tricks when using the flintlock rifle.

Most have involved knowing your rifle and what it likes to shoot accurately.

Most rifles have helical grooves cut into the barrel which is known as rifling.

The rifling imparts a spin to the projectile around its long axis. Rifling is often described by its twist rate, which indicates the distance the rifling takes to complete one full revolution, such as a “1 turn to 48 inches “which is standard in my T/C Hawken rifle.

A shorter distance indicates a faster twist, meaning that for a given velocity the projectile will be rotating at a higher spin rate.

Depending on what your rifle manufacturer recommends it is important to shoot the right projectile in your specific rifle. Some like swaged round balls others do better with the sabots or black powder power belt bullets.

The weight of the projectile is measured in grains and also to the caliber of the rifle that you are using. Most common calibers are .45, .50, .54 and .58 caliber with the .50 caliber being the most widely used and commercially available. In my .50 caliber T/C Hawken I like to use a 175 grain round ball with a .490” circumference.

My powder charge is 90 grains of FFg black powder which will throw that ball out with a velocity of 1950 FPS with a smack of 1571 foot pounds of energy. Use an FFFFg black powder as your pan primer selection.

The black powder enthusiast gets a lot of exercise stalking and walking deer for shots with their partners. One of our favorite hunts is when we start slow hunting thick cover to each other in pre-planned positions and we place deer in good shooting ranges to each other.

A lot can go wrong and there are no guarantees that you will harvest a deer even when it seems to go your way.

We burn a lot of powder and sometimes we even score on a nice buck. Many years back I walked off a hillside covered with grapevines and dozens of deer poured out of the cover.

Beaver boy had the opportunity to make a nice shot on an eight point buck and we took several other deer as well.

The primitive flintlock season starts statewide December 26th and runs through January 10th. Review the PA Hunting and Trapping Digest for more information.

Until we meet again Happy Holidays and I’ll be doing my best to get kicked out of the no deer club!

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle