Muzzleloaders: history with bang
OROFINO, Idaho — Phil Johnston gave up hunting several seasons ago.
When packing his kill out of the woods became more work than the thrill of the hunt was worth, he decided it was time to give it up.
But he remains dedicated to muzzleloader rifles — so much so that he crafts his own black-powder firearms in the basement of his Orofino area home.
While relating how he got interested in muzzleloaders and then started making guns, he slowly carves a maple stock, making room for the patch box.
“This right here keeps me busy during the winters since I retired.”
Johnston, who worked in the timber industry, could be called a purist. His friend Gordon Hubbard of Lewiston notes “he probably doesn’t even have elastic in his shorts” when he is dressed up in his leathers, period clothing from the time of the Corps of Discovery.
Johnston is a member of the Hog Heaven Muzzleloaders and participates in Lewis and Clark re-enactments and commemorations.
He prefers flintlocks, but also shoots percussion cap-lock rifles.
Johnston, 68, started hunting about the time he was old enough to pack a gun around the woods. Back then he shot just about anything.
“If something moved on four feet, it had to be killed,” he says of his boyhood.
As he aged, his bloodlust subsided and he became a dedicated big-game hunter. But by his mid-20s, he says, he was going on hunting trips more for the camaraderie than the thrill of the hunt.
About 1972, when Idaho adopted special seasons for muzzleloaders, the idea appealed to him.
“Gee, it’d be fun to go out and put meat on the table with the same weapons as my forefathers did,” was his thought.
“I had kind of given up on high-powered rifle hunting. Muzzleloading kind of rejuvenated my interest.”
When one of his sons brought home a small cannon he made in metal shop, Johnson got interested in making his own weapons.
Then he read “Tough Trip Through Paradise” by Andrew Garcia, which tells the story of the 1877 Nez Perce War, the end of the buffalo herds and life in the early West.
Next a trip to the Big Hole Battlefield in Montana fed his hunger for history.
“That got me kind of jacked up about some of the history.”
It snowballed from there. Now he has several muzzleloaders, has made 25 and is an amateur expert on primitive firearms.
He can make a rifle in two to three weeks if he works eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. But that doesn’t happen.
“I don’t have anything else to do, so why hurry?”
He buys the barrels and some parts, but does most of the work himself. The gun he is working on now is meant to be a replica of the short guns used on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Nobody knows for sure, but he believes the guns are 1793 contract .50-caliber rifles with 42-inch barrels that were shortened to 38 inches.
“When Lewis made reference to his short guns, I’m sure it was one of these.”
Muzzleloaders take more maintenance. Black powder is highly corrosive and if the guns aren’t maintained, the powder will eat away at the inside of the barrel.
“Once you fire it, you clean it,” he notes.
Shooting the guns is a bit different. They can’t always be relied on to fire.
“If everything is working well, the gun goes bang.”
But the challenge of hunting with, shooting and making muzzleloader firearms keeps him connected to the history he loves.