BERRYVILLE - Victor Jantz of Walnut Shade, Mo., held about 25 pounds and more than 40 years of family history in his hands as he steadied his aim on the target 25 yards away. The rifle, a black-powder muzzleloader, was built by his grandfather for whom Jantz is named.
“It’s kind of like a connection to the grandpa I never knew,” Jantz said.
Jantz and his father, Barry Jantz, were two of more than 100 shooters who competed in matches Saturday at the 58th annual Saunders Memorial Shoot at the Luther Owen’s Muzzle Loading Range and Park in Berryville. The competition began Thursday and continues through today. Participants were free to compete in as many or as few matches as they chose. The competition is as rootedin the history of the Ozarks as the weapons themselves are in the history of the United States.
Muzzleloaders, which fire a round lead ball by igniting gunpowder with a flint spark, date back to before the American Colonial era, said Charlie Caywood, whose family has organized the shooting competition for about 20 years.
Caywood, 82, began participating in the competition 50 years ago and said he had only missed it a few times, although medical ailments that make it difficult to stand may keep him from competing in the future.
“[These shooters] are involved in a real old sport,” Caywood said. “It’d be like people fly-fishing with bamboo rods. They’ve been shooting black powder since cannons, since the 1400s.”Caywood said flintlocks, which provide a small spark and eliminated the need for fuses, came into practice about 250 years ago.
The competition has three weapons divisions: rifle, pistol and shotgun. Rifle and pistol marksmen competed at distances of 50 yards and 100 yards if using a bench for support, and at distances of 25 yards and 50 yards when shooting freehand, or unsupported. Shotgun shooters compete firing at clay targets that are launched into the air.
Along the f iring line, the ages of the marksmen spanned from young children to the well-seasoned. Natalie Morris, 11, and Ashley Morris, 14, both of Springdale, carefully listened to instruction from their father, Curtis Morris, between each shot.
“The modern stuff ’s a little easier to figure out,” Morris said as he calibrated the amount of powder he was preparing to pour into the rifle his daughters were using. “This stuff’s more of a challenge.”
The pace of black-powder shooting competitions is literally from another era. For the rifle division at Saturday’s competition, shooters were given 30 minutes to fire five shots in each match. Many of the competitors keepdigital countdown clocks on the equipment bench 10 feet behind the firing line, tracking the minutes remaining in each match.
After swabbing the barrel
of the rifle - which Morris
trimmed from 33 inches to
24 inches, to make the weap
on lighter and easier for his
daughters to handle - he
poured in the gunpowder,wrapped a lead ball in cloth - “wadding” - and packed the ball deep into the muzzle before returning it to the firing line, where Natalie took hold of the weapon at a shooting bench. After just a few seconds, she pulled the trigger, surprising her father.
But peering into a nearby spotting scope, her older sister confirmed that Natalie wasn’t too hasty.
“She hit inside the 10 ring, just opposite of the X from her last shot,” Ashley said.
Danny Caywood, Charlie’s son, and co-owner of Caywood Gunmakers, said the hands-on involvement in preparing each shot were two things that make the sport appealing to many people.
“You put more of yourself into it,” said the younger Caywood. “The simplicity of shooting modern guns takes the personal interaction out of it. When you’re shooting a flintlock, you have to load the powder, the ball, you have to prime the pan, keep your flint sharp. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it.
“To take that thought a little further, if you actually build the gun yourself, then put in all that work to load it, get it sighted in, and you’ve done the whole process, you’re going to get a lot of satisfaction,” Caywood said. “You really put yourself into it.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 09/29/2013