5 Black Powder Guns That Mean a Lot to Me

Some of the greatest joys of hunting and shooting are the memories, and sometimes, those memories become so entwined with certain objects that it’s impossible to fully separate the two. If you have been blessed as much as I have, you may experience that with multiple objects — namely, guns.

I thought I’d take some time to share with you five black powder guns, along with some explanation of why they mean a lot to me. I had the perfect opportunity to take these photographs when I found myself shooting all of them clear one day last fall.

Phoenix

I’ve written about this smokepole before, in “Hunting with Phoenix” and “Phoenix and Beyond: Muzzleloader Hunting With New and Old Rifles.” This was my late father’s rifle, and as with most special guns, there’s a good story behind it.

This sidelock .50-caliber muzzleloading rifle first came into Dad’s life as a derelict hunk of junk. Someone brought some old junk guns into a friend’s gun shop, this one among them. The stock was ugly and charred where someone had attempted to “tiger-stripe” it with a torch, and the octagonal barrel and hammer were being consumed by rust. Dad saw potential in its chrome-lined bore, however, so he bought it for a song and set to work.

Lots of labor later, he’d restored the octagonal shape to the barrel by hand-filing the flats to remove all the rust pits, tested it with a proof load and cold-blued it, and sanded & refinished the attractive hardwood stock. He replaced the sights, zeroed it with patched round ball, and took it hunting. On its first hunt, he slew a whitetail buck with Phoenix, the rifle he’d brought back from the ashes.

He left the hammer rust-pitted as a reminder of its former condition.

Since Dad’s passing, I have spent a lot of hours toting Phoenix myself, and last season I finally used it to take a whitetail. It’s tough to sum up everything I feel in connection with Phoenix, so I won’t. But I think it is by far my favorite muzzleloader.

Thompson/Center Seneca

One day in the long-distant past, I was 17 years old and had just graduated high school. Dad and I were supposed to go shooting on Saturday morning, but as usual I overslept. I shook myself awake, noting the bright sunshine and remembering that we were supposed to go to the range. Dang it, he was probably itching to go!

I leapt out of bad as only a 17-year-old can do, and started hunting for Dad. As I opened the door of the house to step outside, he was there stepping in — with a handy, light, graceful muzzleloader in his hand and a grin on his face. He reached the rifle towards me and said, “Here, happy graduation. I got you a play-purty!”

I went from feeling like a disappointment to on top of the world. I suppose Dad may have said some more words, but all I could hear was the angelic choir singing in my head as I admired the sweet little .45-caliber smokepole.

The Seneca was one of the best sidelock muzzleloaders Thompson/Center ever built. Essentially a scaled-down version of their Hawken resembler (Dad’s term; they’re not truly replicas of the old guns), the Seneca is light, graceful, and gorgeous.

This particular one was accurate with round ball, Minie ball, and Maxi-ball. Because the Maxi-ball is a conical bullet and we could cast our own, I settled in to hunt with that bullet over 70 grains of FFFg black powder. A few years in, I added a T/C tang-mounted peep sight to sweeten her up some more.

One morning in 1992, I slew a buck with this Seneca — and that evening, Dad took his own buck with Phoenix. I don’t think it can get any better than that.

Uberti Revolving Cap & Ball Carbine

In 1997, I bought the first of only a few new guns of my life. I’d always wanted a revolving carbine, and by golly I finally committed and ordered this one from Cabela’s. Made by Uberti in Italy, it’s a six-shot black powder revolver built on the Remington design, which incorporates a steel frame with a top strap for extra strength.

Like most, it’s called .44 caliber although the projectiles run roughly .454″ in diameter.

With a diminutive shoulder stock — the catalog description claimed it was walnut, but that was a lie — and an 18-inch octagonal blued steel barrel, this was a fun gun from the get-go. Dad and I experimented with conical bullets a little, but in the end I stuck with round balls. The resulting load was ballistically not far from the old 44-40 black powder cartridge.

At the public shooting range in the Ocala National Forest, I sighted in this gun one windy day, and it tattooed me for my trouble. The wind was coming straight at me, and it kept blowing burning bits of powder back into my face at each shot. I ended up with black spots burned into my left cheek, and 23 years later I can still see faint traces of those black powder “tattoos” — likely the only ones I’ll ever get.

The adjustable sights are pretty good, consisting of a leaf-style rear and steel bead-style front. I zeroed it on a paper plate at 50 yards, and got good with the little popper… and come muzzleloader season, I took a buck with the little rascal.

This gun is special to me because it’s the first one I bought new, it made a fun project to do with my father, and after I got that little buck with it, my daddy said he was proud of me. Maybe you have had better mornings than that, but I haven’t.

Remington-Style Cap and Ball Revolver

This was Dad’s revolver, which he picked up in later years to carry during muzzleloader hunts. He taught me the wisdom of carrying a CBR (cap and ball revolver) along, just in case, and he put lead into at least one deer with this old wheel gun.

Naturally, it’s a single action percussion six-shot revolver, loaded from the front of the cylinder with black powder and round balls.

The Remington style is superior to the Colt because the steel frame and especially the top strap make it much stronger. This one has fixed sights consisting of a groove in the top of the frame and a blued steel post up front, and it shoots pretty well. It was made by Uberti, with a 7-7/8″ octagonal steel barrel.

Colt-Style Cap and Ball Revolver

When I was just a young ‘un, Dad gave me his old Navy Arms CBR, which was a brass-framed copy made in the Colt 1851 style. He then went out and bought a no-name version — and promptly stole back his Navy Arms revolver and gave me that one, which is the one at the bottom of this photo.

It’s a cool old six-gun and I have carried it on many a hunt, but it’s not nearly as good as the one he repossessed. The rifling is pretty rough and I’ve never been able to hit much of anything with it at distance.

Like many of these six-shooters, its very label is a misnomer. Stamped on the barrel is “44 CAL. NAVY MODEL,” which most students of the gun know is just plain wrong; the US Navy used .36-caliber revolvers, while the Army used .44-caliber versions. (Apparently, someone thought sailors were easier to kill than soldiers.)

This one has no manufacturer’s name, but it does have a Naval battle scene on cylinder. The 7.5-inch barrel is octagonal, unlike the old Navy Arms version. I hang on to this one because I used it for a lot of years, and Dad gave it to me.

Of the five pictured here, this is the one I’m most likely to sell or trade off; I now own Dad’s Navy Arms Colt copy again.

Smoke and Haze

Some objects make it easier to see backwards through the haze of time to recall old memories, and special old guns like these do that for me. Do you have any special shootin’ irons of your own? Feel free to sound off in the comments below.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.