The tale starts way back. I had shot a Brown Bess once; it was decades ago. At some point in the deep past I read an account of a fellow in the modern-day using one as a general-purpose hunting weapon. It was one of those back-burner deals. I figured that it might be a decent project for after my retirement. I managed to read up on the idea at times and keep track of who was making them.

Several things happened. Cancer right after your 63rd birthday will make a guy think. I was overdue for a firearm. Normally I go looking about twice a year. This past year, I was overdue by a considerable amount. I was selling the house as well right in the middle of all this. I really did not see anything I liked at the right price. After the surgery, I felt like I really needed to treat myself to something substantial, but so much of what caught my eye was just more of the same. In the end, I gave up and concentrated on what I had going into deer season. The itch to buy did not go away. This is about how I came to scratch that itch.

I was looking at the Cabela’s site after Christmas. It is always a good idea to go through the various sites and see what gets marked down and I saw the Davide Pedersoli Brown Bess on sale for under $1K. At the same time, everyone else in this world seems to have jacked up their Brown Bess offerings $100-200. That really got the wheels churning. Eventually, I had to admit that the long-off future was really now.

Of all the Brown Bess models in production, the Pedersoli is regarded as one of the best. There are cheaper. There are more period-accurate. There are even better quality versions out there from custom smiths. Cheaper? A $250 Bess can be had, but they need a lot of rework to get them up to snuff. Usually, that starts with replacing the lock. For about $800, you can find one that does a passable job of functioning, but the lock has to be taken to a gunsmith and the touch hole drilled out. This is so they aren’t shipping a functional firearm across international boundaries, and it saves paperwork. For a period-accurate piece, it usually means buying one of the kits and sending it off to a custom gunsmith that specializes in such work. This is for reenactors, or at least someone that feels dumping several thou into a piece makes them feel more authentic. I wanted a ‘Bess that gets the job done without any hoo-haw.

I have never been big on this whole reenacting thing. I can make myself plenty miserable camping out with modern-day kit. The deer do not care how much fringe I am wearing, and once you get away from being actual living history, there is no one there to say what’s Kosher. I once watched Youtube of a guy go turkey hunting with a flintlock fowler. He had decoys, a pop-up blind and he wore camo, but he had a tricorn hat on, and that made him feel authentic. I’m not making fun of him– whatever works. I’m just saying. I’m sure folks will poke fun at me for whatever I do with my Brown Bess.

To look and hold a Brown Bess is to put a big question mark over your head. WT . . .? It weighs over 9 pounds. It has a barrel just a hair under 42 inches. The lock is massive. However, it was the mainstay of the British Army for over 100 years, and in that time Britain fought the Seven Year’s War and the American Revolution and Napoleon. This big club of a rifle was schlepped to the ends of the Earth, with only minor modifications over its lifespan.

“Sure, Shaman. However, the Kentucky Rifle and our Minutemen. . .” Yeah, but understand that ramming a patched round ball down a rifled barrel only gets you more range at the expense of reloading time. The Brits could put an undersized .69 caliber ball downrange at the rate of 3 per minute, and keep doing this without swabbing until their cartridge box was empty. Furthermore, those wonderful rifles coming out of Pennsylvania were lousy at spraying birdshot due to the rifled barrels.

Yes, but Shaman! Nobody really wanted to lug a big ol’ 9-pound firearm over the mountains! Who’s lugging? I drive a Silverado. If I get tired, I’ll radio back and have KYHillChick or one of the boys pick me up. Meanwhile, I’ve got an 11 Gauge firearm that will blow a turkey’s head off at 30 yards, or down a deer at 50 yards with a 75 caliber ball. You guys are talking rifle. I’m talking a shotgun that borders on shoulder-fired artillery. Besides, if this flintlock thing pans out, I still have a hankering for a Kentucky Rifle.

The general plan that I formulated over the past few decades was to master a Brown Bess so that I could take a deer, a squirrel, and a turkey all in the same year. By the time I do that, I will either know how I want to proceed further with flintlocks, or I will be too old to pursue this path.

So I committed to buying the ‘Bess. As I said, Cabela’s had the Pedersoli Bess on sale. They do that every few years. The item cannot be ordered directly from the website, so I called up to the Westchester store, and they said I needed to call Columbus. So began a tribulation that lasted two weeks, required nine phone calls to talk to a dozen people at two stores and suffered being on hold for over an hour. After my order was lost, Shannon, the manager at Columbus knocked an extra bit off. This was new/old stock, so I was getting some off for that as well. I want to thank Ashley, Bill and Shannon (different one)at the Westchester store for getting me through the final transaction. That took a good hour, start to finish. I took the time to sign up for a Cabela’s Card. That got me another $20, and I ended up with a pile of free swag to boot. This was absolutely the most convoluted firearm purchase of my career.

Track of the Wolf had most of what I needed to get going. This included a .735 round ball mold that is otherwise extremely hard to find. I am investigating all sorts of lines of inquiry for this project. One thing I stumbled upon was a thread on CastBoolits Forum that details DIY black powder. This thread has been running continuously since 2011, and it loaded with information from guys who started out as newbies to the topic and ended up experts. They are making black powder that is as good as Goex or Swiss with great consistency. I post more on that later.

My plan is to have my first cast ball downrange by Turkey Season and to go from there. I am in no big hurry on any of this. I still feel like this is a project best left for my retirement. I am just getting an early start.

I want to send a special shout out to guys at the Muzzleloader Forum . I just found them, and the guys have been extremely helpful. I read a bunch of their threads as a lurker in the past, and joined up when it looked like this Bess thing was going to happen.

I

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