America's Flintlock Rifle

Last week I posted a reel on social media about a test Johnny Walker of Appalachian Awfuls and I conducted to determine the effectiveness of the flintlock rifles some our patriotic militiamen were armed with during the Revolutionary War. The video in this post is the full length version of that reel.

I want to add some details about the test we conducted in the video. The rifle we used was hand built by Walker, and he rifles the barrels one groove at a time just like they did 250 years ago. The test rifle was in 0.45-caliber, was loaded with a patched, 136-grain round ball, and it had a muzzle velocity of about 1750 fps — open sights of course.

The rifle was zeroed at 50 yards and from that distance Walker fired a single shot from the standing offhand position to hit the steel target.

Walker fired a single shot at 100 yards, also from the standing offhand position, while holding an estimated 7 inches above the blue center of the target to get a hit.

At 150 yards Walker had to hold an estimated 25 inches above the blue center of the target, which meant he was holding on air and the rifle’s muzzle was completely obscuring the target. While shooting at this distance from the seated position the wind had picked up a bit so we were seeing about eight inches of drift.

For the 200 yard shot Walker was working with a round ball that was dropping nearly 60 inches below the point of aim, which meant he was holding the sights about five feet above a target he could not see when he pressed the trigger. This single shot that hit the target in the head was fired from the prone position.

Precision was not the issue with these flintlock rifles that had such a reputation for deadliness during the Revolutionary War. The key to their effectiveness was the accuracy and the skill of the men who used them.

I’m glad I was not wearing a red coat back then.

If you find this interesting you will very likely also like an article — link below — I posted two years ago that delves deeper into the ballistics and shooting skill of these rifles and the men who used them to establish America.

I hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day, that you got to go to the range and burn some powder, and that you remember it was an armed citizenry that made this great country possible. I also want to thank all of you for supporting this Substack. Without the paid EmptyCases Substack subscribers it would not be possible.

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