My first Sharps

[marlinman93]

The Freund Sharps loads I made up were 120 grs. of Swiss 1 1/2 with a 500 gr. bullet using two 1/8" wads over powder as filler. In the 15 lb. Freund Sharps it's very comfortable, and I'm pretty recoil sensitive, so if it wasn't I'd be the first to not shoot it.
Sure not like a .32-40, but less recoil than my 11 lb. .45-70 Hepburn for sure.

[Rockindaddy]

Marlinman93: you have inspired me with this beautiful Sharps! My first Sharps is not quite as nice but as your big 50-140 but mine has needed a better buttstock. Took a few photo's of my sawmill blank to finished buttstock with a cheek piece. Hope to bang a bison this October in South Dakota with my 45-90wcf.

[marlinman93]

Marlinman93: you have inspired me with this beautiful Sharps! My first Sharps is not quite as nice but as your big 50-140 but mine has needed a better buttstock. Took a few photo's of my sawmill blank to finished buttstock with a cheek piece. Hope to bang a bison this October in South Dakota with my 45-90wcf.

I've always thought that taking a bison with any old single shot rifle would be the icing on the cake! I've taken deer with mine, and tried to get an elk, but never got a shot at one.

[Montanaguy]

I used my HighWall in .40-65 with BP to get this cow bison in Nebraska. We hunted on foot and tried to do it the old-fashioned way. My partner shot his cow with a .54 flinter, requiring a single shot at about 100 yards. I shot mine twice as it was going over a hill at about 150 yards. Turned out one shot would have done it. Lots of fat meat!

[Rockindaddy]

Montana: Nice photos of you and Billy Bison with you holding your 1885 Winchester. We are taking our Sharps rifles to South Dakota this October to hunt em up! I see all the quarters hanging! Have you tried barbecuing the ribs?? Figured they would be like beef ribs.

[marlinman93]

Montana,
I'm a big fan of the .40-65 Win. with a 410 grain Snover bullet at around 1350 fps. It's very accurate for long range work, and pretty deadly on game at typical hunting distances.

[Montanaguy]

Montana: Nice photos of you and Billy Bison with you holding your 1885 Winchester. We are taking our Sharps rifles to South Dakota this October to hunt em up! I see all the quarters hanging! Have you tried barbecuing the ribs?? Figured they would be like beef ribs.

We were a bit disappointed with the meat. It was cut and wrapped for the trip back to Montana in about 30 hours. Ideally it would have hung for a couple of weeks to age. These cows were 5-7 years old, so maybe that's why the meat tasted pretty wild. None of those ribs came home with us...didn't even think about where they might have ended up. The butcher may have had dogs?

[marlinman93]

We were a bit disappointed with the meat. It was cut and wrapped for the trip back to Montana in about 30 hours. Ideally it would have hung for a couple of weeks to age. These cows were 5-7 years old, so maybe that's why the meat tasted pretty wild. None of those ribs came home with us...didn't even think about where they might have ended up. The butcher may have had dogs?

That's always an issue when traveling far for a hunt. It's never going to be ideal unless your drive home is just one day.
Where we elk hunt is an 8 hour drive, and our biggest concern is the trip home, especially if we got an elk the last day! If we got one before that there's a local town an hour away with a store that charges a small fee to hang your elk for us until we head home.
We usually buy a huge amount of ice, and lay down a bed of ice bags on the floor of the utility trailer. Then wrap the elk in a tarp, and more bags of ice on top. We stop occasionally for gas or food, and buy more ice for the top as we need it. So far never lost any meat, and the butcher shop here at home hangs it again until it's aged long enough.

[Montanaguy]

Montana,
I'm a big fan of the .40-65 Win. with a 410 grain Snover bullet at around 1350 fps. It's very accurate for long range work, and pretty deadly on game at typical hunting distances.

It was hunting season but I was home in bed with a nasty sore throat. I happened to look out the window to the snow-covered hills at the back of our place in the boondocks and spied about 20 elk feeding. I could see horns, big ones. So I hurriedly dressed, went downstairs to get my C. Sharps 40-65 and a handful of rounds. I trudged through the snow until I came up the hill to the field the elk were in and I could just peek over at them. They had not a clue I was there. I crawled up far enough to get a prone shot at 150 yards with my deadly accurate rifle. I picked out a huge bull broadside and fired. They all looked up, looked around, and slowly walked away over the hillside they were on. I wondered why the snow had kicked up way over the bull I had shot at when I noticed that the tang sight was still set for the 400 yards I had been shooting at targets before I put it away in the safe. I figured that small error saved my life. If I had killed the bull I would have had to slog back to the house, get a knife and the tractor, go dress out the bull, tractor back to the garage and hang him up. And then go back to bed. I might not have awakened in the morning. My wife was in town, otherwise none of the above would have happened. But I've often thought how neat it would have been to have taken a trophy elk with that rifle and a black powder load and my own cast bullet. Here's the rifle and that dang tang sight:

[mongo40]

I'm pretty fond of Sharps rifles myself!