Muzzle Loading at the Highland Field Sports Fair

The Highland Field Sports Fair held at Moy Hall Estate near Inverness every year is a mini game fair and includes many opportunities for shooting. Amongst these is a Try a Gun stand run by the Inverness District Wildfowling Association. The stand includes an opportunity for the public to try muzzle loading shooting with a stall operated by me and another MLAGB Approved Instructor on behalf of the MLAGB.

The stand had over two hundred participants through its hands over the two days of the Fair shooting a variety of muzzle loading guns.

The most popular firearm on the stand is by far the Brown Bess musket. The Brown Bess in its various forms was used by the British Army for 150 years.  Like all weapons, the musket's capabilities and limitations dictated the tactics with which it was employed.  It is smooth bored and fires a round lead ball weighing about an ounce.  It lacks the accuracy of a rifle and, while it is lethal to several hundred yards, a soldier would be very lucky if he hit the man he was aiming at beyond 80yds.  It was therefore employed in the linear tactics of the day.  Closely packed lines of soldiers would fire volleys of shots at the enemy as he closed within effective range.

The Brown Bess is used by MLAGB members in competition with French Charleville muskets and American Springfields. Matches are shot at 50m and 75m, the maximum accurate range of these smoothbore weapons.

As well as the Brown Bess, participants were able to shoot with a variety of muzzle loading sporting shotguns such as the one in the picture below.

See more pictures of Muzzle Loading at  the 2002 Highland Field Sports Fair

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Updated 14 September 2010.