Jake Connelly of Cave Springs took in the breadth of the Arkansas deer hunting experience this season while taking two fabulous bucks.
Connelly, a certified public accountant for Ozarks Electric Cooperative, killed an exceptional piney woods buck near Magnolia during the modern gun deer season in November. He filled his second buck tag on Dec. 12 with a muzzleloader in the Ozark Mountains in Franklin County near Chester.
Instead of using a modern inline muzzleloader with a spitzer bullet, modern propellant and primer, he did it the old-fashioned way, with a traditional .54-caliber Hawken style rifle firing honest-to-goodness black powder and patched round ball. It's a Pedersoli reproduction, a high-quality firearm that he bought on closeout at Cabela's-Bass Pro Shops in Rogers. It's the Rocky Mountain model with a highly-figured maple stock.
"I love the old-school look and style, and I love the appeal of primitive hunting with a powder flask, patch and roundball," Connelly said.
The projectile is a round lead sphere that nestles inside a cloth patch that forms a barrier between the powder and ball. The patch also forms a seal to prevent gas from escaping around the ball edges. The rifling in the bore makes one full rotation in 65 inches, which is a really slow twist. As the ball travels down the rifle's bore, the rifling engraves the ball and makes it spin, which stabilizes it in flight.
The charge comes from 81 grains of Goex FFg black powder and a percussion cap. Few people use traditional black powder anymore. The only place Connelly found it was at David Rose Gun Shop in Farmington.
"As a general rule of thumb, you want 150% more powder than the caliber of the rifle," Connelly said. "I'm an accountant, so I eat that kind of stuff up. That comes out to 81 grains of powder. I have a 90-grain powder measure. I don't fill it perfectly full. It's closer to 85 grains."
In talking with experts that shoot them in competition, Connelly said that he learned the maximum effective range of a patched round ball is about 100 yards. He said he limited himself to about 60 yards.
"One hundred yards is max for people that do it all the time," Connelly said. "I practiced in the 50- to 60-yard range. Those mountains are very steep and the terrain features don't let you see very far, so it's the perfect rifle for hunting in the mountains. Even with a modern rifle, the farthest shot I would ever have is about 120 yards."
Connelly said he learned the hard way that there are some tricks to dependably detonating a sidelock firearm. Connelly did not shoot at a deer during opening weekend of the muzzleloader deer season in October. He tried to shoot the rifle after a hunt, but it did not fire. To unload the rifle he had to attach a bullet pulling jag to his ramrod, drill it into the ball and pull the ball out of the bore.
"It's a huge ordeal," Connelly said. "I went to Cabela's and talked to the guy that helped me purchase it. He said I have to tap on the side of the gun to get powder to settle in front of the nipple to get a better flash."
On Dec. 12, Connelly took a friend on his first deer hunt. A doe stepped into range. The gun failed to fire again. The does ran away, of course. Connelly said he poured a few grains of black powder into the nipple. The does returned, and at 3:30 p.m., Connelly dropped one. He dragged the doe out of the hunting area and returned to his blind.
When he reloaded his rifle, Connelly made sure he banged the powder into proper alignment with the nipple, and he also put a little powder in the nipple. At 5 p.m., two small bucks and a mature buck arrived. The mature buck had appeared on Connelly's remote camera several times, but it vanished for several weeks, leading Connelly to believe somebody had killed it. It returned in early December, appearing on camera a little earlier each day. On Dec. 9, it was photographed at 6 p.m.
"They went across the trail where I dragged the doe," Connelly said. "They didn't spook, but they didn't like it. They didn't run, but they left. They were uncomfortable."
They returned shortly after but left again. The closest they got was 100 yards. At 5:10 p.m., they returned a third time and seemed to relax. The big buck began feeding, approaching ever closer. At 60 yards, it turned broadside, and the rifle fired flawlessly.
"I was thinking, 'If I'm going to take a shot at this deer, I need do it right now,' " Connelly said. "It was a great shot. The buck ran about 75 yards, but it ran over a ridge where I couldn't see him. I backed out and gave him time. I called a guy that hunts a lot and tracks a lot of deer. We found it an hour and a half later."
The ball lodged in the buck's hide and did not exit, so there was no blood trail.
The buck's rack measured 191/2 inches inside the main beams, and its total spread was 22 inches. Connelly said he scored it roughly at 133 Boone and Crockett.
"That's a really good deal anywhere, especially good for the mountains, and the Hawken thing adds to it," he said.
Connelly said he donated the meat from the muzzleloader buck and doe to Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry, which provides meals for nutrition-challenged Arkansans.
Connelly's gun buck was an entirely opposite experience. He went home for Thanksgiving, and Connelly hunted with his father for three days on a natural gas pipeline right of way between pine thickets in Columbia County. The land has been in Connelly's family for 150 years. It's a typical southwest Arkansas environment where a box stand sits along the pipeline every 400 yards.
"You can see forever," Connelly said. "A good buck ran across the pipeline at a full sprint about 150 yards away."
Connelly returned Tuesday morning and saw 10 deer, mostly spike bucks. The big buck appeared at 250 yards. At 210 yards, the buck turned broadside. A quartering away shot from a Weatherby Vanguard chambered in 300 Winchester Magnum dropped the buck almost in its tracks. The bullet was a 180-grain Nosler Ballistic Tip.
"I got that rifle when I was 16," said Connelly, now 29. "The scope is a Leupold 4.5-14x50. That gun is set up to shoot long range."
Connelly described the buck as a really good south Arkansas 8-point. The inside spread was 161/2 inches, and about 18 inches outside. It was only the third time that Connelly killed two bucks in a season. He also did it in 2006 and 2017.
"It was two totally opposite stories," Connelly said. "I got one long-range buck on a south Arkansas pipeline and one really close in the mountains."