Extremely few of us go through life specifically remembering something seemingly as trivial as a phone call. However, back in late December 1985, I enjoyed a telephone conversation that I will always remember, and one that pretty much changed the rest of my life. That call was from a beginning gun maker by the name of William "Tony" Knight. And he had a brand new muzzleloading rifle system he claimed would change the sport of muzzleloader hunting.
Now, in those days I was the Hunting Editor for MUZZLELOADER Magazine, the Black Powder Editor for SHOOTING INDUSTRY and the Blackpowder Hunting Columnist for Petersen's HUNTING. Plus I wrote 20 to 30 feature articles annually for dozens of other widely read gun and hunting magazines and annuals - specializing in muzzleloading. More specifically, my articles specialized in muzzleloader hunting. So, I regularly heard from a lot of entrepreneurs with new muzzleloading products they honestly felt would revolutionize modern-day muzzleloader hunting. However, from Tony's enthusiasm as he described his new, extremely modern MK-85 rifle, I sensed something more than someone just trying to make a few quick bucks. And when he offered to send one of the rifles for me to shoot and test, I jumped at the opportunity.
The rifle I slid out of the box a few weeks later was as refined as any modern center-fire rifle produced by Remington, Winchester or Ruger. The rifle was well built and expertly finished. More importantly, it was built with features unlike any other muzzle-loaded hunting rifle ever commercially produced - including a unique double safety system and an easily removed breech plug for ease of cleaning. I had fallen in love with the new Knight MK-85 even before firing my first shot with the rifle.
In early February 1986, I carried the rifle on my first modern in-line rifle hunt, for wild hogs. The very early .50 caliber MK-85 (serial number 37) had been built with a turn-in-48 inches rifling twist, and tended to shoot best with the then new bore-sized conical bullets produced by Buffalo Bullet Company. And a big 385-grain hollow-based bullet pushed down the 24-inch barrel by a 90 grain charge of Pyrodex "RS" flattened a near 300-pound wild boar where it stood.
That summer, Tony upped his rifling twist to 1-in-32 inches. He and I had both become strong proponents of the new sabot system being produced by Muzzleload Magnum Products, or Harrison, Arkansas. And the novel fast-twist bore of the MK-85 easily shot the saboted jacketed handgun bullets better than any other rifling twist on the market. That following November, I joined Tony on his family's farm in northern Missouri to hunt whitetails, and on the third morning of the hunt, I took a great heavy-bodied 8-pointer at about 75 yards. The deer went down on the spot, and was my first in-line rifle whitetail and the very first big game animal I had ever taken with a saboted bullet. (Knight changed their standard rifling twist to 1-in-28 in 1987.)
I knew right then and there that this was the way muzzleloading would go, and that I would spend the rest of my life hunting with one of the modern muzzle-loaded hunting rifles.
Since that first year with a Knight in-line rifle, I've now taken more than a hundred whitetails with the various Knight models I've carried afield, plus enough other big game to fill an average sized semi-truck trailer, maybe two. Following is a look at a few of my more memorable hunts.
I shot my first "long range" muzzleloader buck during an extremely cold November firearms season hunt in Minnesota back in 1992. I was hunting with a large group of other well known outdoor writers and folks from the hunting industry. Tony Knight and I had traveled together from his home in Missouri to hunt with our MK-85 muzzleloaders in the southern "shotgun zone" near Winona, MN. I had spent several days, staying in the stand all day, watching over a narrow bottleneck along a lengthy ridgetop cornfield. If pushed from the heavy cover along either side of the ridge, I felt confident that a good buck would cross at the point where the field was narrowest. And my suspicion played out.
On the third morning of the hunt, nine does showed up at the edge of the snow-covered field about a hundred yards to the left of where I had positioned my treestand. The deer quickly crossed the bottleneck, and stopped just short of going into the timber on the opposite side. Then, a very nice 8-pointer crossed in exactly the same spot. And when that buck stopped in front of the does, I already had the deer centered in my crosshairs. As I waited for a doe directly behind the buck to move out of the bullet's path, I noticed that all of the deer were looking back in the direction from which they had come.
I leaned forward to look along the edge of the field, and there stood a beautiful 160-class ten pointer. In the -20 degree morning air, the steam from the buck's breath hung in the still morning air. Before I could swing the rifle to find the buck in the scope, the deer bounded through the 10-inches of fresh fallen snow to join the others, which had stepped into the edge of the hardwoods. Just as the buck reached where the other deer had been standing only minutes before, it stopped. I guessed the distance to be 150 yards, and settled the crosshairs right at the top of the deer's back. The trigger came back…the rifle boomed and jumped upwards…then the saboted 260 grain jacketed .451" diameter hollow-point drove home with a resounding "thhhhwuuuuummmmppp".
The deer bucked up and dove headfirst into the woods. But, as the scope returned to where the whitetail had been standing at the shot, a bright reddish-pink line in the snow told me that my shot had connected. And when I climbed down out of that stand a half-hour later and walked over to where the deer had disappeared, I only had to walk another ten yards to find him. My shot had been right on.
On another very memorable hunt in the Northwest Territories the following year, my hunting partner and I had gotten onto a very good central barren ground caribou bull that had seemed to simply disappear. We separated to better cover some rolling high tundra. And when I popped up out of a shallow valley, I looked over just in time to see my partner putting the sneak on something. When he topped a barren pile of rocks, he quickly brought his rifle up, aimed and fired.
A few seconds later, the bull we had glassed a half-hour earlier came running up out of a depression - looking no worse for wear. About 300 yards from my hunting partner, the wide-racked bull stopped to look back while my friend frantically reloaded. I guessed the bull to be just a little more than 200 yards away from where I watched, so I quickly pulled off my day pack and threw it on the ground. Then, using the pack for a rest, I sighted in on the caribou. I couldn't see any sign of a hit, so I let my crosshairs settled down about 4 or 5 inches above the caribou's back and lightly applied pressure on the MK-85's trigger. The rifle bucked, and the bull went down as the saboted 300 grain jacketed flat-point .451" bullet drove home.
In 1995, I hunted with an entirely new breed of Knight rifle - the bolt-action Magnum Elite. While working on a new muzzleloader hunting video with Stoney Wolf Productions, I used that .50 caliber rifle to take a dandy Utah bull elk. That year I was also hunting with the new Barnes-made all-copper Knight "Red Hot" bullets for the first time. And on the fourth day of the hunt, my guide had called in a huge older 6x5 bull that we felt would top 900 pounds on the hoof. With the camera rolling right over my shoulder, the bull came to within 60 yards, looking for a fight. When the elk turned broadside, I put the crosshairs of the 1x scope (required by Utah's ridiculous muzzleloading regulations) right behind the shoulder and pulled the trigger. The shot was true and that huge elk ran just 50 yards, then reared up on its hind legs just like the Lone Ranger on Silver, and flipped over on its back - never to move again. We recovered the perfectly expanded bullet just under the hide behind the opposite shoulder.
My most recent Knight Rifles hunting memory was made during this past season. I was hunting a late muzzleloader hunt, following several days of snow. After being forced to bed for the most of three days, the deer came out in force once the snow stopped. In the dim light of early morning I had seen no less than a hundred whitetails working a river bottom hayfield, including a couple of decent bucks that I just couldn't get within range of before they had gotten into heavy cover. Then, I spotted a wide ten-pointer basically headed in my general direction. Keeping out of sight, I moved to where I felt I stood a better chance of getting a shot, and ten minutes later that deer was walking past an old dead snag I had determined was just over 190 yards away with my laser rangefinder.
I was shooting a new rifle from Knight - the "Long Range Hunter" version of the DISC Extreme. The rifle was topped with a brand new HPML muzzleloader scope from Leatherwood Optics, and the rifle was loaded with an equally new copper-plated polymer-tipped spire-point bullet from Harvester Muzzleloading. The deadly accurate Green Mountain barrel of the rifle repeatedly proved capable of printing the bullet inside of 1 1/2 inches at 100 yards, and several 200-yard groups shot were well under 3 inches across. Prior to this hunt with an all-new rifle-scope-bullet combination, I had taken 7 does with the rig while on management hunts. With the 110-grain charge of Triple Seven used, the 260-grain bullet was good for 2,030 f.p.s. at the muzzle, generating 2,380 f.p.e.
As the deer paused practically in front of the old tree, I positioned the second of the four reticles of the Leatherwood scope center of the chest cavity, right behind the shoulder. When the rifle boomed, I heard the bullet hit the target. And the upper 150-class buck ran just 30 yards before piling up.
At the 2007 SHOT Show, Knight Rifles introduced two entirely new rifles. One, the KRB7, is a modified rolling-block style action muzzleloader that will be offered in the popular .50 caliber. The other is a radical change for a company that has only built muzzle-loaded rifles - up until now. Knight Rifles' new KP1 is an exceptionally slick break-open rifle design, offered in a variety of modern center-fire rifle calibers from .223 Remington to .300 Winchester Magnum, plus .17 HMR and also as a .50 caliber muzzleloader. The really good news is the different barrels are interchangeable. Watch for more on these two new designs on the Knight Rifles website at www.knightrifles.com in the very near future.
Well, it looks as if I'll be back out adding some new Knight Rifles hunting memories again this next fall.
By Toby Bridges