National Muzzle Loading Championships
Twice each year the fans of muzzle loading meet in the Mecca of Black Powder – Friendship, Indiana. The Walter Cline Range is the headquarters of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association and it’s the site of the twice yearly National Championship Matches.
It’s a week of friendly, but intense, competition for titles in every form of muzzle loading. There are competitions for rifles, pistols and bench-rest guns shooting at targets from 25 yards out as far as 1,000 yards. Muzzle loading shotgun competitors shoot sporting clays, skeet and trap and the quail walk that may have been the first version of sporting clays when it was first created at Friendship.
And if you think the muzzle loading firearms all look like something Daniel Boone might have carried, think again. Some competitors love the challenge of shooting clay targets with a 150 year-old flintlock, but you’ll also see some of the most high-tech, exotic-looking pistols and rifles competing in the unlimited class on on the firing line in Friendship.
An especially interesting side match is a must see for hunter… the manufacturers challenge puts the best shooters in the business into direct competition as they represent the factories that produced their firearms – Dixie, Traditions, Knight, and more are on the line with factory teams to compete for bragging rights and the manufacturer’s trophy.
The top championship match is the National Offhand Shooting competition that carries the name of a former president of the NMLRA, Max Vickery. Max was also a national off-hand champion and in this final year of his life he presented the trophy to Tim Marsh from Stanton, Kentucky as the current champion. Since we covered the match, Max Vickery has passed away after a long battle with cancer.
If you love the flash, the smoke and the smell of black powder, The National Muzzle Loading Championships of the NMLRA has it all and the challenge of competing for National Titles in the sport.
