I shoot the White Buffalo

On the 500 meter high power silhouette range, the NRA Whittington Center has a white buffalo silhouette target at 1123 yards.

(Click on any pic to see the full-size image).

This is the view of the range from the firing line

Sitting up on the hill, well beyond the 500 meter rams, the buffalo is about 6 feet tall and some 10 feet wide.

The last row of numbers are on the 500 yard line. If you look just over the #3 on the back line, you can see a small blueish-white splotch on the hill:

That's the target.

This is my original Sharps Borchardt Long Range Creedmoor rifle, built before the Sharps Rifle Company went out of business in 1879.

These rifles were purpose was built to shoot targets at this distance.

The rifle uses the .45-90 Sharps Straight cartridge, firing a 535 grain bullet.

My shooting partner, Eric, has a 1874 Sharps buffalo rifle (Shiloh Sharps, Co.).

In 2019, for our annual trip the ISSA Int'l Schützen Matches, we packed the rifles along and spent the Friday morning before the matches started, shooting at the buffalo.

Neither Eric nor myself have any experience shooting these rifles beyond 200 yards so our long-time friend, and expert black powder silhouette shooter, Russ Hooks, came along. With Russ' guidance, we both managed to get the rifles on target and hit the buffalo several times before we decided that was enough abuse for one day.

Watch me take a shot