Bob McBride grew up like many young boys dream of growing up, as far north as you can go in the United States, deep in the Alaskan wilderness. With a father who loved the outdoors, Bob’s life revolved around hunting, winter trap lines, fishing, and exploring the Alaskan bush. As a boy, his family would take yearly winter trips north into their winter hunting camps. Most of his time there would be spent hanging around camp playing mountain man until he began hunting and trapping himself around the age of 9.
“School would let out, I’d drop the books, grab a pocket full of shells and off I went… I was 10 years old and I could be 20 miles down the frozen river, it was like a highway for a little kid.”
As a young adult, Bob would join the Marines and end up in Houston, Texas. He recalls his time in Houston as an oddity in his life, it was such a change from his home now in the mountains of Tennessee and even more of a change from his formative years in Alaska.
Bob’s father has always been into firearms, reloading his own ammunition and always tinkering in the shop, but never considered himself a muzzleloading enthusiast. He owned a Thompson Center Hawken and other muzzleloaders, but they were in large part just another gun in the collection. Bob would feel the same about muzzleloaders for a long time, muzzleloaders were another piece in a self-reliance lifestyle.
In college, Bob would go on to study history, something he’d been interested in for as long as he can remember. This love of history would eventually guide him to his home in Tennessee, in an area known to have been traveled and camped on during the American Civil War by both Union and Confederate troops. Bob mentions in the interview, that the Ohio Volunteer Militia spent a year and a half occupying the county he lives in, attempting to pacify it after a series of Confederate lead attacks on the Union forces. While metal detecting, one of his other hobbies related to history, Bob has located and dug several sights he believes to have been campsites of both Union and Confederate cavalry.
This direct, literally hands-on, connection with history later lead Bob into the full embrace of muzzleloading, and later Black Powder TV. Bob has been a “serious” black powder shooter now for 10-12 years, and by serious he means that he goes through 20-25lbs of powder a year. In the beginning, though, his real interest was using an original 1853 Enfield for hunting season. It was another part of his gun collection until he found a dropped minie ball while metal detecting. In perfect shape, Bob wondered to himself, “Why don’t I shoot these with the gun they were meant for?”
This intimate connection to history sparked a new found love and a new way to experience history for Bob. Just a few weeks after shooting the first original minie ball he purchased an original Mike Brooks flintlock longrifle, his first. And like many of us know, one is hardly ever enough. Now with over 20 muzzleloaders in his collection, Bob has all the muzzleloading bases covered. Within 6 months of starting his collection, Bob’s hunting is done almost exclusively with muzzleloaders.
Now, a decade into loving muzzleloaders, Bob’s focus has shifted to hunting and shooting just as our ancestors would have. He grabs the muzzleloader and their bag of the day and heads out to the woods. This isn’t the kind of muzzleloading everyone does, but for Bob, it’s what he enjoys. Outside of the connection to history, Bob loves the hands-on, tangible nature of muzzleloading. “Muzzleloaders are just more personal.”
“When my nieces and nephews come to the farm, they want to spend 10 minutes shooting the ARs, and they want to spend the rest of the day shooting the blackpowder guns.”
To hear more from Bob and learn more about behind the scenes of Black Powder TV production, listen to the podcast today
Some of Bob’s favorite builders and craftspeople-
Links to Bob’s work
Black Powder TVhttps://www.youtube.com/c/blackpowdertv
Bob’s Youtube Recommendations
Duelist 1954- https://www.youtube.com/user/duelist1954
Blackpowder Maniac Shooter - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdLhvCzRayFr8nyZOS7Y1UQ
Leatherwood Outdoors- https://www.youtube.com/user/Leatherwoodoutdoors
Find out more about the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association at our website - NMLRA.org
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A special thanks this week to the guys at Primitive Pursuit for sponsoring the podcast! Primitive Pursuit was founded in 2017 to be an outlet for learning experiences as a traditional bowhunter.
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