Wearing hand-tanned buckskins, throwing tomahawks and firing blackpowder rifles, members of the Eagle Valley Muzzleloaders will hold their annual spring rendezvous this weekend.
The event starts Friday in a canyon camp on the southwest side of C Hill and lasts through Sunday. The public is welcome to camp or visit for the day.
"It hearkens back to a simpler time when people had to rely only on themselves," said organizer and group member John Considine.
The rendezvous will have two camps, a primitive camp where no modern tents, cooking stoves or flashlights are allowed and a nonprimitive area where folks can park RVs and trailers. There is no camping fee, but these are dry camps so campers should bring their own water. To find the event, drive west on Rhodes Street past the Greenhouse Garden Center. Follow the gravel road out into the canyon.
The camp areas are set around a trail-style shooting range with several shooting positions which opens at 9 a.m. Friday. Metal targets which ring when you hit them are scattered on the far hillside. Special competitions will be held throughout the rendezvous such as the "Long Gong" long-distance shoot, a shotgun shoot, a 10-shot fun shoot and a candle shoot.
Other period activities will be reenacted, such as candle making, buckskin tanning and lead ball making. The "muzzleloader" rifles used by the club fire round lead balls which the club makes themselves after melting the lead in campfires. Molten lead is poured into a mold, then knocked out. The cool, hardened ball is rammed down the "muzzle," or barrel of the gun on top of black powder which is ignited by either flint sparking on a steel "frizzen" or by a percussion cap like on a cap gun.
The Eagle Valley Muzzleloaders also participate in the Nevada Day Parade and are involved in the Carson City Rendezvous scheduled for June.
For information call Ben "Kryer" Merrell at 883-7736 or Segundo Jim Mozzini at 246-4514.
On the Net
For information on the annual Eagle Valley Muzzleloaders Rendezvous go to http://webpages.charter.net/twofalls/spring_Flier.htm or go to the Carson City tourism site at: www.visitcarsoncity.com