Loaded. The previous shooter is still lying down and waiting for a good wind. The three of us use the same target. We wait for each other patiently at this time, sincerely wanting our partner to have a good shot too. Of course, we also make this known: at 1000 yards it is not easy to put a hole in the middle of the target, so we loudly acknowledge our partner’s success. There is no jealousy here, we cannot beat each other, this is not football. The only opponent here we can overcome is the ego.

At this point I already look at the wind. It has been teasing us all week. The prevailing wind direction is almost always a tailwind, which result a high hit, but it constantly deviates to the right and left by 45-45 degrees. Or if it feels like it, it stops for 1-2 minutes. The whole week is a big meteorological experiment.

The rifle is loaded, capped, the sling is looped around my arm. I wait to lie down. The American shooter had a shot. At the bullet stop the markers pull the target down, put a big white disc in the hole, and the big black indicator plate at the bottom of the target shows what value it has become. So, even at the shooting stands, we can see what happened through the scope.

Working as a target puller is not bad either. Long-range shooting is very different from short-range competitions. Here, the opponents constantly communicate with each other, and in fact, they constantly help each other. At the shooting stand, the scorer’s duty is to help the shooter to the target, and he does everything he can to do so. At the bullet stop, shooters mark the hits. Everyone always helps. Everyone is part of making the event happen, helping the organizers. It is especially good to work at as a target puller at the bullet stop: for two hours, the gunpowder locks you with a stranger, with whom you talk. You get to know him, his life, his family. I’m sure many friendships are made under the flying bullets, sometimes laughing together when a shot came short and debris is reaching the target like pellets from a shotgun shell.

It’s my turn now. I’m not lying down yet, but I’m looking at the wind flags. I have to adjust the sight to the wind of the last moments. Left tailwind, the wind flags placed every 200 yards are all evenly deviated to the left by 45 degrees. Ideal. The bullet’s spin drift at this distance requires two minutes of angle adjustment to the left, and I add 4-5 minutes to the right on the rear sight for wind compensation. The bullet will fly for a long time, it’s slow, so I’ll need this.

I lie down. The rifle seems to be an extension of my shoulder. The strap holds it so tightly to my body that I don’t even have to hold it with my right hand. I locate the target. The number above it is at least 1.5×1.5 meters, but I can barely see it through the aperture of the rear sight. A rifle scope would be easier I think, as I’m making sure for the second time that I’m aiming at the right target at all. It’s important, because I almost shot at another by accident once this week. I look out at the wind flag. The same wind direction, same wind force, I feel its gentle touch on the back of my neck.

Now comes the spirit level. There’s a level on top of the covered front sight. The bubble is clearly visible as it creeps into the center with the slight adjustment of the butt in my shoulder. If the barrel tilts somewhere, the hit will go there too. I take in air, start to let it out and aim in the meantime. My right hand doesn’t hold the rifle at all, only the strength of my right index finger is increasing as I increase the force on the trigger. My grip is so light that like my right hand doesn’t really exist at all. One last look at the flags. At 200 yards it’s already hanging a little. The wind calms down, and then the shot could be so low that I could even miss the entire target. I’m running out of time, I have to shoot now. I hear the crack of the rifle, and I see the front sight ring jump slightly on the black aiming mark, which at 1000 yards looks like a tiny dot just in the middle of the ring. A good shot for sure.

A few seconds until the bullet gets there. You can’t see a hit at such a distance from the shooting position. The markers pull down the target to mark the hole. Like the Messiah, I wait for the board to appear again. It rises, rises, the center is already visible, but the white disc is not in the five. Still not bad, just a little low. Right under the most valuable circle, it almost touches it. The wind has calmed down a bit, which is why it hit at six hours. I look at my own notepad with a MOA graduation of the target, that my friend Szilárd Venczel made for me. Well, without it, I would be in a big mess, it’s running through my head… It shows exactly what I have to do.

I quickly write down the wind direction, wind force, and sight setting in my notebook, which I have been keeping track of for the fifth year now, and I am already recharging the rifle like crazy because the wind has calmed down. I will have to increase elevation by one MOA, because in the absence of wind the warm air rising from the ground will push the projectile up somewhat. I only need a quarter turn on the elevation. But there is no crosswind either, so I have to go back to the spin drift corrected zero. I adjust the sight like crazy and hope that the wind does not come back while my companions are firing their shots. I am lucky, it holds.

Now I lie down and check as quickly as I can. I look at the mirage in the scope next to my mat. It is almost boiling above the ground. I just learned this from Lee Shaver just before the relay. Good! I shoot. Nerve-wracking anticipation. The target disappears and comes up almost immediately. In the center, the hit indicator disc glows in blinding white, fluorescent orange marker in the right corner of the target indicates a 5.1, meaning it is a V-bull hit. “That’s right, that’s why we came for!” rings in my ears a quote from Kornél Országh from one of our training sessions at Kisbér-Hánta Shooting Farm range. He was right: without the interpretation of the wind flags, there is zero chance in this fun.

I am amazed again that it is possible to do this without optics, without a bipod, with a 34-gram bullet flying at barely 400 m/s, with a rifle made around 1860. I would be happy, but it is not over yet, we must move on. This shot no longer exists, only the next one. A quick note, and everything starts all over again, until suddenly the rubrics on the scoreboard run out, and the last – the one hundred and seventeenth – bullet of the five-day competition flies towards the target. And it hasn’t even gotten there yet, but it already hurts that it’s over. And I don’t care at all about the position, the medal, I don’t care about the victory. It doesn’t matter. The only good thing is that the bullet flies so that I can play with the wind again.

Muzzle-loading long-range shooting is a miracle. Lee Shaver, a true legend of the sport, said: “This is the hardest shooting sport. I’m sure of it, because if it were harder, I would do it.” I can only add little to that: I don’t know if it’s the hardest or not, but it’s the most beautiful, that’s for sure. For us, the handful of black powder crazy people, it certainly is.

Balázs Németh