History of the Coon ‘n Crockett Muzzleloaders
The Coon ‘n Crockett Muzzleloaders is a black-powder shooting club founded in 1969 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and formally chartered on July 5, 1973. It grew out of a conversation between two shooters on the drive home from a state muzzleloading match, built up through a newspaper notice and a first gathering at the Lincoln Park Clubhouse, and held its first shoot that same August. From those beginnings it became one of the larger black-powder shoots in the northern plains, with an annual match, regular public appearances at regional festivals, and a membership reaching well beyond North Dakota.
The Coon ‘n Crockett Muzzleloaders began with a borrowed rifle and a drive home. Two North Dakota shooters came back from a state muzzleloading match in 1969 having decided the Grand Forks area needed a black-powder club of its own, and they started one. What began as a gathering in a basement became, within four years, a chartered club with an annual shoot that still anchors its calendar.
A rifle borrowed for a state shoot
The club traces to a single weekend in 1969. Dick Ganyo had no muzzleloader of his own to shoot the North Dakota state association match at Cooperstown, so he borrowed one from a fellow shooter, Al Thompson, and drove down with Don Purpur. Somewhere on the road back to Grand Forks the two of them settled it: the area needed a black-powder club, and they would be the ones to start it. The first meeting was nothing more than five men in Don Purpur’s basement, Purpur, Ganyo, John Breidenbach, Al Thompson, and Forey Flaagen, deciding how to find anyone else who felt the same way.
Their answer was a small notice in the Grand Forks Herald’s City Briefs column, inviting anyone interested in muzzleloading to turn up. That open call became the first proper Coon ‘n Crockett meeting, held in the first part of June 1969 at the Lincoln Park Clubhouse in Grand Forks. Enough people came to carry the idea, and the club went from a paragraph in the paper to a shoot of its own in the space of one summer.
The first shoot: one day in August 1969
The first Coon ‘n Crockett shoot followed that same August, on the first weekend of the month. It was a one-day affair in 1969, a handful of men shooting muzzleloaders together only weeks after the club had a name at all. The format held until 1973, when the shoot stretched to two days, and it kept building from there. What started as a single August Saturday became the fixed point of the club’s calendar and the event its name is still tied to across the region.
“Jeremiah Johnson” and the Hawken revival
The club’s founding coincided with a wider revival of interest in the muzzleloading era, and one film did a great deal to fuel it. Jeremiah Johnson, released in 1972, drew shooters and gun makers alike toward recreating the look and gear of the mountain-man period. The firm Thompson/Center began production of its Hawken rifles at around the same time, putting an affordable, ready-made plains rifle within reach of a new generation of shooters.
That wave reached the club directly. The first two Thompson/Center Hawkens in the Grand Forks area went to two of Coon ‘n Crockett’s own, John “Bear” Breidenbach and Garald Gillies, both charter members, bought through Sportsman’s Headquarters, the local shop then run by life member Jon Dickson. The two of them did not stop at the cap-lock Hawken: they started with percussion rifles, moved on to flintlocks, and eventually took up even a matchlock, working backward through the ignition systems to get closer to the older style. That drift from the easy end toward the demanding one runs through the whole club’s approach to the hobby.
The Hawken was the short, heavy plains rifle that armed the mountain men of the 1820s and 1830s, and its reappearance as an affordable modern reproduction in the early 1970s gave the muzzleloading revival a rifle to rally around. For a club whose members were chasing exactly that older style, an affordable Hawken was the rifle to have.
July 5, 1973: fourteen names on the charter
By the time that revival was in full swing, the club put itself on a formal footing. The Coon ‘n Crockett Muzzleloaders was officially chartered on July 5, 1973, and the names recorded on the original charter set out its first slate of officers: Donald Purpur as president, Clarence Mutscher and Allyn Thompson as vice-presidents, Richard Ganyo as secretary-treasurer, and John Breidenbach as sergeant-at-arms. Alongside them the charter listed the founding membership, fourteen names in all, the men who had carried the club from a basement conversation to a formal organization.
One of those early contributions outlasted everything else from the first years. Verna Lambert, wife of charter member James Lambert, designed and drew the Coon ‘n Crockett logo and painted the club’s original canvas banner by hand. Both the mark and the banner were made the way the members made their own gear, by hand and for keeps, and the emblem she drew still carries the club’s name.
From a local match to a hundred shooters
From 1973 onward the annual shoot grew into one of the major black-powder events of the region, drawing a hundred or more registered shooters in a typical year. Hundreds more came only to watch, and a fair number of those spectators ended up signing on to shoot themselves. The club kept a family orientation as it grew, and over time its membership spread across several states and into Canada.
Beyond organizing its own shoot, the club has long taken its gear on the road to regional events, appearing at festivals such as the Rendezvous Region Festival in Cavalier, North Dakota, and Catfish Days and Heritage Days in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, where it has set up a fully equipped old-time blacksmith forge as part of its display. These appearances put working black-powder craft in front of the public and tied the club to the wider living-history scene of the northern plains.
That presence occasionally reached a national audience. In 1993, the NBC Today show ran an on-air announcement promoting the club’s annual shoot, and the following year several members were filmed for a nationally aired segment. For a regional shooting club, the brush with national television was a measure of how far the muzzleloading revival of the early 1970s had carried.
What the founders left
What a few men started so they could shoot muzzleloaders together has grown into an institution of more than fifty years. Its members worked backward through the ignition systems toward the harder ones, from the forgiving percussion cap to the flintlock and even the matchlock, and that taste for the demanding end of the craft still runs through the club.
Like all good institutions, it keeps a few things unchanged. The August shoot first held in the summer of 1969 is still the club’s annual match, and Verna Lambert’s emblem still carries the club’s name. More than half a century on, the club has outlived its founders and now counts members across the border into Canada.
Common questions
Is the club connected to any larger muzzleloading organization?
It grew out of the North Dakota state muzzleloading association’s shoot at Cooperstown, the 1969 event two of its founders attended before starting a club of their own, so it sits within the same state and regional muzzleloading community rather than standing alone. That network is also how it came to appear at events beyond its own grounds, from the Rendezvous Region Festival in Cavalier to the Catfish Days and Heritage Days gatherings across the river in East Grand Forks.
Why do members shoot flintlocks rather than just percussion rifles?
Both fire by black powder, but they sit at different ends of the tradition. The percussion cap is the more forgiving system and the usual starting point; the flintlock is older and more demanding, since the shooter manages the spark and the priming by hand. The recorded pattern among the club’s shooters runs the harder direction, percussion first, then flintlock, and in at least one case a matchlock, precisely because the difficulty is the point on a heritage shoot.
Did “Jeremiah Johnson” actually start the club?
No, the timing is the other way around. The club was already meeting and shooting in 1969, three years before the film reached theaters in 1972. What the film and the new, affordable Thompson/Center Hawken did was widen the audience the club was already part of, turning a small regional pursuit into a national revival. The first two T/C Hawkens in the area, bought through the local Sportsman’s Headquarters, went to club members, which is a fair measure of how closely the club tracked that wave.
Who can take part in the annual shoot?
The shoot has kept a family orientation as it grew, drawing a hundred or more registered shooters in a typical year along with onlookers who came to watch and often ended up taking part. Alongside the shooting, the club has carried a working old-time blacksmith forge to its public appearances, so the event reads as much as a living-history encampment as a marksmanship match. That mix is what carried it from a one-day 1969 gathering to a two-day event by 1973 and on to a national television mention in the 1990s.