It was a warm spring day in Willard, Utah and mother had some time off of her usual work place.  She decided it was a good time to clean out the old cellar, under the back of the house.  This was a task that was usually accomplished maybe every other year or maybe every three years.  No matter, the cellar was filled with the usual;  Spiders, dead mice, live mice, bugs, broken fruit jars, rotten potatoes and onions and lots and lots of dust.

Mother wanted the place to look real good when she was done, because that years fruit was going to be put up and placed on those shelves and she wanted it to at least be as presentable as she could.  The cellar is a cold, damp place.  It had been hand dug many years before and the walls were lined with rocks.  The rocks were held in place with mortar of some sort that was crumbly.  So the whole rock work had been painted many times with white paint.  I’m certain lead based paint was used more than not.  Cus that was all they had back then.

The shelves were just pine and rather rickety.  Nailed at the top to the joists that held the floor up overhead and nailed at the bottom with just a frame work of 2X4’s.  The shelves themselves were of one inch thick pine about 12 inches wide.

So, mother would have us kids help her out with this task.  All the “everything” that was in the cellar had to come out and be put on the ground outside.  Once everything was out she went to sweeping and wiping down the shelves and cupboard and everything else down there.  When that had dried good enough, she would gather things from outside, one at a time, wipe it down and put it where she thought it best for safe keeping.

Well, this particular cleaning involved me.  Now, I have never considered myself a “bad guy”.  Maybe a bit curious, and to some perhaps a little more curious than others.  But, here she handed me a tray that held a set of nice pure silver things.  I carried it carefully up the cellar stairs and placed it on the ground outside.  And then I went back down for some more things to carry up.  After the last load was delivered to the ground outside, I got to looking at the silver set.  Boy it was a pretty set.  A creamer, a sugar bowl with a lid on it, a nice spoon and of course the tray.  All of every piece was pure silver.  Not really shiney, because of where it was stored, but silver none the less.

Mom had instructed me at some point to make sure some of the burnable stuff, like cardboard and wood scraps got put into the burning barrel out by the coal house.  Of course I always followed instructions to the “T”.  That fire was burning  good in that old 55 gallon barrel.

Looking at the silver set again, I got to thinking just how fragile it looked.  The creamer wasn’t very thick walled.  I did not think about the fact that all it had to do was hold cream in it, while someone served up a special guest or two some tea or coffee.  Well, I was about eight years old afterall, and I always felt I was pretty strong for my age and size, so I picked it up and gave it a squeeze across the top.  SMUSH!  It caved in so very easily I could not believe it.  So, next I stepped on it and it smashed even more.  Then with a stomp or two it was pretty dang flat and didn’t look like a creamer at all.

My mind just raced to think what next I could do with it and then it hit me!  I’ll bet it will melt right down and be pure silver!  I went to the burning barrel and started looking around for something to put it in so I could put it in the fire.  I found a 3 pound metal coffee can and a broken metal coat hanger in the pile of barrel dumpings near by.  I rigged the coat hanger so it would suspend the coffee can inside the burning barrel , then I put the smashed creamer inside the can and hung it on the inside of the barrel.  I moved the fire around so it was under and around the can and then I left to go see if I could help some more with the cellar cleanup.

Time has a way of getting away from us as we age and right now (2011) the time is really flying past.

I grew up somehow and found myself suddenly being discharged from the U.S. Air Force.  I was 24 years old and came home to Willard to start the next phase of my life.  Of course until I got my feet on the ground and a job, or college or whatever was next, I was staying with Mom and Dad in the old house.  My bedroom was upstairs in the attic area as usual.  One morning mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and she suddenly said, “Oh Wynn I have something I have been saving for you!”  And she jumped up and headed for the porch.

What she handed me was a plastic bag with a wire tie around the top.  Inside was a note and a piece of metal.  I opened it up and the note read “Mothers Silver Tea Pot”.  The metal had melted and formed in the curved shape of the bottom of the 3 pound coffee can, it was about 3 inches long and maybe ½ inch thick at the thickest part.

Mother just stood there and grinned.  She told me the story of going out to the burning barrel the day after we had cleaned out the cellar and there she found the can and the cooled metal inside.  She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that since the creamer was missing from the set, that that piece of cold metal in the bottom of that can had to be that old creamer!  Sure enough it was.  And she saved it all those years.  I have to ask myself right now, why she didn’t kick my butt hard for that one.  Sorry mom!

So, there you have the story about that, but what about the Silver Slug?

After several of us had gotten ourselves muzzleloaders, we were doing quite a bit of shooting to get used to them and fine tune the sights.  We were almost always shooting targets someplace and tweeking those sights.  We were also getting to be quite accomplished in the marksmanship part of shooting muzzleloaders  as well.

One day we were looking for something and came across an old bullet mold.  It had markings on it that said it was a mold for a 45/70 bullet.  A strange looking mold as it has other uses besides just molding a bullet.   I decided that day, that I could melt down that silver piece of metal and pour it into that mold and make a “silver slug”.  And one day I took the time to do just that.  I had to melt and pour and melt and pour several times before I got one that was nearly perfect in shape.

And then I went in search of something to mount it onto.  Something solid and something that had some meaning to it.  When I found just the right thing to mount it on, it was like a magic day.  I had picked up a rock down at mothers  old cabin site South of Monticello, Utah a year or so before.  What kind of rock it is, I don’t know, but it was a bit heavy for its size, had some color to it and had an odd shape.  Perfect for what I was going to do with it.

I carefully planned out the place I was going to put that slug and with all the care in the world I glued it exactly where I wanted.  When it was dry, I tried and tried to get it to come off, but it wouldn’t and it is still stuck to that exact place after all these years.  Next came attaching some leather to the “flats” of the rock.  I glued and glued and trimmed and trimmed.  When that was done, it sat for awhile while I pondered what I should write on the leather.  Something pertaining to muzzleloaders and shooting and something explaining the bullet itself.  One day it hit me just what to write on the leather!

Yessir!  “This Silver Slug Symbolizes Superior, Squirmin, Squintin, Squatin and Scorin!”  After all is is going to be a travelling award to be held by the best shooter among those who shoot, at whatever is shot at and whenever  there is a shoot.

Next to the bullet I wrote: “Blackpowder only—–All Others Eat Pork”.  That is a take off of a story we have about muzzleloaders vs conventional cartridge rifles.  Mountain men eat venison, buffalo, elk and antelope, while the “flatlanders” eat pig meat.  We call conventional cartridge guns, “suppository” guns.

On the back of the rock I wrote a brief about the Silver Bullet and the mold that made it.  (I believe Jack “Wapiti Dung” Zundel has that mold in his possession).

Well, once we started shooting and passing the Silver Slug around we would write our name and the year we won it.  I think the first year was 1977 (I could be wrong) and after many years of shooting and passing it around we decided to retire it and put it in a safe place for posterity.  I have it in my possession if you would like to see it first hand.

The names were written almost anywhere we had a place to write a name and put a date down.  There were some years it didn’t get passed around because the holder of the trophy didn’t realize they had it.  In one case Wapiti Dung, Mountain man Extraordinaire, had it on a shelf in his basement and it was there long enough that even the mice would not run past it for fear of sneezing from all the dust.

It was shot for and passed around until our good friend and Willow Creek Free Trapper “Waldoon” won it at our rendezvous in  1994.  It was brought back to the rendezvous a few years after he passed on and that is when we decided it needed to be retired.

It is funny how some things get started and become tradition for many years and then something happens to end that tradition.  We had fun with this one and I, for one, believe it made better muzzleloader shooters out of most of us.  After all, we are very competitive, and to get to hold onto the coveted “Silver Slug” until the next time we shot meant quite a lot to each of us.

Bears Butt

Dec. 2011