Blackpowder cartridge rifles such as this 1874 Sharps replica from Dixie Arms appeal to hunters looking for a combination of challenge and history.

On my second day in the saddle, my guide excitedly told me to get off my horse, take a steady rest and shoot a big bull elk that was angling uphill 400 yards away. I just shook my head. As we sat around the campfire that evening, I tried to make my guide--who was used to hunters with scoped bolt actions--aware of the limitations of an open sighted, single-shot rifle.

I ended up passing on two more elk that were just too far out of range, but the fourth time paid off, when a chorus of early morning bugling and some fast riding brought us to within 125 yards of a five-point bull that had just lost his harem.

He was slowly crossing a shallow valley as I dismounted and quickly moved up to an opening between two thick pine trees. It was a well-calculated shot, albeit one made difficult by my labored breathing in that thin, high mountain air. I took a deep breath, aimed and fired my single shot.

That 5x5 now hangs proudly over my fireplace mantle, and the 385 pounds of meat I brought home gave me ample opportunities to recount the tale at the dinner table.

I soon acquired an 1874 C. Sharps Arms No. 1 Deluxe Sporter--with double set triggers and premium wood--chambered to .45-70. I killed a number of deer and other big game with that deluxe Sharps, but eventually I became intrigued with other single-shot calibers.

I had read about Theodore Roosevelt's infatuation with the .40-90 bottleneck cartridge chambered in his No. 3 Sporter. I decided to duplicate his special order buffalo rifle, paying a small fortune (or so it seemed at the time) to C. Sharps Arms to build a 12-pound, octagon-barreled rifle with set triggers and tang sights, a cast pewter Hartford-style fore-end and a Bridgeport ring cut into the breech end of the barrel.

Using this rifle and a paper-patched 385 grain soft lead bullet, I set about verifying some of the one-shot kills I had read about in 19th century accounts by the buffalo hunters.

According to some old-timers, there was only one way to make a one shot kill on such a massive creature: have the bullet hit at a point right on the line of the shaggy mane where it meets the coarser hair, exactly halfway down from the top of the hump. It is at this juncture that the bullet, if placed right and of sufficient velocity, will clip the heart, punch through both lungs and break the far shoulder.

Those who shoot open sights but have trouble seeing them clearly should consider switching the military-style notch sights found on many single-shot replicas with sights like this sporting buckhorn.

On one hunt, after riding out on horseback in Montana in search of a free-roaming herd of bison on a 10,000-acre ranch, I spotted a bull that I wanted to take. Dismounting far enough away so as not to spook the herd, I belly-crawled to within 125 yards of the shaggy old critter. I flipped up the tang sight, set the rear trigger, settled into my sight picture, and then waited for the bison to clear the rest of the herd and give me a broadside shot.

I touched off the trigger, and the 2,000-pound beast crashed to the ground in a thick cloud of dust. He never got up. The ranch foreman jumped up and exclaimed, "I've never seen a bull go down like that!" He was used to seeing multiple hits by hunters using bolt actions and semi-automatics with semi-jacketed bullets. But true to form, my .40 caliber lead slug, traveling at 1,575 fps and with a muzzle energy of 2,130 ft.-lbs., had clipped the heart, punctured both lungs and smashed the far shoulder.

A few years later, using this same rifle and bullet combination, I made the longest one-shot kill of my life, an event that I doubt I could ever duplicate. John Schoffstall, owner of C. Sharps Arms, was accompanying me on an antelope hunt in eastern Montana, near the small town of Glendive. We had been hiking the plains for three days without seeing anything even remotely resembling an antelope.