My birthday was this month, and I received two awesome presents from my family:



At my local gun shop, they had a Ruger Super Redhawk 7.5" 44 Magnum on the used rack for a low price. It had the wooden inlet grips and a set of fiber optic sights - the exact setup I've had some interest in for a while. However, between my 460 and 327 builds, I'm thoroughly done with gun purchases for a while. So imagine my surprise when I opened a deceptively heavy present from my parents. All it needed was a new set of Wolff springs, and now its ready to be sighted in.

As if that wasn't enough, my sister had been perusing Ebay and came across a rarely seen 15" 209x50 barrel for sale. Having heard me mention wanting to build an Encore muzzleloader at some point, she bid and won it for me. Again, I didn't want to make another big purchase, so I took the scope off the Optima and mounted it to the Encore. I got some extra rings and a base for the Encore, and some fiber optic sights for the Optima. The heavier Encore will serve as my long range (relatively speaking) setup, while the open sighted Optima will be my backup/close range muzzleloader.