By Mike Nesbitt | Contributing Editor
“The Quigley,” more properly called The Matthew Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match, was inspired by the movie Quigley Down Under.
Perhaps no rifle match is more successful. Next year, in 2026, the 34th annual Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match will be held, in eastern Montana once again on Father’s Day weekend. That gives us time to get ready.
The Quigley, sometimes referred to as “The Q,” is known world-wide. Competitors come from almost every State, and several come from other countries such as Gavin Dignam who comes from Australia. Attendance by over 500 shooters is common, with over 600 for certain years. This rifle match does not have the longest-range targets, nor does it require the most shots to be fired, but in all respects, it is simply the most!
Actually, the Quigley is a mid-range match with only one long-range target. That’s the buffalo at 805 yards. The shortest distance to the target is the “bucket” at 350 yards and that must be shot at offhand. All of the six targets are certainly challenges. Eight shots are required for each target, which are various shapes, each with a different and sometimes unusual distance from the firing line.
And there’s more than just the shooting. The Quigley camp gets filled with well over 1000 people. Well behind the firing line is “vendors’ row” which is over a quarter-mile long so everyone goes shopping at Quigley. The comradery, the dinners, as well as the focus on good shooting make the Q something that’s very hard to miss.
After all, it’s a 1,000-mile road trip just to get there. So, forgetting something and remembering it after you get to camp is not the best way to do things because you can’t simply go back and get it. That is especially true for your rifles and the select ammunition you most likely need to shoot straight and true. It is all part of being prepared and selecting the right rifles and ammunition needs to be at the top of the list.
My “top gun” is the .45-90 Bridgeport Model Sharps by C. Sharps Arms which I’ll have a lot more to say about in just a bit. It is shown in the photo with the red background, along with the box of ammo holding fifty cartridges. The Quigley match will use up 48 of those cartridges so to be well supplied I’ll be sure to take 100 rounds along with me. And the Bowie knife, that’s just a handy item to have in any camp.
Notice that I said “rifles” because there is no way I’d go to Quigley with just one rifle. That’s true even if I’d use only one rifle. The reason for that is because you never know when a “back-up rifle” might be needed. Little things can go wrong with a rifle, even with the very fine modern-made Sharps rifles like the guns most of us find favor with for long-range shooting. And, if you are shooting with a C. Sharps Arms rifle, that gunmaker has a tent or trailer just back of the firing line where those little things can be repaired right on the spot.
The “little things” that come to mind right away could be a broken firing pin or a busted lever spring. Things like that require only ten minutes or even less time to fix, provided that you have the few tools needed to do the job as well as having the parts needed to be replaced. Most of the little repairs done by Pat Dulin and the C. Sharps Arms crew at the big Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match, that I’ve seen, were done for free or just for the cost of the parts. That’s customer service at its best.
So, once again, I’m making sure that my main rifle is that heavy Sharps, Model 1874, which was made by C. Sharps Arms. It’s the rifle I expect to compete with; my 14 ½-pound .45-90 by C. Sharps Arms, a heavy Bridgeport style of Sharps, with the 1 ¾-inch heavy barrel, 30 inches long, and sighted with the full-length MVA 6X scope. I bought this gun five years ago and I got it for shooting at Quigley, although it wasn’t used at the Matthew Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match until last June.
The reason it wasn’t used sooner was because of “teething problems” with the scope, actually with the scope mounts. This scope has the mounts anchored in the barrel’s dovetails on the barrel, because I didn’t want extra holes drilled into this rifle, and the problem simply was that those dovetail mounts kept getting loose which would send the bullets to who knows where.
Every time the scope would come loose, another thickness of brass shim would be used to try to tighten the mount in the dovetails, both front and back. Nothing seemed to help and that rifle was “punished” by “standing in the corner” for long periods of time. Then, after one more try in a silhouette match, the scope came loose again.
That made me rather mad. In that state of mind, I took the rifle to Allen Cunniff, my partner for Quigley as well as my most available and over-worked gunsmith. When I told him what had happened, he took the rifle with the comment, “We’ll have to give it another try.” His remark triggered a response from me, saying, “I don’t want another try, I want it fixed!”
Well, Allen certainly did a good job of fixing it. What he did was to insert the dovetail part of the scope mounts into their respective dovetails in the rifle’s barrel, then drill through the scope mount parts and screw them down. With the other parts of the scope mounts back in place, those screws can’t be seen. And the problem hasn’t been seen since either. Now I find that “fix” a good thing to recommend to shooters who favor the full-length scopes which are mounted to the rifle’s dovetails in the barrel. After all, the scope simply cannot give good service if it won’t hold still, shot after shot.
Since Allen did that good “sneaky fix” for the scope mounts, I have used the gun in various silhouette matches as well as in some of the Black River Buffalo Runners’ Old West Centerfires matches. The gun has allowed me to turn in higher scores and, at least in one case, helped me win the match. So, with the background of some good scores turned in, that rifle was at the top of my short list of rifles that would be going to Quigley.
The load I’d be using in the .45-90 was the same loading that was developed in this rifle shortly after getting it. For a bullet, this rifle favors the 550-grain .459-inch diameter grease groove bullets from my Hoch bullet mold. (The Hoch molds are no longer available.) Under that bullet goes a .060-inch thick Walters’ wad, which protects the base of the bullet from the pressing grains of un-burned powder as the bullet accelerated toward the muzzle. And under the wad is a charge of just 70 grains of Swiss 1½ Fg power, the second largest granulation of powder that Swiss makes. With this load, I can shoot with repetition and still get good performance.
It was with this .45-90 rifle that I shot my best score at Quigley last June, hitting with 29 of my 48 shots. In addition to that, on the second “postage stamp” at 417 yards, I hit the target with all eight shots, winning an “8-straight pin” which was a first for me. With hits like that under its belt, I can’t be leaving my good shootin’ .45-90 at home.
Recoil is there, certainly, but it is not as harsh as when loaded with heavier powder charges. I do wear a shoulder pad while shooting this gun. That just adds to the comfort and allows me to concentrate more completely on sight picture and trigger pull without fearing or anticipating the shot. Like many other shooters, I need all of the help I can get.
The other rifle I’ll select to take to Quigley as a possible rifle to use in the match is my favorite “Hartford Model Sharps” in .50-70 caliber. This is the gun I call “Moonbeam,” my often-used .50-70 by C. Sharps Arms. This rifle, like the .45-90, also has a 1 ¾ Heavy barrel, of 30 inches in length, but the two rifles are certainly different.
This .50-70 uses iron sights instead of a scope. And, while the .50 has a larger bore, it shoots lighter bullets. Those bullets for the .50-70 are cast from Accurate Molds’ #52-450L2, weighing 450 grains. Its powder charge is lighter than the .45-90’s too, but only by 5 grains. My favorite loading for the .50-70 uses 65 grains of Olde Eynsford 2F powder under the 450-grain grease groove bullets. We might easily say that Moonbeam has a lot of experience with that 65-grain loading.
In fact, that is the rifle and load which I used at Quigley in 2024. You might recall that I partnered with Mike Moran that year and we both shot the big match with our .50-70 rifles. He says he will use his .50-70 again in the coming year, shooting a paper patched bullet over a full charge of 70 grains of powder. I, more or less, took my .50-70 along last June as much in support of him as well as having it there as my back-up rifle. And, while I did have the idea of shooting the match with my .45-90, the actual decision wasn’t made until I registered for the match.
The reason that my decision needed to be made at registration is because shooters using scopes are in a different classification than shooters with iron sights. There are several different ‘classes’ at Quigley; for men, women, seniors, and for different types of rifles too. But I do believe that all scope users are in the same class. That’s just a way to keep things organized.
And my .50-70, taken primarily as a back-up rifle, would be used, and used very well, should my .45-90 suffer a loose scope again. That is, if the scope could not be secured properly while in camp. No, I certainly did not expect the scope to come loose but, then again, that had happened before. This simply supports the idea that you must prepare for what you don’t expect and I couldn’t see traveling 1,000 miles to a rifle match with only one rifle. Also, Moran intends to shoot the match with his .50-70 Sharps, but he will also take a second rifle as well, another rifle by C. Sharps Arms, a Model 1874 “Hartford” in .45-70 caliber.
So, that is what I based my choices on for my rifles to take to Quigley next year. And at Quigley, we’ve always had some real weather, you name it, we experienced it… Some heavy rain storms have hit us hard enough so that the firing line was closed until the afternoon. That cost us some “looked forward to” practice time when most shooters find their sight settings for the various targets. It always pays to check the sight settings too because they can change, especially if any changes were made in the loads. But by Thursday, in the week before the match actually got started, I had my numbers and was ready.
Of course, most all of the load development and testing will be done long before making the trip to “Quigleyville” which is near Forsyth, Montana. Doing more shooting to get some final practice as well as the correct sight settings is still necessary because most of the targets at Quigley are set out at unusual distances, such as 417 yards for target #5. It is what we might call little things like that which makes “The Quigley” such a unique shooting match. That’s why goin’ to Quigley requires getting those rifles and loads ready with some real advanced planning.
