www.n-ssa.org for details.

I'm a shooter with Wheat's Louisiana Tigers Company B out of Ft. Shenandoah, VA. I shoot competitively 4-8 times a year. Anyone else make trips there or abroad for the purposes of skirmishing?

I bring this to bear because aside from boy scouting/camping this was the brunt of my 'roughing it' experience. While a medium size permenantly parked camper is nice in harsh winters, it still gets pretty cold at times. Firemaking and old-style living are useful skills <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

If you're ever in the area on a nationals, drop by our camp and say hello <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> or just say hello here!

Hi Garland. I've only seen these Civil War re-enactment events briefly on TV and I don't know anything about it. Just skimming through the website, I get the impression that some people only do the re-enactment stuff (the costumes, the battle re-enactments, the period festivals/villages that are set up, etc.) while n-ssa.org seems to be a little different because they also emphasize an actual marksmanship aspect? Is that fair to say? Like I said, this is an area I know nothing about so please set me straight if I'm wrong.

Thanks for the invite, though!

That's exactly right. It's a competitive shooting organization utilizing reproduction or original pieces, we follow specific rules and guidelines and have uniform codes we have to meet amongst other things. So effectively we look like reenactors who go out and shoot targets. There are team events, individual events and artillery team events. I love waking up to the sound of 20+ cannons going off.

It's kind of a living history with shooting included. Wide range of people and wide range of shooting skills. I think our musket teams are class C (we call it the blind running hogs division) and our pistol team is class A (frequently in the top 10). Our mortar teams aren't worth mentioning and our carbine teams are also class C.

Some teams are very competitive and thus, very good but not much fun. We try to balance competitiveness with fun. Which is part of the reason we're Class C.
It's all in good fun though <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I have attended the reenactment at Olustee Battlefield here in North Florida, some years ago. I worked with the Florida Park Police and was assigned to a detail to provide security for the re-enactors during one of the many nights that they were there. I can attest that those individuals lived and dress the era that they protrayed. I once was making a security round of the campground with a mag flashlight. Boy did some of the re-eactors get mad at me. They made their security checks with old oil laterns.

Many people confuse the organization I'm with (which happens to be a massive organization) with reenacting. We do NOT reenact. We are a competitive shooting organization. Just making sure everyone is on the same page here.

Oh, only shooting. So it's a shooting organization that happens to focus on period weapons. Do you wear period costumes during competitions? If so, I guess that's where I get confused with "re-enacting". So, all re-enacters wear costumes but not all who wear costumes are re-enacters. Did I get that part straight? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

All these interesting things that people in other parts of the country do from where you live. It's like the amazement and bafflement the first time I saw curling at the winter Olympics a while back. I had never heard of it before, and here it was at the Olympics, and apparently we (the US) was good at it!

Effectively yeah, we wear the uniforms. The team I'm with actually got permission from Louisiana state to exhume the corpses of two of the original unit members to find out what the french zuave uniform they wore was constructed out of/with/like .. So there's a good degree of historical accuracy but instead of playing cops and robbers in the woods we actually do some real shooting <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

At nationals we get something like 15,000 competitors (3 phases of 5000 each) shooting musket. Those sounds you hear in the movies of the confederate/union lines firing at each other are actually recorded at our range during nationals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpI0zcaEjA

This is a good 9 min video detailing what we do. My unit can be seen at about the 40 second mark in the pirate-esque (french zuave uniform) uniforms. This looks like it was done at a nationals.

So for those of you confusing this with reenacting, enjoy!