....Ed, yeah, there is some resistance within our NCOWS group. One member even vocally complained that some of us were trying to turn them into a military group? What's funny, our group has a BP class for single shot rifles. It consists of a rifle, one pistol that can be cartridge or cap&ball and a shotgun. There was a lot of grumbling when Tod Lane and I started bringing our Trapdoors to shoot it. We only shoot 5-5-2 and our times are no worse than the average shooters. What was proposed for our version of a BAMM shoot was a bolt action rifle and one revolver. Semi autos weren't discussed. The idea was to shoot all 10 rifle targets and 5 pistol. I believe Dewayne (Liebrandt) tried it at one of our summer matches. I didn't shoot at all in June or July so, I never asked him about it at this last shoot. Too busy harassing each other over other things, lol. The group year end meeting is coming up in November. This should be discussed.
If your firearms can be documented to the 1865-99 timeframe and are loaded to NCOWS safety standards, there should be no problem. There were many occupations within the era that would make use of many different kinds of firearms. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there WAS military during the period . . .)
You'd be limited to bolt actions manufactured and known to be used on the North American Frontier between 1865-99. A rare critter indeed. My favorite would be the Vetterli 1869/71.
But where the rub rests is having to consider that the By-Laws state with every shooting class a "pistol caliber" rifle be used, or loaded down to approved velocities.
is it a case that they don't think it would be fair to compete with a lever gun against a bolt action, or that using a single shot military longarm would slow up a posse shooting a match, or rounds would cause target damage? Rounds, as mentioned, could be loaded down to be within NCOWS approved velocities using lead bullets.
What seems to be their reason for the complaint? It couldn't be just a resistance to Military impressions.
Also, this might be good to cross-post in the NCOWS Forum, too, to get NCOWS membership input.