Fun and Game With a Muzzleloader : Hunting: Rick Hacker provides Christmas dinner the old-fashioned way--he earns it.

Rick Hacker introduced a visitor around the den of his home in Sherman Oaks.

There were Beauregard and Edgar, in their eternal staredown from opposite sides of the room. Sam and Harley were in their usual corners, silently ignoring everybody.

Hacker said Harley will be guest of honor at the Christmas dinner his wife, Joan, will prepare, but it’s not an honor Harley would recommend. Harley is also the dinner.

“I name all my animals,” Hacker said. “That’s Beauregard the buffalo, Sam the ram, and that’s Edgar, the five-point elk. We got 375 pounds of meat off him. That lasted us many years.”

That left Harley the antelope, who was named after a motorcycle.

“Instead of going straight up, his horns go outside, like handlebars, so I called him Harley,” Hacker said.

Well . . . isn’t that an honor, a measure of immortality, not only his own name but a role in two great traditions--muzzleloading hunting and Christmas dinner?

Hacker is the consummate holiday hunter. For the last 22 years, he has provided the Christmas meal with one of his antique single-shot weapons--some original, some replicas, but all faithful to technology dating to the 1700s. His book, “The Muzzleloading Hunter” (Outdoor Life Books, distributed by Stackpole, $21.95), is the definitive treatise on flintlock and percussion weapons for the 20th-Century hunter.

“I’ve always been a fan of the Old West,” Hacker said. “It was a practical way to relive history and I like to hunt, and to me that is hunting personified--the true way to hunt. You’ve got one shot, it’s you one-on-one with the animal. You have to stalk, you have to be close. Most of my shots are 35 to 75 yards.”

Hacker, 47, also subscribes to an old-fashioned hunting ethic.

“I like to eat everything I shoot,” he said. “It’s almost a religion with me.”

His book contains recipes for “muzzleloading meals,” none likely to be found at Denny’s: Rocky Mountain elk stronganoff, black bear corn-fried steak, wild boar chops.

His table has been graced with all of those, as well as a San Marino sheep he shot on Santa Cruz Island, pheasant, wild turkey and venison. Hacker said that not only does this meat taste better than store-bought stuff, it’s better for you.

“No fat, no chemicals. People are used to eating animals that are full of artificial encumbrances. You can’t barbecue wild game, because there’s no fat. But I always wanted to have a wild boar for the holidays. There’s a great illustration in one of my Dickens books of them bringing in this whole boar roast. So Joan cooked it in the oven, then I took it out to the barbecue, turned it up and flambeed it with bourbon. It was great.”

England, with its strong traditions, still has markets that sell wild game, Hacker has noted on visits there.

“You lose a lot of contact with life by having everything so organized,” he said. “You buy a piece of meat, put it in the microwave and it’s done. If you hunt, the hunt lingers on throughout the meal.”

Fortunately for Harley, the Hackers’ dining room is not visible from the den, so diners will not feel his blank eyes on them during the meal. However, from his vantage point he may follow preparations in the kitchen and recognize a section of him that has been in a freezer while his head has been on a wall since Hacker brought him home from Montana in 1987.

Hacker calls it “the longest shot I ever made--225 yards, and he was running away uphill at an angle.”

The weapon was one of Hacker’s favorites, the replica of a .40-90 Sharps--.40-caliber, with 90 grains of black powder. It was built by his guide, John Schoffstal, and weighs 12 pounds.

“The traditional gun was what they called a Big 50--a .50-caliber,” Hacker said. “The .40-90 became very popular with the serious, long-range hunters of the frontier years. You’ve got to be in shape to use these guns.”

Hefting the weapon, Hacker joked: “You can also club ‘em to death with it. I was the first hunter in the 20th Century to shoot a buffalo with a .40-90 Sharps.”

That would be Beauregard. Normally, Hacker wouldn’t even try that long a shot. Muzzleloaders don’t have telescopic sights, and the projectile moves so slowly that allowances must be made for wind and trajectory. By comparison, a .30-06 bullet has a muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second, while a muzzleloader projectile exits at 1,050 feet per second.

“But the beauty of it is that when it hits, nothing gets up,” Hacker said.

Hacker’s standard load is a 435-grain lead conical bullet, made by the Buffalo Bullets company of Whittier. A .30-06 bullet weighs an average 180 grains.

“They don’t travel fast, but there’s no doubt when they get there,” he said. “It’s like lobbing a boulder. You don’t have any wounded game.”

So he had a good feeling about it and, against Schoffstal’s advice, touched off a shot.

“I set my trigger and used my tang sight and gave him a lot of lead and aimed a little bit high--and shot. As I shot, the antelope dropped, and I heard something hit the ground behind me. It was John. He had dropped his gun (and said), ‘How’d you do that?’ ”

It wasn’t the first time Hacker had impressed someone with his prowess. In 1982, he became the first white man to hunt in Zimbabwe--formerly Rhodesia--after that nation’s seven-year civil war. He used a .58-caliber black-powder muzzleloader to bring down a one-ton eland.

“I hadn’t been in Africa 48 hours when I’m crawling through the brush on my hands and knees with a native who doesn’t speak any English, going after an animal I don’t know how to spell.”

And when he found his prey, he said, “It took two bullets to put him down. That’s unusual.”

Since he wasn’t allowed to take the meat out of the country, he gave it to the natives.

“That night I heard these drums-- boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-- and all this shouting.”

The tribe was celebrating his kill with a feast.

“They gorged themselves all night, and the next morning they had yards and yards of it hanging to smoke.”

The natives knew what many city-dwellers don’t, Hacker said.

“Meat isn’t ‘gamey’ if it’s processed properly. The problem most hunters make in the field is they’ll let the meat sit there for half a day while they take pictures and things. Forget the trophy pictures. You can always take those later.

“If it’s a big animal, you want to open the body cavity and air it out. You have to gut the animal immediately (to) let it cool (and discard) the stuff you’re not going to eat. In the case of a big animal, I’ll let that meat age for six days (to) let it break down a little bit. Then when you get back to camp, you hang it.

“Don’t let the hair of the animal touch the meat when you’re skinning it. It can taint the taste of the meat. If possible, I’ll take it right to a butcher (and) have him skin it, quarter it and bone it.”

When he got Edgar, Hacker was hunting with five conventional hunters who, he suspects, did not take him entirely seriously at the start. Hacker is not inconspicuous. At a practice range, his shots are noted by loud explosions and great clouds of smoke.

“There goes Hacker again,” others say.

As a muzzleloading hunter, he likes to dress the part, with coonskin cap and buckskin coat.

“I’m always the joke when I walk in because I dress like this,” he said. “And when I say I’m from California, that clinches it. They all roll their eyes.”

But Hacker and Edgar had to hang out in camp, in a manner of speaking, for five days until the others got their animals.

“Didn’t hurt it at all. It was cold up there. If it’s hot, you have a problem with flies. You should cover the meat with cheesecloth or some covering that’s aerated (to) keep the insects off.”

Some hunters use plastic, but Hacker said, “There’s no ventilation, and that will spoil the meat.”

And that, one supposes, would mean canned ham or frozen turkey for the table.

“People lose touch with their heritage,” Hacker said. “Christmas is such a traditional time and hunting is such a traditional sport that when you combine the two and you’re eating a meal you hunted for the Christmas table, that’s the epitome of the holiday celebration. That’s what the pioneers did before there were grocery stores.”

Hacker recalled the film, “Jeremiah Johnson,” when Robert Redford killed a deer in one scene and his family ate it in the next.

“A guy behind me said, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ I turned around and said, ‘Well, I guess the Rocky Mountain Safeway was closed that day.’ ”