http://www.lymanproducts.com/lyman/publications/black-powder.php

 

brilliant thanks,

 

Hunters in many US states have a traditonal blackpowder hunting season. a 50 cal ball (.495") is plenty of power to take down our whitetail deer at 30 to almost 100kg weight.

In Colorado, Utah, and other states in the middle west, they use a 54 cal roudball rifle to take down elk. They can be about 125 to almost 300kg.

I am no England hunting expert, but the fallow deer could be easily hunted with a 45 cal. Even whitetail deer can be taken down just fine with a 45 cal. I know someone who hunts whitetails with a 40 cal, although legally he need to do it with a bigger gn in my state.

32 cal is primarily for smaller game like fox.

Of course any caliber is fine for target shooting.

Blackpowder guns are slower than jut about any modern rifle. The trajectory is pretty similar to a 22lr rimfire rifle.

You could use one to hunt a little bit more than 100 meters. However, past 70 meters the bullet start to drop. Many hunters I know who use this type of firearm stick to 70 meters or less.

They're a ton of fun to use. However, you need to clean them well after use. Blackpowder has sulphur in it, which will rust out the barrel.

 

I am no England hunting expert, but the fallow deer could be easily hunted with a 45 cal. Even whitetail deer can be taken down just fine with a 45 cal. I know someone who hunts whitetails with a 40 cal, although legally he need to do it with a bigger gn in my state.

32 cal is primarily for smaller game like fox.

Of course any caliber is fine for target shooting.

Here (arkansas) 45 is the smallest you can legally hunt with. You are allowed pretty much anything as a backup gun but still must have a 45 or bigger with a barrel of legal length.

I'd check local laws first on what you can and can't use.

 

Thanks for the info.very informative.i have been thinking about getting a cva v2

 

A few years back I went deer hunting with two friends. I had not been in years so I wasn't too serious about seeing or killing anything. I'm on the stand for 15 minutes and two bucks walked in. I was using a 50 Cal. Hawkin with round ball and my target load of 70 grains of ffg. The 9 point buck dropped like a rock. Rond ball can do the job.

 

Back on July 21, 1865... James Butler Hickok shot and killed Dave Tutt from a distance of 75 yards in the streets of Springfield MO. The .36 caliber ball passed completely through Tutt at that distance. This is one of the few, well-documented face-to-face gun fights in history.

For a through-and-through kill with a .36 caliber ball... at 75 yards... that is absolutely astounding, nearly unbelievable. That's why Hickok was greatly feared... so much so... that his eventual killer had to murder him with a shot to the back of the head. (Same for Jesse James... and John Wesley Hardin.)

 

It's not putting numbers on it, but there is at least the story of the newsman that interviewed a number of Civil War surgeons after the war. They were asked which guns caused the worst wounds. According to the story, they, to a man, agreed that black powder muzzle loaders caused much worse wounds and damage than the more modern cartridge guns that came in the last part of the war.

The story was, the slower, and softer balls, would totally destroy any bone they hit. Whereas, the more modern cartridge bullets had more of a tendency to pass through the bone without totally destroying it. A soft round ball strike to a bone almost guaranteed the necessity to amputate, or resulted in death.

I know when I go to the gun range, my targets always have a lot bigger holes in them than any of the ones being shot with modern weapons. lol!

 

That's interesting, I agree, I was also told something similar, take the Remington 1858 .44 ball round 30 or 35 BP grain shot . if you were to be hit square in an arm or leg at about 30 or 40 yards with one of them it would probably take the arm or leg completely off the poor sod that got hit. if it did not, there would be a hell of a mess damage wise to the limb. Then of course you have to consider the shock aspect, now that's a real killer, such a shock to the system from massive tissue damage. Hope I am NEVER on the wrong end of a shot from one of these. NASTY, very NASTY!

 

Don't have scientific data, but can tell you from personal experience that a .495 round ball launched by 70gr of FF from a TC hawken will drop an adult whitetail in its tracks with a neck hit. DRT!
The neck hit knocks them off their feet, have yet to see one get back up.
I've saw one run 50 yards with everything in it's chest cavity turned to mush by a 30-06.
(cut the diaphragm and poured it out)

Course the .50 used most of it's impact, while the .30 caliber kept on traveling.

 

A friend years ago develop the conical bullet for black powder rather then round ball, Buffalo Bullet Co. and the claim is that they are more effective than round ball and greater range .
I only have in black powder a Ruger .45 cal. pistol, and H&R rifle.
Happy hunting.

 

Here is a round ball ballistic calculator: http://www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/ctml_experiments/rbballistics/web_apps/rb_ballistics.html

The round balls shed velocity very quickly, and don't penetrate as deep as the conicals. Many head of big game still died though.

Should not be too hard to find ballistic coefficients for the "bullets", as well as reasonable velocities for them.

 

diameter x diameter x diameter x 1502.3 = weight of lead roundball in grains

(velocity x velocity x bullet weight in grains)/450240 = foot pounds of energy

(bullet weight in grains x speed in fps x diameter in thousandths of an inch)/ 7000 = taylor knockdown number

I don't know of a formulae for figuring velocity of BP bullets using bullet weights and powder charges, there may be one. I'm sure Lyman or somebody has a chart showing the information though.

Hope this helps.

 

Yep, about the only 'good' side to being hit by a BP ball (compared to center-fire) is you can wear (hard) armor that will deflect the shots more times than not.

So in a world of BP rifles and pistols are abound at least the body armor will be much more sufficient to stop them compared to the high-velocity of todays weaponry.

Even as late as WW1 some cavalry units wore light-armor.

While it didn't really help against anything but 'spent' shots from long range and deflections, the armor was designed in the era of lower-velocity black powder firearms.
I recall reading about some of the first fighting in WW1 was a party of scout cavalry and the armor one of them was wearing was shot right through at close to medium range.

Later on trench armor was more proof against the rifle-improvements, but this was even heavier than cavalry armor and not much good apart from sniping and sentry duty.

Wearing armor like this would easily defeat BP most of the time, but things like arms and legs, plus the head are always vulnerable...

 

I did some experimentation with a steel disc vs BP rifle (Thompson .50 caliber) at about 30 yards distance.

Now although the plate deflected the round ball (having first knocked it over with the force though) I was only using about 50 grains of BP. 80 grains to even 100 GRAINS is the norm for souping up the shot into bringing down large game etc.

So at a higher charge it will be clearer what the BP does to the disc.

Against the much more formidable 12 gauge 'slug' the results are markedly different.

 

That's an interesting experiment!
Some may disagree with my perspective here on shot guns. I had a great Winchester multi choke 28 inch barrel 5 shot pump a long time ago ( loved it) beautiful slick gun. BUT, Problems with shot guns are, and this is big one ( rang) and accuracy. By their nature they are essentially scatter guns, bird shot, stuff like that. of course modern innovative people/ companies have come up with trying to get round this problem, by make weird and wonderful shells or slugs for them to try and expand their scope or uses, and to a point they work. but I always say horses for courses, so to speak. if your going after a flock of birds at 10,15,25 mtrs , your not going to use a .50 cal Barret sniper rifle, unless your insane of course, your going to use a shotgun. You probably won't even hit one as that flock takes off, 16 meters away at full speed, you would never even get a bead on the bird/birds until it's about 100mtrs away, then they are going to be all over the place moment wise, and the big bad ass barret is far to big and heavy to move it that quick, so you get my pint about the horses/courses thing.

Of course to clear a room in a house, go after that flock of birds, take the legs of bad guy at 5 or 10 yards, punch a hole in an car engine block at 15 to 25/30 yards ish, shotguns are the bad boy to have, it's where they come into their own. But, take that Barret or say my sharps 32 inch .45 cal sporing BP rifle, with around 90 grains BP, and a 380 grain slug and put it put up against that shotgun at a dear 280/350 yards away and the table swings the other way. The deer is going to laugh at the shotgun round, and drop like a stone after the barret or the sharps round hits it.

Regards pistols, Remington or colt .44, which is a relatively short range weapon. It's more maneuverable than a shotgun, smaller, lighter, but that shotgun don't need to so accurate to take the bad guy down. To me, they both have their good and bad points. but both are more than capable of stopping something at 5,10,20,30, or more yards, and both have their uses.

In your experiment, you use rifle against rifle, so move that steel plate out to say 80/ 90 yards and then see which one wins.

But it was interesting to see and watch. :thumb:

 

Hi Prepper.

I might just do that. The problem is the steel armored discs aren't mine to shoot up and accurately hitting them with the shotgun slug at 80 - 90 yards would be tricky, especially with open-bore sights.

 

The myth of smoothbore innacurracy comes from the use grossly undersized balls in muzzleloading martial arms. Undersized balls could be easily rammed down a fouled bore to acheive higher rates of fire needed in battlefield line formations. A loose ball rattling and bouncing down a fouled bore is not conducive to accuracy.

Here's an example of what a tight fitting ball/patch combination and proper load developement can do at 100 yards.
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/279088/
Please note these groups were shot with a flintlock musket Having Only A Single Front Sight...No Rear Sight! This man knows his weapon.

Brushing the bore between shots, using swaged balls without internal voids that are weight sorted within 5 grains, meticulusly rigid loading procedures, constant repeatable seating pressure, wad column developement, lubing the bore After loading, plus other details are required to realize the full accuracy potential of a round ball and smooth bore. While a smooth musket will never equal the accuracy of the famed longrifle, with attention to all the above, hitting a man size target at 200 yards is not only possible but probable.

BP is my area and I'm not knowledgable about modern smokeless firearms. Although I haven't witnessed any smoothbore shotguns with modern style slugs capable of the kind of accuracy shown in the link above, I have seen experienced nitro shotshell reloaders using proper slug/wad/bore fit and load developement acheive significant improvements. Reliable 75-80 yard kill shots on deer with a slug/load combo the shotgun 'likes' (and every smoothbore gun, BP or modern is unique) should be obtainable.

 

I agree, I would like to see a shotgun get those sort of results on a target ( as you showed on the link) at 100 yards. If any shot got into the black, my money is on pure LUCK. then it would be one in a million.

 

Bumping an old thread, but just remembered where I had seen these 60 yard, modern smoothbore shotgun slug groups and thought some might find them interesting. Both groups were shot off a rest.

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=514364

This is what the right slug/wad/bore-fit/load combo can do. How far this kind of accuracy will hold up depends on the range at which the slug (or musket round ball) goes from supersonic to subsonic speed. Passing through the speed of sound apparently produces a lot of buffeting that kills accuracy.

I have found two ways to obtain top accuracy from a smoothbore weapon. Launch the projectile below the speed of sound so it flies subsonic all the way to the target, or launch it fast enough to stay supersonic until impact. Like everything else with smoothbores, there are only generalizations and no hard set rules that Always apply. As soon as you think something is written in stone, you'll find a smoothie that is an exception to the rule.

Maybe it's that individuality and the added challenge of finding a load that is 'mutually agreeable' to both you and the gun that makes black powder smoothies so appealing to me.