50 cal trapper pistol for ram hunt ?

[silent sniper]

hello guys, I am planning on going on a Ram hunt later this summer. I am having trouble deciding which gun i should use. Part of me wants to use my original 14 guage double barrel smoothbore, that i used to kill my first deer with.I was also debating using my t/c 50 flinter, sense it hasnt killed any big game animals yet. or lastly i was thinking about using my 50 cal flintlock trapper pistol that i built for the ultimate challange. i was shooting it tonight with 45 and 50 grains of FFF powder and a roundball. with some practice i dont think i would have any problem hitting a rams vitals out to 50 or 60 yards.my question is would the pistol have enough power to kill it ? i was thinking the max i will shoot out of it is 60 grains FFF powder, as i dont want to hurt the gun. would a roundball have enough power to kill a 100-120 pound ram at 35-65 yards? or would i have to use a conical for added power. i dont have any problem using a conical, i jut want something that will insure a quick clean kill. So will the pistol have enough umph for the job or should i just give up on that idea and use a rifle. thanks SS.

 

[Britsmoothy]

60grns puts you above a 1000fps maybe well above 1100 even. Around 500ft/lbs (not that I take any notice of ft/lbs).

Sounds good.

Brits.

 

[stubshaft]

I have shot alot of feral sheep with a 45LC. If you are going to keep your shots under 35yds then you can't go wrong with the pistol. If you are planning on a shot out beyond 50yds. then I would take the rifle or 14ga. Will the pistol cleanly take a sheep out to 65yds? :hmm: Probably, but a Ram can soak up alot of lead and even if hit hard they leave poor blood trails because their wool tends to soak it up.

I am an old traditional bowhunter and most of my shots nowdays regardless of what I hunt with are under 25yds. To me THAT :v is the challenge and under those parameters then the pistol is definitely adequate. :hatsoff:

 

[paulvallandigham]

What is the ROT of your barrel? Unless its made from a PISTOL designed barrel with a fast ROT, its not going to handle conicals well at all.

Use a Chronograph to tell you what velocity you can get from that pistol, using a PRB. Don't Guess. NO, more powder is not going to necessarily make it better.

The problem with hunting Sheep in Mountains is that they tend to be found on very STEEP SLOPES. If you can't Kill them Right There, they can fall long distances in rocks, breaking horns, and sometimes getting to places YOU can't get to. ERGO, Hunt ruined!

Mountain sheep are sheep, but terrain makes them very tough, and tenacious. That is why sheep hunters use HP rifles to hunt them. Its not that they are really hard to kill. Any good chest shot will kill them.

Its how difficult it is to get close enough to them, and how difficult it is to place a shot accurately, considering winds, terrain, and the sheer stress on hunters working at those altitudes.

I recommend you take your .50 cal. rifle, among the options you have listed. Any trophy taken with a BP gun is a serious trophy.

If an archer is lucky enough to get within range of a mountain sheep and kill it, that should make national news the day it happens, IMHO. Its not that it hasn't been done, and won't be done again. It's the fact that so many factors have to come together to make it happen that is newsworthy. I know of no archer who thinks his Mountain Sheep, or Mountain Goat trophy did not involved a lot of Luck, or Divine Guidance.

Best of wishes for you on your hunt. :hatsoff:

 

[longcruise]

hello guys, I am planning on going on a Ram hunt later this summer.

Where do you hunt these sheep? Get the impression they are ferals of some type? Sounds like a fun hunt and one I might like to try someday.

At 100 to 125 pounds it seems like they are about equivalent to a small to medium whitetail doe or maybe a large Pronghorn.

How long is the barrel on your pistol? I'm not as confident as Brits that you will get to the 1000 fps mark, but who knows? Does the pistol "crack" when you shoot it or just "boom"? If it's making a distinctive crack, then you are exceeding 1000 fps and are probably hitting 1075 to 1120 range depending on your elevation and barometric pressure.


Maybe you could try some 50 yard penetration tests?

 

[silent sniper]

i was planning on hunting feral sheep on a large ranch. i dont know how far the shots would be but probably 50 yards are less. the barrel is 9 inches long and has a 1-20 twist. i dont know if it is breaking the sound barrier or not but it definetly kicks !!! lol

 

[longcruise]

I'll bet that son of a gun kicks. I got no experience with feral goats other than having seen a few. I guess there are "feral" goats and then there are "exotic" goats. A ranch I hunted in TX had some goats. I think they were Corsicans. A mature one had a curl and three quarters.

If you can get access to a chronograph that would help. I'm thinking that anything over about 1200 fps should work on those goats in that 100 to 120 pound weight range.

Set up four or five 1/2 gallon plastic milk jugs full of water and shoot them in a row at about 20 yards and see how that works. My guess is that if the ball would penetrate a piece of 1/4 inch plywood and go on through 2 or 3 of of those jugs, it oughta work on the goats.

I'm not calling this science though! :redface:

 

[John Wasmuth]

"Corsican" are sheep, not goats. Never insult goats like that!, LOL! :rotf:

 

[silent sniper]

actually that is exactly the species i wanted to hunt. the corsian ram. i really like how they look and i think they would be fun to hunt with a pistol. it would be a pretty good challange.

 

[John Wasmuth]

Yer pistol will do just fine. Keep yer shots close and send one thru the heart/lung area. They dont take much killing and aint near bad on the grill. Mouflon, Hawwiian Blacks, Texas Dall, all good table fair.

 

[longcruise]

Yer pistol will do just fine. Keep yer shots close and send one thru the heart/lung area. They dont take much killing and aint near bad on the grill. Mouflon, Hawwiian Blacks, Texas Dall, all good table fair.

There ya go Sniper. Straight from a Texacan who oughta know. Seems like down there in TX they have more feral and exotic animals than native species. :haha:

The guy who owns a ranch I hunted on had a video of himself shooting an emu on his ranch. I asked him "how come you shot it" he answered "it was tresspassin". :rotf:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Having now learned that you intend to go on a "canned" hunt, on level ground, I see no reason NOT to use that long barreled .50 caliber pistol for the hunt. You should be able to get close enough to kill the sheep with a well placed shot. You still might want to do penetration testing with the load you want to use, and you may still want to try some conicals to see if they can shoot accurately enough for you in that gun. Without knowing the rate of twist, and depth of rifling, its impossible to speculate on how well any conical will do in a gun.

Because of the short barrel, you want a faster ROT than what you would expect to find in a rifle barrel of that caliber. Most conical barrels are made with much shallower rifling than what is done for a PRB barrel. The shallower rifling is desired to help in sealing gases behind the bullet, so you don't get gas cutting of the bullet that destroys accuracy. Some RB barrels can be Adapted to shooting short conicals by using a filler or good OP wad between the powder and bullet base. The heavier conicals will deliver more "Whomp" than a .50 cal. RB.

However, my first deer was killed at about 40 yds. The .50 cal. RB went completely through her chest, breaking ribs going in and coming out and hitting both lungs and some arteries. She stumbled about 100 feet down a steep sided ravine, before dying, but she would not have covered half that distance on flat ground. So, the .50 cal. RB is adequate for the job. The only issue is how close you can get, and how well you shoot that pistol.

Have a good hunt. What you are doing is a lot safer than climbing around mountains trying to locate and get close enough for a clean shot at sheep.

On my second Boar Hunt in Tennessee, another member of the party decided to take a Corsican ram in addition to his hog, and used a High power rifle with scope on it. He still laughs about it, as he got within 50 yds of the animal for the shot, and had trouble using the scope as it showed him too much fur! Had he brought the right handgun, he could have easily killed the sheep with it at that same range.

 

[longcruise]

Having now learned that you intend to go on a "canned" hunt............

Given the negative connotation of the term "canned", it may not be appropriate to label it as such. A canned hunt takes place in a very small enclosure and involves the shooting of pen raised animals. Most ranches that have Corsican ram hunts are quite large and the rams range free within the ranch.

The ranch I hunted in texas was 1,600 acres. Hardly canned.

 

[John Wasmuth]

Having now learned that you intend to go on a "canned" hunt, on level ground, I see no reason NOT to use that long barreled .50 caliber pistol for the hunt. You should be able to get close enough to kill the sheep with a well placed shot. You still might want to do penetration testing with the load you want to use, and you may still want to try some conicals to see if they can shoot accurately enough for you in that gun. Without knowing the rate of twist, and depth of rifling, its impossible to speculate on how well any conical will do in a gun.

Because of the short barrel, you want a faster ROT than what you would expect to find in a rifle barrel of that caliber. Most conical barrels are made with much shallower rifling than what is done for a PRB barrel. The shallower rifling is desired to help in sealing gases behind the bullet, so you don't get gas cutting of the bullet that destroys accuracy. Some RB barrels can be Adapted to shooting short conicals by using a filler or good OP wad between the powder and bullet base. The heavier conicals will deliver more "Whomp" than a .50 cal. RB.

However, my first deer was killed at about 40 yds. The .50 cal. RB went completely through her chest, breaking ribs going in and coming out and hitting both lungs and some arteries. She stumbled about 100 feet down a steep sided ravine, before dying, but she would not have covered half that distance on flat ground. So, the .50 cal. RB is adequate for the job. The only issue is how close you can get, and how well you shoot that pistol.

Have a good hunt. What you are doing is a lot safer than climbing around mountains trying to locate and get close enough for a clean shot at sheep.

On my second Boar Hunt in Tennessee, another member of the party decided to take a Corsican ram in addition to his hog, and used a High power rifle with scope on it. He still laughs about it, as he got within 50 yds of the animal for the shot, and had trouble using the scope as it showed him too much fur! Had he brought the right handgun, he could have easily killed the sheep with it at that same range.

Dont know where you hunt "canned" sheep at Paul but trust me, come on a ram hunt on the ranches we hunt and you'll wish you'da gone to the great north west instead. It aint for the weak of heart nor the weak of mind, although some times I question my own sanity during some of the hunts. They dont stand there and wait for you to walk up and thump them. You actually have to hunt. Some operations have given exotic hunting a very very bad name.

 

[bigbore442001]

With more land being developed for housing and other purposes you will see more hunting preserves in the future. Whether for good or bad, you can't turn the clock back.

 

[John Wasmuth]

Yep, I work on two of them and guide on a couple more. Texas is full of them as are a couple other states. As less and less land is able to be hunted I think yer right.

 

[paulvallandigham]

I meant nothing negative about the hunt when I used the term, "Canned". it is the fastest way to indicate that you are not hunting Sheep in their natural habitat.

I am fully aware that some Hunting preserves cover thousands of acres- particularly those in Texas. However, getting close to rams on flat ground is a heckova lot easier to do than climbing mountains. That doesn't mean you won't work hard!

There are all kinds of hunting preserves, that offer hunts for "exotics"( game not native to the area, or country). Some are small; few are huge. In some of them, the guides drive the hunters to where the game is located, spot the game for the hunters, and then drop the hunters off as close as possible for the stalk and shot. In others, you have a guide to direct you as to which animal to shoot, but you may go in on horseback, or even half to walk to where the game can be found.

I know of NO hunting preserve where you are allowed to simply roam about and shoot whatever game you can find. On top of that, most Hunting Preserves Guarantee a "Kill".

These are the characteristics of a " canned " hunt. I have done them, and have no objections to how most of these preserves are run. I have no objections to hunters taking advantage of these opportunities when they can, unlike some hunting " snobs".

I wish this man well on his hunt. I am sure it will be exciting for him.

 

[shootemup]

Good luck on it, sounds like a fun hunt.

 

[longcruise]

I can see that we have different meanings to the term "canned hunt". In my definition it involves a hunter shooting an animal in a small enclosure where the animal has been placed. A good example is the video that surfaced recently of a well known outdoor personality standing with a bow in a treestand while a large white tail buck circulated around an enclousre with a 10 foot chain length fence. The enclosure was probably less than an acre.

I hunted hos in a 450 acre enclosure and felt that was about as small as was comfortable for me. It would have been unacceptable if it weren't for the fact that the cover was extremely dense.

 

[BrownBear]

Reminds me of a guy who was looking for a "canned" buffalo hunt and came to Kodiak to hunt them on a local ranch. It took about a dozen stalks over six days on a particular bull he wanted, plus 10-15 hours a day on horseback to do the deed.

I got dragged into the fray after the fact to help get the animal out, when it rolled down and wedged into a narrow draw, four feet in the air and not much else visible. On a break the hapless hunter told me next time he hired a "canned" hunt, he was going to ask first about the acreage. This particular ranch is 24,000 acres, and the little bit that's fenced is 4-strand barbed wire.

Along with the neighbor's acreage and our own in the Southwest, we hunt a little over 1600 acres or a little shy of 3 square miles of mixed terrain. There's only barbed wire stock fences, but you run up against the boundary lines more often than you might imagine when the animals are free to leave.

Sure, a wildlife fence would turn the animals back in to you, but I'd find 1600 a little small for my own peace of mind in an enclosure. In tighter cover, you could probably get by with less and not be poking your socks through animal wire to dry while you ate lunch.

Have a great hunt Silent Sniper. I'm betting you're lined up with a class act, and the folks who use terms like "canned" are doing a bit of their own sniping.