.50 or .54 for elk?

[Wes/Tex]

Robert J,

If it was me, I was looking for a smack down at a reasonable investment, it would be a TC Hawken or Renegade with a .58 or larger caliber barrel. Rebore or replacement barrel.
I love my flinter TC Hawken with the .62 Green Mountain barrel. What a machine!

You sound like a candidate for October Country's Big Bore Sporting Rifle in 8 bore! Yee-hah!!
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14 pounds, 1-144" twist, 210 grain load giving 1800 fps velocity to a .82 caliber ball! Oy Vey! :wink:

There's a baby version in .62 plus a standard hunting gun in 20, 16, 14, 12 and 10 bore for the economy minded armored car stopping crowd!

 

[nkbj]

Oh wow that's a whomper stomper!

Mine is just a 3rd hand TC Hawken with a 2nd hand .62 smoothbore GM 32" barrel later rifled for round ball. That length and wall thickness turned out to be give nicer handling than the .54 factory barrel so rifling made sense. With 80 grains of FFg it chronographs at over 1300FPS, over 1500 with 120 grains and the asteroids will all hit the dinosaur.
Got named The Rattler (in Texas our range was across the clearing from the quiltatorium windows).

 

[mooman76]

I'd use a 50 if that was all I had but if I had a choice, I'd go 54 or even 58 which I do have. You do your part and either will work.

 

[Vaino]

Get a .54 w/ a PRB bbl w/ a 1:66 twist and you're set for deer or elk. Sight it in at 100 yds and hold on shots are good to 125 yds on elk and slightly less on deer.

The .58s and larger have one drawback.....w/ reasonable powder charges the trajectory is too "loopy".....in other words, the mid range height is too great and if a .54 trajectory is wanted, the powder charge has to be increased a lot. The result is a real "thumper"......Fred

 

[Wes/Tex]

Way to go Fred! :thumbsup: "Loopy" says in a word what Sam Fadala spend a chapter trying to get across in discussing his "Simplified Sight Chart". :wink: His contention is that .54 is about the max for his treasured 1800-2000 fps velocity without having to expend excessive powder charges. The velocity range can usually be approached with .54 caliber barrels above about 28" with 100 to 110 grains of FFg. The beauty of that speed is the sight chart reads 0 inches high/low at 13 yards; +1" at 50 yards; -1" at 100 yards and -6" at 125 yards. Keeps hold over at a minimum out to about most of our sighting/shooting max range. The snipers among us may want to readjust! :haha:

 

[Tom Compton]

I e hunted elk w both a .50 and a .54 both loaded w PRB. In range w good shot placement = dead elk. Kinda like a .270 vs .338WM.

 

[nkbj]

If you play with the calculator long enough there's a place around .52 that's the ultimate black powder round ball performance.

 

[William O.]

The three guns I'm looking at all have a 1/48 twist, which they say shoot prb and conicals well. My plan was to shoot both type of bullets and go with whichever one was more accurate at 100 yards. If I go with a .54, should I look at guns with the same twist rate and go with the most accurate, or go with a slower twist rate more designed for shooting PRB. As a note I want to shoot the most accurate bullet, regardless of what it is.

"They" say a lot of things but don't rely on that until you see for yourself. While twist rate is important, it is the depth of the rifling that will be most critical when it comes to accurately shooting a round ball or lead conical.
My choice for an elk hunt would be my .54, which has a 1:48 twist, using a patched round ball. I say that because it's my most accurate rifle at present and I have not yet worked up an accurate load combo for my 50's. I did have a Lyman Great Plains Hunter (GPH) several years ago, which has a fast twist, shallow Rifling bore for stabilizing conicals. It would place Lee REAL bullets into nearly one hole at 75 yards time after time. However, I had to use a max load plus a lubed wad in between the powder and bullet to get this kind of accuracy, and the recoil was brutal. I'm quite confident that this conical would have gone lengthwise through an elk but I was unwilling to put up with the recoil from that rifle when my .54 shooting a PRB was just as accurate and much more comfortable to shoot. My point is that within a reasonable distance, both the 50 and 54 calibers using a PRB will take an elk cleanly and quickly, provided you put that ball in the right place. Conicals carry more energy than RB's because they weigh more. Conicals are also going to have a different trajectory because of that weight but what they do not do is allow you to do is make a marginal shot better at a longer distance. I'm much more into hunting game as opposed to just shooting them. My self imposed limit is 85 yards because past that my eyes don't allow me to make an accurate shot. What's more is that after 100 yards, both the bullet(RB)drop and energy loss get to a point of not being enough to do more than wound the animal which I believe to be unethical.
These are things I think you should consider before selecting the caliber and bullet type of your next muzzle loader.

 

[BigAl52]

Brown Bear guess you and me are some loopy characters with our loopy 58 calibers. Being loopy aint bad those 1874 Sharps rifles did some real loopin when they were puttin buffalo down once upon a time. Al

 

[hanshi]

Let's face it. Even though the .45 is my "favorite" and has been ultra successful in collecting deer, I'll say there's no such thing as "too much gun" or "over-gunned" for deer, etc. There are no degrees of dead and the limitation is rightfully the hunters recoil sensitivity. In Africa hunters use the same - say, 375 H&H - for large game and small antelope. I've killed deer with the .54 and .62, along with the .50 and .45. All that happened in every case was that the deer died, that's all.

 

[csitas]

You guys are fun to listen to, and study. I've been hunting all my life ,I'm 74, all kinds of weapons , smokeless, black and archery.I just love killing deer, or black bear. Never been for elk. One thing I've always wondered is how far past the animal does your projectile have to go before it's dead.This includes archery also.I don't care who you are , **** happens and you know the rest of the story.

 

[rodwha]

I believe 4" was the FBI minimum for mostly dead.

 

[hanshi]

Never killed an elk but probably same as with deer. As long as you get a double lung and/or heart shot; he be yours.

 

[excess650]

This gun will be my deer/elk gun. I think the .54 is a little overkill for deer, but I only want to have one gun for both so I'll take the .54

.54 seems to get rave reviews here in Pennsylvania where the late MLer deer season is flintlock only. I've not finished mine yet, so haven't shot a deer with a .54. I HAVE taken WTs with .58 and .62 and find them quite efficient for quick dispatching. 100gr fffg under PRBs sighted a couple inches high at 50yds results in several inches low at 100yds with both. The trajectory is less of a problem than velocity drop-off(penetration and expansion), and that's a RB issue regardless of caliber.

Overkill? Maybe there is such a thing for small game, but for deer or elk, I don't think so. Dead is dead, and the quicker the better. Oregon has Roosevelt elk, the largest sub species of elk.

 

[BrownBear]

Oregon has Roosevelt elk, the largest sub species of elk.

Oh yeah. Kinda shocking to me to go from Roosevelts to the Rocky Mountain variety. "Hey, who shrunk my elk?" :grin: They were transplanted to a few spots in Alaska, and ADFG has live-weighed bulls to 1300 pounds compared to the 800# or so usually cited for the Rockies. That's getting into the realm of the largest moose at 1,600 pounds.