Think seriously about what you want to do as far as picking calibers. A .54 pushes a 230 grain RB downrange. A .50 pushes only a 180 grain ball. The 50 grains of lead amounts to a lot of weight to carry to the range for practice, and even more weight to tote when hunting.
Are you hunting where you are likely to take LONG shots? By long, are you likely to be shooting deer at over 60 yrds because you can't get closer? If so, then maybe the .54 is a good choice. Are you going to be hunting game larger than big whitetails? Like Elk? Moose? Caribou? If so, then maybe the .54 is the way to go.
However, if your shots are going to be close, even on the larger game species, a .50 will do the job as well, with complete penetration on broadside shots the norm inside 75 yards. More importantly, with the lighter lead balls, you are more likely to practice more. And there are plenty of lighter powder charges you can use to practice with using a .50, where everything about that .54 is BIGGER, including powder charges.
I hunt with a .50 caliber full stock, Poor Boy style rifle with a 39 inch barrel. Flint, of course. I hunt is some of the brushiest, tangled wood bottoms you can find, because around here, that is where the deer are to be found. Oh, they sneak out into the corn fields during the summers, and feed at the edges of the corn fields before dawn, but they know when shooting time arrives better than most people wearing watches, I swear! They are back in the brush and trees, heading to bedding areas that are next to impossible to sneak up on. We intercept them between the feeding and bedding areas. Sometimes we get lucky when another hunter shows up late, or has St. Vitus Dance, and just has to walk about the woods, spooking deer out of their beds and moving them past us. My point is that I can't usually see a deer past 50 yards where I hunt, and most of my kills have been shots under 40 yards. The shortest was at 2 yards.
Be sure you really NEED a .54 caliber rifle before you make that choice. If you don't understand how a pure lead ball kills, or have been reading or listening to those jerks who say that a RB just bounces off a deer( Big news to Daniel Boone!)to justify using jacketed pistol bullets shot out of plastic shoes, using modern smokeless powders at high velocities, and claiming such will kill deer out to 200 yds, if your scope sight is big enough, then you need to spend some time doing penetration testing for comparison in any medium of your choice.
If you intend to use a scope, and don't have a medical reason for doing so, I have to ask you if you are really interested in hunting with any traditional firearm, or are you just trying to have another extra season for hunting?? IMHO, a scope sight on a flintlock is like an elevator in an outhouse- it just doesn't fit!( Yeah, I borrowed that line from "Roadhouse".) Ifon the other hand, a scope is the only way you get to hunt a few more years with bad eyes due to old age, Put the scope on the gun!
If you are going to use a traditional rifle, in flintlock no less, you should be expecting to finally learn- if you never have before-- how to shoot open sights and shoot them accurately. But, in doing so, you are going to find that these sights will also be a limiting factor on how far a target you can hit accurately. A 150 yd shot is a very long shot with open sights. Even a 100 yd shot is a long shot at most deer with open sights.
What we all found is that the RB happens to penetrate more than adequately out to 100 yds, our longest shot, and expands at BP velocities to kill deer very nicely, and as quickly as they die when shot with high power cartridge guns at longer and shorter ranges.
I will not lie to you about the fact that on some occasion, you are going to look across a field and see a fine deer a couple of hundred yards away. It may be on property you have permission to hunt, or it may not. You are going to have to enjoy the sight, but pass on trying a shot. If instead of that Traditional Flintlock .54 rifle, you had a 7mm Super Duper Magnum with a 24x scope dialed in a 500 yds., you might end your hunt right then and there with a clean shot on that distant deer-- If you read the distance right, and the wind right, and if there isn't any twig, or stick, or sapling that is " invisible ", even through your scope at that kind of range, between you and that deer, that will deflect your bullet.
A man showed me where he stood to kill a deer on the next ridge the year before with a modern shotgun using Foster Style rifled slugs, and no rear sight on the shotgun. The distance was close to 175 yards. He said his slug hit the deer in the neck, and broke its spine, to drop it in its tracks. He had been "aiming " for its lungs. He had NO idea how far that next ridge was from us, and he wanted my estimation as to the range. He did know that his kill was one of the luckiest shots he had ever taken!
So, "Luck " happens, even to people who haven't earned it! I don't know about you, but " MURPHY "- of MURPHY'S LAW Fame-- pretty much lives in my back pocket. Consequently, I don't tempt him with long shots.
This is why its called " Hunting", and not " Getting ". NO? :hmm:
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