I disagree, Cooner. It depends on what you are hunting, and what distance you are shooting. If you are shooting those little deer that live on the Eastern shore, 50 grains is more than enough. If you want to recover your lead ball in the animal, 50 grains may be too much on close shots.
Again, you have to do penetrating testing before you can say a load is too little or too much. Whenever you increase the diameter and the weight of a round ball, its ability to penetrate will change from a lighter weight or small caliber ball. At high velocity a light weight, pure lead ball will flatten in some media so fast that they will not penetrate very far. Slow that light weight ball down some, and penetration will be greater.
My experience with the .54 is that its a small freight car, and when you get it rolling, its not going to stop very fast or easily at all. I have seen .54 balls loaded with a lighter powder charge than I was using in my .50 penetrate further than my ball did. I am glad I didn't bet money on it, as I would have lost! I am talking about target loads, although I can't remember the exact load we used. That was more than 20 years ago, so please forgive my sad memory. I know back in that day I was shooting 55 grains of FFg in my .50, so the guy with his .54 was loading 50 or perhaps even 45 grains in his gun. Shocked the heck out of me. My RB penetrated 6 1" boards spaced 1" apart and left a mark on #7. His went through 7 boards and into the 8th. I even check his powder measure, I was so surprised. He had an adjustable powder measure similar to my own, That is when I became a firm believer that weight has more to do with penetration than velocity, at least when you are dealing with the over-50 caliber RBs.I found it also works when choosing Shot sizes in smoothbores.
