Accuracy Expectations

[The Baron]

I have a question about accuracy with my .62 fusil. I shoot alone, so you guys are my only source of comparison. I have done a fair bit of load testing by now and I have realized I don't really know what I'm looking for in way of results from a gun with no rifling or rear site. I hear stories of guys splitting balls on an axe at rendezvous and other great feats (at what range is that typically attempted?). I also see folks hitting the "X" on the 3x5 cards in the member contest, from 25 yards. I've gotten a few very close, but I'd have to line up a score of cards before getting one worth entering.

My question for all you folks here is, just what kind of accuracy should I be looking for from a smooth bore flinter at 25/50 yards?

 

Accuracy with a properly tuned and sighted-in smoothie at 25-50 yards can be excellent. Yes, we frequently split balls and shoot cards in half with them (range for such novelty targets is about 10-15 yards for the cards, 15-20 for splitting). My friend Rick and I won a post shoot with our smoothbores not only because the .600 balls knocked bloody big chunks of wood away but also because we didn't miss the 4x4 post at 20 yards.

The big thing with a smoothbore is to stop thinking that it doesn't have a rear sight. I does have a rear sighting picture. Put it on the bench and start of aiming across your tang screw. See where it hits five times, then compensate by aiming on one side of the screw or the other, shoot five rounds, and so on.

My NW trade gun's "rear sight" is the point where the barrel and the left side of the tang come together. If I line my sight up with that, I generally hit what I'm aiming at.

Hit a possum walking away from me at 40 yards, down hill last deer season, and used to practice shooting at EMPTY 20lb LP tanks at about 100 yards.

smoothbores are guns, too, and will do what you ask of them. Past 75 yards you're going to loose accuracy faster than with a rifle, but short of that you'll be golden.

Why anyone would want to cut gouges in a perfectly good barrel is beyond me.... :blah:

 

[Stumpkiller]

If yer seein the tang screw, front sight and target all at once ye ate far more carrots than I did in me youth. :haha:

I treat my smoothie's barrel like the arrow when shooting my traditional bows. It's there, I am aware of it. I don't focus on it. Instead, I focus 100% on the target and rely on my peripheral vision to align the barrel as needed. With your master eye directly over the barrel your brain will automatically align it for windage. The left eye, getting the secondary image, helps with the elevation.

Hold a pencil under your eye and focus on this dot >.< While concentrating on the dot, you should have the image of two fuzzy pencils pointing at the dot in your lower periphery. The intersection of lined formed by those two fuzzy pencils is the impact site in a perfect world where trajectories are flat. Luckily, most smoothbore muzzleloaders are wider at the breech than the muzzle, so there will be some point downrange at which the ball does cross that line. Once you find that range, you're gold. The higher your eye is above the barrel, the farther out that range is. Don't try to move your head to compensate for range. Instead, hols higher or lower based on range . . . or just rely on "instinctive" hold adjustment, which only comes with a great deal practice (and so should be called "conditioned" or "learned" instead of "instinctive").

If you rely on the front sight & no rear it becomes very critical on where you hold your cheek/head each time. Like using the point-of-aim method of archery with the arrow tip held on a reference point on or neat the target. Move your anchor 1/4" and you're off by a foot down range.

Never shot a Tulle, but with the Bess your best bet is to ignore the front bayonet lug and concentrate on the target. Back when I was relying on a smoothbore for most of my m/l I was happy with 6" at 50 yards.