Any opinions on a .54 smoothie?

[roundball]

"...y'all have surprized me with how versatile a "small" SB can be..."

I think you'll get a lot of satisfaction out of it...99% of small game is taken in the 20-25 yard range...yours is the same GM Flint barrel I have and a point to remember is with those big strong GM ML barrels you can forget about trying to correlate its use to that of a modern thin walled .28ga shotgun...it apples & oranges.

The GM octagon drop-in barrels are made with extremely thick high quality steel walls and when compared to the thin walls of a modern shotgun barrel, the word massive come to mind. Couple that with the fact that you're also using lower pressure black powder and there's no direct correlation to the guidelines associated with modern .28ga barrels and their shells.

One rule of thumb for smoothbore muzzleloaders is a powder to shot ratio of 1:1.5...1 part powder to 1.5 parts shot. Bob Spencer's excellent website entitled "The Versatile Smoothbore" is written for the .62cal/.20ga and can be applied up or down the gauges proportionally...his turkey load in a traditional long barreld smoothbore, with barrel walls even thiner than a GM, is 80grns Goex 3F and 120grns (1+5/8oz) of shot...1:1.5 ratio.

I've used his turkey load for a few years now and have shot it 250-300 times experimenting / patterning with many sizes of chilled and hard shot in 2/4/5/6/7.5/8, and copper plated shot in 4/5/6's, different wad configurations, etc...they all work just fine. The field load I use in my GM .54 Flint is the same ratio, just proportionally scaled back...70grns Goex 3F & 100grns (1+3/8oz) shot.

Note that using medium and large size shot (#4s,5s,etc) there's a lot of air space in the shot charge compared to tiny #9's for skeet which pack more lead into the same physical space...for my skeet loads I scale back to only 80grns of #9's (1+1/8oz) to control the weight gain and keep the velocity up...almost a 1:1 ratio of powder to shot in that case.

Anyhow, I've gotten as much or more enjoyment out of experimenting with .54 and .62 caliber smoothbores these past few years as I have my ML rifles in previous years...opened up a whole lot of new opportunities for experimenting, learning, hunting, etc.
:thumbsup:

 

[spaethjm]

I had not planned to use the 54 for turkey I have a 12 ga percussion for that. I just felt with that load and pattern it would be more than adequate to do the job. I wish it was legal to use rifle my 36 cal would get the nod.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Odin: you are blowing your patterns with that load. Reduce your powder charge to 55 grains( 2 drams) and 7/8 oz Max. shot, to get a better pattern. If you will consult the pellet energy charts in the Lyman Shotshell Reloading Manual, you will see that the pellet energy of #5 shot is more than sufficient to kill any turkey out to 30 yards, with a hit in the neck or head, but you will get better patterns if you keep the velocity under the Speed of sound. All that added velocity disappears in the first 20 yards, anyway, where its not needed, NO? Its only function is to blow the patterns out.

If you shoot the lesser powder charge( make it 55 grains of FFg if you have it, you will get a fairly dense pattern at 25 yards. If you think you need a pattern to kill turkey at 35 yards, then you should consider switching to #6 shot to give you more pellets in the pattern, for more hits on the turkey's neck and head, where the pellet energy is less, but with more hits, you get more energy delivered to kill.

 

[spaethjm]

Like I said I am just starting out and I do not plan to use this gun for turkey.