Back to the jaeger question

[eldeguello]

That is a very impressive three shots, but cheeze it must have hurt some touching off 140 grains of powder behind a 370 grain bullet!! Don't blame you for firing only three, mine would have been a one shot group. OUCH!! :boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo:

Well, you know, it should have hurt to shoot that load, as when I got home, I ran the figures through my recoil calculating program, and it came out to be 51 foot-pounds. However, shooting this load did not seem to hurt as much as shooting my Ruger No.1 45/70 with a 400-grain bullet at 2200! This despite the fact that the Hawken has a brass buttplate, and the Ruger has a piece of rubber back there.

 

[Ron LaClair]

I've taken many deer over the years with my .62 jaeger with patched RB ahead of 130gr 2ff. I've never recovered a ball from a deer. The one time I did was when I shot a moose. The load was patched RB and 200gr 2ff. The shot was straight away at 50yd's, the ball traveled full length and stopped under the hide in the brisket. It didn't hit any heavy bone and the ball was only slightly flattened.

 

[jim gray]

I believe the ball & mallet routine was mainly a military expedient though it's probable the use extended to civilian hunting uses as well. I haven't seen a mallet illustrated a being carried by hunters in period illustrations but that may "artistic license".

The mallet was used to load rifles before the advent of the patch. The mallet was necessary to force the ball, which was nearly bore-size, into the rifle. The rifling had to cut into the ball on loading if the gun was to be accurate. This was not a military expedient as the rifle was too costly to produce and slow to load for it to be practical as a military weapon. The mallet was primarily used by hunters and target shooters and was considered useless by military leaders.

Loading undersize roundballs with a patch to engage the rifling made the rifle practical as a special purpose weapon, but it was still far too time consuming to load to be a stasndard issue weapon. It was not until the invention of the Minie Ball that rifles had a major effect on military strategy.