BPBL Sharps Rifle, The Red Headed Step Child

I realize that I am talking about a breech loader, but I have been trying for ages to get the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Department of Fisheries and Wildlife to allow me to use my .54 Black Powder Breech Loading 1859 Sharps Sporting Rifle during the shotgun season. Now I find that the state of Delaware, whose hunting regs are viritually the same as Massachusetts, has made an allowance for one of my favorite under utilized firearms! There is hope! Does anyone here know if there are any other states that allow the use of the Black Powder Breech Loading 1859 Sharps Rifle for white tail deer season? NSSA won't let me use it for the skirmishes and I am denied the right to hunt with it.

 

[Grey Wolf]

If you are refering to a BP cartridge rifle, you can't use it in my neck of the woods. If you are refering to a rear loading BP Sharps that uses nitrated paper rounds, and a cap, I don't see that it would be any different then a inline, so called muzzleloader. I use my BP cartridge Sharps during regular gun season..

 

I am refering to the rear loading paper cartridge Sharps.

I have been researching the velocities of the PC Sharps and find them quite similar to many of the smokelss shotgun rounds. ::

 

[Stumpkiller]

NY will in the northern zone during the regular gun season. A few of the southern zone counties have a bill in house that will allow rifles there. As far as state game regulations are concerned it's a rifle and not a muzzleloader.

 

What makes it illegal to use that Breechloading cap rifle during the regular season?
: It isn't a muzzleloader and therefore shouldn't be allowed use during that time, IMHO. Because it was a transition rifle, from muzzleloading to a true ctg. brechloader, it must be used during the breechloader season - regular season - around these parts.
: The eye-tie .54 Perc. Sharps I had did a wonderful job during the regular season. The 480gr. Slug went the entrie length of the deer, coming to rest under the hide of the left leg. It smashed the right front shoulder, traversing the lungs, just in the top of the guts and smashing the rear leg before coming to rest. There was very little meat damaged, mostly in the front shoulder that took the full measure of the slug's impact. I had called the deer in with a 'comeer-deer' call.- Worked splendidly as he came in at a run, to be stopped with the slug.
: The mould dropped a tapered slug that properly matched the tapered chamber of the rifle,(as in the originals) then I filled the remainder of the chamber from my horn. The load reuslted in 110gr. 2F and gave just under 1,400fps. This would have been a very good moose or elk gun as well, but I got talked out of it before giving it that test.
Daryl

 

[Stumpkiller]

. . . to allow me to use my .54 Black Powder Breech Loading 1859 Sharps Sporting Rifle during the shotgun season.

Now reflect on this. Here in the Southern Zone of NY we are defined as a "shotgun with single, lead projectile" hunting region. I have a Remington 11-87 semi-auto with a Choate FAL pistol-grip synthetic stock with a Hastings fully-rifled barrel, and if I chose, I could mount a 10x scope on it and fire BRI saboted slugs into a 1-1/2" group at 100 yards. That's legal. Even with a regular rifled slug it's as accurate as a Civil War musket - and how similar is a rifled slug to a minie bullet? Pretty darned. We can also use "centerfire" pistols. So I could get a 14" .45-70 barrel for my Contender and put a scope on that and do 2" groups at 100yds. Heck, I could shoot a .338 Win in a Encore with a 12" barrel or a ..308 Win in a 16" bolt actioned Kimber pistol if I wanted. I used to hunt woodchucks with a friend in the same fields and woodlots I deer hunt - he used a .338 and I used a .270. All legal. But comes deer season: no "rifles" allowed.

The good news is I can now use a rifled muzzleloader in shotgun season instead of the one week post regular season muzzleloader season. For many, many years this was verboten. I guess they want us using short-range innacurate weapons when were all plodding together in the woods shooting at movement.

 

Claypipe - Ah- I see- they allow rifled shotguns, why not your .54? - perhaps you do have a legitimate inquiry- but where do they draw the line?
: Perhaps the .54 (28 guage) is too small for the game branch to consider it a rifled shotgun?

 

I have seen shotgun seasons closed when the rifled shotguns came into vogue. The original idea was for the standard rifled slug or round ball which had a max range of just over 600yds. With the rifled barrels now in use, the elongated slugs which now have max ranges measured in thousands of yards, are therefore deemed to be too dangerous with so many afield for this season.
: Apparently they (rifled shotguns) are not allowed in Southwestern Ontario Deer season for this very reason.
: Perhaps someone can coment on that, whether it is true or not- it is what I heard from a resident who hunts deer on his own land.

 

The regs state 10 gauge and smaller, this includes the .410. So, the .54 is well within the bore parameters.

The Mossberg websites claims a range of over half a mile for their shotgun slugs, the same range as the BPBL Sharps. This state has always been slow on the uptake.