Hawken50- A bullet is not a round ball. Any and ALL bullets including ball-ets are concial bullets. The bullet does not have to be cone shaped to be a conical - they are all called conicals. It is but a generic name for a bullet.
: Some bullets have poor shape for hunting purposes - like the .58 minie "balls"(so called). They are pointy bullets/conicals that are poor for big game due to their nose shape. They glance on bone and travel through the soft areas of the body, rather than smashing bone and carrying straight-line penetration. Another poor hunting bullet is the TC Maxiball. This is because of it's shape and the wide, deep grease grooves. The shape(and instability in 48" twist bls. causes glancing, just as the minnie, and the grease grooves cause the slug to collapse instead of expanding as a good flat nose bullet would.
: Yes- flat nosed bullets are best for hunting in a fast twist barrel, whether the gun is a BP ctg. gun or a muzzlelosding rifle.
: For very large game in a 48" twist, a patched round ball is best. Slugs from that bl. will kill deer but are worse than poor on very large game like big bears, moose and elk. They are good only at wounding & quick loading. Use them on Moose or Elk and plan on tracking and shooting it limb from limb - 4 to 8 times to bring it to bag. THAT's British Columbia history. You can use 1 ball and kill it within 50yds. IT won't even go as far as most heart-shot deer.
: If you want to kill with 1 shot, learn to shoot patched round balls from that 48" twist or re-barrel to a 28" and use flat-nosed slugs. From 48" twist and slower barrels out to 100yds, the patched round ball has ample penetration and is a better, faster killer than any slug from the same calibre and much better than anything smaller.
