Did they really???

[Stophel]

Something that I've been thinking about lately. In the 18th century, did they really use patched round balls in smoothbore guns? Oh, I'm sure that it was done on occasion, but was it a common practice? I would actually tend to think not. Of course, when the smoothbore was used for birds or small game, shot would be used. What about for deer/large game? Did they use a patched ball? Seems to me from all that I have seen that Buck shot or Buck and ball were THE loads used in smoothbore guns for large game at the time.

Do we put too much emphasis on patched balls in smoothbores? :hmm:

 

[redwing]

I don't know the answer to that one. I do recall reading about a battle at the Red Buttes near present day Casper, Wyoming.
One of the trappers noted that the ground was covered with shards of smoking blankets. He wrote that these shards were from the waddings in the Indians trade guns. He also noted that these Arikaras were the best shots among the NDNs in the Rocky Mtns.
Now did he mean wadding on top of the ball to hold it in the bore? Did he mean it was patching? I seemed think they were using it as wadding not patching.

 

[BrownBear]

I can only speculate from the standpoint of practicality- based on personal experience.

I tried a few shots without a patch, and results stunk beyond imagination. Might be fine at close range for fast repeat shots in the heat of battle, but there's simply no way you could shoot accurate enough for game. When you're hungry and your family is starving, you're going to do everything you can to increase your odds of scoring.

As for wadding over the ball rather than patching, in my experience with both shot and RB, it's probably fine for simply loading and shooting, but if you're active at all, your charge is going to start sliding down the barrel. Trying wadded newspaper rather than overshot cards on a hunt when I forgot the overshot cards, I went through a lot of newspaper keeping that shot in place, and I have to guess blanket chards would be only marginally better. Blanket chards shove down the bore would keep an unpatched ball from rolling around for a short while- long enough for aiming in battle- but I sure wouldn't want to carry one that way all day.

All speculation, but I have to guess that folks tested their guns now and then just like we do, then went with the combo that provided the best accuracy and the most reliability. Why handicap yourself if you don't have to?

 

I would guess that the smoothrifles were typically fired with a patched ball, but that the true muskets and fowlers may or may not have been. I'd guess more likely they were just fired with wadding to hold in the charge. Long distance shooting, while done, was not the norm in those days.

 

[Stophel]

My question is not so much "were balls patched?", but rather "were balls used?". Large shot being used instead of balls for large game.

I remember reading not too long ago of a period newspaper article where someone was accidentally shot, being mistaken for a deer. A man saw a rustle in the bushes and fired (stupidity is not new). The victim was killed, and they said that he had received five wounds.

 

[rich pierce]

There is a lot of archeological evidence that large balls were used in trade guns. Admittedly much of this is from military sites (forts etc). Guns were sold by gauge (so many balls to the pound)but this may simply be a convenient form of measure in case a single ball was used. I believe Hamilton's books have data on balls from trade guns. Again, some of this data may have been from war activities. And of course when hunting elk, buffalo, etc we read accounts of a single ball being used. But for deer hunting, I don't know. Buck and ball may have been standard loads for men and beasts of the field.

 

I've seen a lot of references to 'buck and ball' loads being used, so my speculation based on that is yes they were using near bore sized round balls in these. Did they patch them with or without buck? Who knows? I'd say yes and no. If you were in a hurry and the fight or game was close, you'd likely spit a bare ball down the pipe for any shots after the first.

Most of my knowledge on this subject is more 19th century along the lines of Redwing's comments. I've seen several references to the use of 'blanket wadding' in NDN trade guns during the 1830's. Always seemed odd to be. Might be stroud cloth with an undersized ball. Charlie Hanson has mentioned that it was a regular practice to use 32 ga (.53) balls in 24 ga (.58) NW guns. You'd just about have to use something like stroud cloth for that. NDNZ were also documented to use undersized balls without patches in NW guns when running buffalo. There are sources that talk about having to keep the muzzle pointed up when running meat until you shot just to keep the ball from rolling out the muzzle. When you're loading like that, its no wonder that so many period accounts talk about NDNZ not being able to hit much with fuzees unless they were very close.

Sean

 

[redwing]

In the Book written by "Uncle Dick Wooten" the Mtn. Man. He also later on put a Toll road over Raton Pass.
He talks about his early days on the Sante Fe trail. In a conflict with some NDNs. Dick tells about the NDNs firing old flint smooth bores with copper balls. He notes the NDNs traded for copper balls from the Mexicans who had copper but very little lead. :thumbsup:

 

[Shelby Skinner]

I'm going to say yes. First, buckshot is VERY limited in terms of effective range on deer. With a modern shotgun its a 20 yard affair--perhaps 30 if you have a really tight gun. A patched round ball effectively doubles this range on deer and maybe buys you minute of deer accuracy out to 70 yards depending. Second, small shot was much harder to come buy in colonial/frontier times and many of these hunters had their own bag moulds and made their own bullets from lead they purchased or traded for.

 

[tg]

There was probably a bit of everything done there are records of large quantities of mixed sized balls, buck and shot I suspect it was as much an individual/circumstance situation at any giver time seeing how B&B patterns I would see it as only a very close up hunting load, I have used .530 thru .570 balls in a .58 smothbore with the same light patch after the first shot the fowling holds the small ball/patch in place, At our last shoot I hit the 100 yd gong with a .10 patch and .535 ball from a .58 fusil, ( we won't talk about the many closer targets that were missed :shocked2: )I have read where many suspext wading of whatever was at hand was used to keep the ball in place in some areas,I see a basketball sized hornets nest in the back yard and am going to try some for holding various balls in place in the fusil once things get a bit damper out.

 

One question you might want to ask is when and where. If you look at a lot of original journals, big game populations dropped off pretty quickly after an area was settled. A few years of year-round market hunting would pretty well knock it out. I've seen references that mentioned game being scarce anywhere near the wee burb of St. Louis by the first decade of the 19th century because the NDN and white market hunters had worked over that country. The same pattern follows for NDN country in the West. There was actually a paper in the journal 'Conservation Biology' several years back that looked at period journals for where big game animals were and weren't found in relation to areas there were in dispute between NDN tribes verses not. The article was entitled 'War Zones and Game Sinks' The authors even looked at the L&C journals. Game 'populations' or encounters were apparently recorded much more often in the disputed areas which they termed 'war zones'. Whereas, game was much harder to come by in core tribal areas that weren't disputed as much. My point is that folks living in settled areas, white or NDN, were much less likely to need to use round balls because they would've been required for either warfare or big game. These population centers probably represent the majority of smooth rifle and fusil usage, so the answer to you question is most likely more shot instead of balls. But the farther you get to the 'left of the frontier', the more likely you are to be using more round balls. Anecdotally, this trend seems to follow the same pattern when you look at museum collections of Native arrows with blunts and broadheads.

Sean

 

[Elnathan]

Not really evidence one way or another, but Walsingham and Payne-Gallwey in Shooting: Marsh and Moor describe Highland poachers using a buck-and-ball load to hunt deer with. So it was done that way in the Old Country...

 

[sidelock]

Skinner, if you don't believe deer can be taken at 50-70 yd with buck just ask any old Eastern VA hunter. I have taken many at these ranges with #4 buck. :thumbsup:

 

[Grizzled Roberts]

It is documented that both the British and Patriot
militia were using buckshot by 1780 in SC. Of course most of this was very close in fighting or out and out ambush. Put up a big deer sized paper target at 70 yards. Then load buckshot in your 18th century military musket. Load it like they did in 1780 no plastic wads. Of course your military musket of .69 cal or .75 caliber will have no choke at all. You will find that you would likely get more pellets in the deer standing next to yours instead of in the one you were shooting at. In the 18th century buckshot was for close up duty. Like wise the very loose loaded military loads were very inacurate. They shot undersized ball so as to defeat the fouling.
It is easy to cram a .69 caliber ball in a 75 caliber musket with a steel ramrod. A man familer with is musket can hit a large game or man sized target from 70-100 yards. If the farmer can't shoot worth a nickle he might as well use buckshot
and spray and prey. :thumbsup:

 

[J.D.]

small shot was much harder to come buy in colonial/frontier times

Not necessarily. Many moulds, presumably for smoothbores, contain cavities for swan shot and/or buck shot, as well as a cavity, or two, or three for round ball.

There is also at least one record of frontiersmen making shot by hammering a ball flat, or nearly so, and cutting it into squares or cubes that were hammered, chewed, or otherwise rounded to improve their ballistic properties.

As to the question of how they were used? IMHO, anyway the shooter wanted, as dictated by necessity.
J.D.

 

[romeoh]

:hmm: I also have no evidences. And I also tend to say it may depend on where and when.
If were talking about an european aristocrat who is the only one which has the right to hunt I´d say it could be that a smoothie was only loaded with shot and not a single ball - because he had the money to afford an extra rifle.

But what if we´re talking about a not so wealthy person? Who needs a gun for defense and to get meat. And for whom buying one gun already is an expensive thing. Then I´d say a smoothie was the better choice, because you could load it with both and choose between both ammo - depending on what you have in mind to shoot at.

Last not least, what if a smoothie and round balls for it is all you get? I´m talking about soldiers with muskets.
Let´s pretend you´re a soldier far away from everything in a camp. And you are hungry? :shocked2:
Hunger is the best cook my grandma used to say. Hunger could make a good shooter too. :grin:
Even if civilians didn´t use smoothies with single balls they may have learned it from soldiers or former soldiers who had no other choice.
I would go even farther. We´ll never know who was the first one who patched a ball and also not weather it was in a smoothie or in a rifle, but I wouldn´t be surprised if it was a hungry soldier... :grin:

Just my two cents.

 

They shot anything they could stuff down a barrel at times. I remember reading that Nathan Boone said that his father Daniel carried a long barreled fowler into a battle with the Indians once that he loaded with two[or three] rifle balls and several buckshot--meaning all balls were undersized. However there are plenty of references to shipments of bore sized balls for fowlers/fusils--perhaps mainly used in time of war(?). The smoothie, being a multipurpose gun, could of course be used with any combination of ball, buck and ball, buck, or bird shot. As modern hunters, we know that a bore sized ball is a better big game load than buck shot under most circumstances, and I suspect that was known then, too. Buck and ball was a common military load.

 

[John Tice]

I think Herr DFD posted a very interesting question. I can only comment about here in New England. I tend to think round ball was used for some large game hunting, that is deer, but buck-and-ball loads were likely very common too. For most hunting, the various sizes of shot likely prevailed for fowling along the large river valleys like the Connecticut River, Thames River, Niantic River and so on. By 1750 there weren’t that many deer left in southern New England anyway. I think musket balls were also widely used in warfare as it was typically mandated that each militiaman (virtually everyone between 16-60)had a working firelock and so many rounds of ammunition or so many lbs of “bullets.” Take the memoirs of Joseph Plumb Martin, a Connecticut soldier (born MA), who was a young private during the American Revolution. He related one incident in New York where he witnessed a soldier take his “piece” with a six foot long barrel, which he rested on a fence, and pick off a British soldier “certainly over half a mile” away. Whether true or not, it does suggest some serious shooting with round ball. Martin also noted a soldier who had his musket charged with buckshot, which the British called “Yankee peas.” In another interesting incident he mentions melting down musket balls to make shot to hunt squirrels and pigeons. Had he been caught he would have been severely reprimanded. Now whether New Englanders cloth patched the ball, that I don’t know, but I think ball, shot, and buck and ball, were used in many combinations with a lot of different kinds of wadding.

 

[Capt. Jas.]

In Virginia during the F&I war it is recorded that some militia preferred large goose shot for indians as opposed to the single ball which seemed to be more a more common issue. This of course would have been for musket use so more than likely no cloth patching was used with those single balls.

I am also eager to see if there are many records showing patched round balls in the smoothbores. If so, it will be civilian and I bet it is the exception to the rule.

 

[JV Puleo]

I suspect you're spot on. And...I also think that they commonly used bullets quite a bit smaller than most shooters think they need for optimum accuracy. The references to using blankets as patching material confirm that...you'd have a heck of a time patching a ball .005 smaller than the bore with a piece of blanket.
Also...there was virtually no shot as we know it in the 18th century. I think the first shot tower was only built in England late in the century and (I may be off a few years here) the first in America was built in 1803. All they had was cast swan shot, buckshot and sheet lead cut up into little squares...wadded with tow. I sometimes wonder if the PC enthuiasts go to the trouble of making their own shot. Of course you're not allowed to shoot sitting ducks either...and thats how it was done historically.

One other point...One of the most difficult things to find documentary confirmation of is something that is so commonplace everyone knows it and takes it for granted. So...if patching round balls was extremely common, we're less likely to find written reference to it. The blanket reference above speaks to this by suggesting that it was unusual enough to merit mention.


Failure to take this into consideraton was a primary flaw in the reasoning used by the former academic historian Mr. Belisle who posited that firearms were uncommon in colonial America because he didn't find them in probate records. That they were so commonplace that they were virtually invisible historically wasn't taken into consideration. (There were other major flaws in his work - all of which resulted in him losing his job and destroying his academic reputation.)

Joe Puleo