Disappointed with 54 cal round ball.

[Idaho Ron]

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I don't like PRB's. If others do that is fine with me. If you like PRB's over conicals that is also fine by me. But if you want to hear what I think caused the problem read farther. :stir:


Traditional ml suck as a hunting tool. Modren ml are not much better.Prb has killed all American game. Real bp, real rock in the locks, real lead round balls. You have to learn your gun and hunt within its limitations. Archers have to do the same. Its not a .50 browning from a rest at 300 yards from a portable bench. Not what I want. Learning the limitations of a maxie or Minnie or buffao and your gun that your hunting is part of the game. If that's what you want to hunt with that's fine by me. Your deer wont taste any better then mine killed with round ball. Its been 40 years since I've killed any thing with anything but a ball....some of them very tiny but an onuce of them :wink:

From his account of the shot it sounds like he knew his gun and the shot was within his comfort range. I don't know how he could have done things different. The PRB failed to get total penetration. It is simple as that.

 

[Idaho Ron]

Nice job Herb. From the looks of the picture that buck should have left a blood trail.

 

[roundball]

Every deer I have shot with either .50 or .54 PRB, from 15 to well over 100 yards, 70-85 grains of 2 or 3F, has been a pass-thru. Almost all were broadside chest. Only one that I remember was quartering away and steep downward angle and also resulted in a pass-thru.
I am quite surprised that you didn't get a pass-thru with that shot.

All I used for 15+ years were Hornady & Speer swaged lead balls which are 100% pure, and got pass-thrus most all the time...and after Hornady / Speer prices went thru the roof, I started switching some calibers to 100% lead cast balls from Eddie May in GA, and continued to get pass-thrus as a normal outcome.

Then as I experimented with / learned about / switched from heart shots to high shoulder shots to drop a deer dead in its tracks and eliminate tracking / recovering completely, I started to get a few more inside stops, maybe 25/75 because of the spinal column being hit...but even then if a ball stopped, it was stopped bulging the hide on the far side...the Hornady .58cal ball example below I managed to recover from a big ole Doe in November...spine really deformed / slowed down the ball...nicked the hide with the tip of my knife and it fell out. They literally just crumple down and never twitch with the high shoulder shot at the spinal column/neck vertebrae junction...DRT.

The complete effectiveness of the simple, traditional patched round lead ball has been proven for centuries all around the world, and still gets it done today as perfectly well as it always has, always will. It's just not a long range / powerline / beanfield / plains bullet.

 

[TMan51]

Anyone else getting this kind of results or was this unusual for the 54?

I built my .54 about 30 years ago, and it's been a freezer filler through several seasons since. In that time, I've been able to recover exactly two balls. Both were shots past 75yds, at mature animals quartering away, where the ball had to traverse a couple feet of hide, internals, muscle and bone. Beside my .54 Hawken, I've also used other .50/.54's with a patched ball, and up close, 25-35yds, complete penetration is about 100% as I recall, even with a shoulder coming or going. I use 85-95gr of 3F in my .50cal rifles, and 110gr of 3F in my .54's.

My thought is that any single shot with a gun or bow, is not going to tell you much. You may never recover another ball again. With a .54, the odds are better than even that you won't.

 

[satx78247]

Personally, I fully agree with what Cynthialee & other experienced hunters here have said: Your PRB did precisely what I would have expected & WELL, too.

IF you believe you are "under-gunned" for the game that you hunt, try a Minie-ball of appropriate size in your .54 caliber rifle. = My about 530 grain homebrewed Minies work exactly as I expect & they "pass through" the K-five area nearly 100% of the time out of my ".58 caliber sort of Zouave rifled-musket".
(For really BIG feral hogs, I've decided that I am "under-gunned", after being "treed" more than once. - At 68YY, I don't climb trees well & am looking for a heavier caliber rifle or Cape-gun.)

just my OPINION, satx

 

[robert reed]

No .54 here but I shot a yearling buck this past season with Hornady .490. Complete pass though, DRT. I also shot a yearling doe with a .270 150 no exit and ran 40 + yards. Both at very close range, I don't know why these things happen and don't worry too much about it as both now reside in my freezer! :grin:

 

[daniel collums]

most of the time a ball/bullet will make a clean pass through no matter the details. Some times you can make a perfect up close shot and it will not. Almost all my kills have been made by a .50 and a big double handful from .45's and a few or so with the.54 prb's. Big hogs being the tougher of my big game have stopped some balls even from the .54. I have had a bunch of pass through shots with a .45 on good size hogs and deer. Only a few of the balls recovered were still round most were flat on one side and a bunch looked like chewed gum. There are a lot of factors that don't always add up when shooting slow moving soft lead balls. A little thing about deer hide is its very elastic and when a deers lungs and stomach is not full of air and food it can stretch a lot.

 

[Spikebuck]

But my first question to the guys that are getting full penetration is how hard is the lead? Were your balls homemade? If so how hard was the lead and what type of lead were they made out of?

To date, all I've used for round balls in my .54's is Hornady. By your testing, they are ultra soft lead. For conicals all I've used in my .54's is Hornady GP's.

As stated in my previous post, 13 of 14 I've taken with .54's were complete pass throughs. One shot into a large bodied 7.5 year old (cementum aged) whitetail buck from 2013 was at 89 yards and broke through bone on both sides and was lodged right under the skin on the opposing side...that was a Hornady GP.

DSCN0397 by mdheaser


All were very dead in very short order. :thumbsup: I couldn't be happier with the .54 whether shooting PRB or the GP Conical.

 

[Herb]

Nice looking rifle!

 

[Leatherbark]

It doesn't figure sometimes. My hunting buddy built him a 45 Southern rifle several years ago. I told him the .440 ball would most likely stop before exiting. Our farmer friend likes to use .45 Great Plains bullets as he doesnt like the .440 ball stopping before exiting and has lost a few. My buddy has killed two deer so far with his .45 Southern flintlock and and both balls exited. The last one he shot a few weeks ago was a spike and the ball hit a rib on the way in and blew the heart up, caught a piece of lung tissue and exited.

THe shot was about 40 yards. The entrance hole was big where the .440 Hornady ball hit a rib and I suspect fragments of bone blew outward. The exit hole was small but blood poured out both sides.

He left the deer lay for a while so the farmer could let his bloodhound practice on the blood trail. The deer probably traveled another 40 yards before bleeding out. Dang dog didn't even raise its head to look and sniffed right up to the deer.

Bob

He uses 70 grains of 3f black

You just cant ever figure what a projectile is going to always do.

 

[kaintuck]

Herb,
Not many tree stands there where you hunt! :shocked2:
Beautiful stock on that rifle!
Marc n tomtom

 

[mzloder]

I've had to defend the 30-30 from people who insisted a .270 was the minimum for an ethical kill.

+1, can't count the number of times! Now, I just smile............

 

[mzloder]

Nice deer Herb! :applause:

 

[Idaho Ron]

But my first question to the guys that are getting full penetration is how hard is the lead? Were your balls homemade? If so how hard was the lead and what type of lead were they made out of?

Mine are home cast. I buy the "pure lead" from where I work. Never tested it for hardness. If you want to, I'll send you a few.

If you would like me to test them I would be happy to do so. Ron

 

[irishtoo]

i shoot a .54 home cast soft lead ball, 85gr 3f goex, flintlock. one, two, a couple of time 3 deer a year. all pass thru, no recovered balls, 15 feet to 60 yds, broadside shots. the deer died right there or travel up to 100yds or so. most shots are heart/ lung, several were high and took out the great vessels and spine. i dont know why you didnt get passthru, i would like to recover a ball or two to see what kind of shape their in. i am always amazed that they can travel as far as they do with such massive internal damage, hearts and lungs just shredded. you shot it, it died, you found it. thats the goal. good luck to you. irishtoo

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Wow, I was always told that the ideal shot had your round ball (or other bullet) lodge against the inside of the hide opposite the entry wound, just as you describe here.

A shot like that means ALL of the energy from the shot was expended perfectly in the body of the animal. Any more energy would not have made a difference in the kill as the only other damage it could do is rip through the hide making an exit wound. Stopping partway through is "too little energy", passing through completely is "too much energy", and stopping against the hide on the inside opposite of entry is "just right" (Goldilocks effect!).

Unusual that you didn't see massive blood with only an entry wound on a heart shot. The times that I have done that (only a few), a lot of blood burst out immediately covering the shoulder in blood. The deer rarely made more than a few steps before collapse, let alone run for 60-yards with a heart that was no longer pumping. Adrenalin can do a lot but 60-yards is more common with a lung shot than a heart shot.

I had my heart stop once (luckily, it started right back up) and collapse took less than 1/2 a second. When the heart stops pumping, everything shuts down - like a hydraulic system that loses pressure.

I presume you looked at the heart when you dressed her out. I'd be really curious to find out what part of the heart you hit that a deer could run that far? It had to still be pumping somewhat effectively for the doe to go that distance.

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:

 

[GANGGREEN]

I agree with almost all of the other guys that sometimes things just don't work out as planned and you can't gauge anything based on one shot or one recovered ball. I suppose that I'm more experienced than many and less experienced than a bunch on this board. I've probably killed around 15 deer with .50 flintlocks, shot with both round balls and Powerbelt bullets. I've probably recovered 4 or 5 of those balls/bullets. I've also killed 5 or 6 deer with .54 round balls and never recovered a single one.

I've also never had any issue finding a deer hit with a .54 but I've struggled to find several of those hit with .50s and yes, I even lost a deer or two out of those (probably mostly or completely my fault). In my opinion, for what it's worth, the .54 round ball is simply a superior deer killer about 95% of the time when the hunter does his job.

 

[Greenmtnboy]

Sounds like a good hunt to me.
Don't know why you care if it passes through if you recovered the deer.

exactly!!
:hatsoff:

 

[Spikebuck]

I'd be really curious to find out what part of the heart you hit that a deer could run that far? It had to still be pumping somewhat effectively for the doe to go that distance.

This buck, which dressed 203 pounds, made it 30 to 40 yards straight uphill from the field in the background with the heart pictured below:

Old Moe 2 120913 by mdheaser

DSCN0388 by mdheaser

I don't think that heart was pumping at all after the Hornady GP plowed through it. When I reached inside to gut the deer, I could not believe what I was feeling before I pulled it out. Big game animals (heck, even squirrels) are amazing creatures.

 

[Drahthaar]

That's amazing that the buck pictured made it as far as it did!

I also took a pic of the heart after cleaning the doe. No where near the carnage but through the heart, pics are on my phone. Trying to figure how to post the pics....

Many thanks for all the replies! Love hearing/reading the stories that others have had with similar weapons.