Kentuckywindage said:
a nice conical in the 1:32 twist barrel. You will like the results much better.
Conicals are not magic. The ONLY thing they increase is penetration. Penetration need only be adequate to kill.
Its going to be shot placement. There are problems with conicals that are largely ignored by the modern proponents. Such as; if they are so wonderful why are the naked conicals a modern adaptation for HUNTING rifles? Very few were used in hunting in the past. They were known but not used much. Forsythe, Baker and W.W. Greener all stated that the ML conical was inferior to the RB and very inferior if the RB was of the same weight. MLs never did use conicals, with success anyway, for large game in Africa and India.
Until the advent of the breechloaders the round ball was the preferred hunting projectile in America and many other places as well. The elongated bullet that was used here was the cloth patched "Picket". It did not tend to slide off the powder. But was difficult to load, needed a fitted guide starter or a false muzzle with the same starter, and used more powder and lead with little gained from the hunters standpoint.
The other problem is pressure levels and the picket was bad for this as well. Nipple erosion. then we have increased recoil and higher trajectories due to lower velocity with the naked conical at least. The Picket often required 1/3 more powder than the RB in the same rifle to get decent accuracy and even then it was inferior to the PRB from the same gun at 100 yards in most cases. AND the picket is short with a very short bearing surface my 40 cal picket weighs about. It WAS popular with target shooters in the east for shooting at 220-440 yards.
Now I think the 50 is light for elk. It was according to some historical references considered the minimum for use in the American west in the 1830s. But I would shoot one with no reservations if the shot presented itself I have a 50 cal hunting rifle but have not shot an elk with it. One must always be sure of his shot. Back to shot placement again. A properly placed RB is far better than a poorly placed bullet of any kind.
Examples:
A friend of mine lost an elk he shot with a 338. Said he only got one lung and never got another shot or found the elk. Another friend shot one with a 45-70 broadside and blew a chunk of lung out the far side still followed it a mile before killing it with a followup shot. I did no witness either event. Sometimes the determination of the animal can be incredible.
I have killed a large cow elk with one shot with a 54 RB and I have shot one 4 times with a 40-90-380 at twice the distance but given the bullet weight there is little different between 80 and 175. Elk was dead on its feet but would not fall over. In this case the RB "worked better" or at least required less shooting... Even though the soft 380 gr FP bullets all passed though and did good damage in the process all perfect lung shots above the heart in about a 5" circle. Given that the elk swapped ends after the first shot not too bad.
But the RB broke the humerus and got the Aorta just above the heart. So the elk bled out faster.
So. People can use what they want and are comfortable with. But they need to understand that the naked conical has been known to move off the powder, an inch or two is not going to be catastrophic if the barrel is of good steel. But more than this and there can be "issues". That it causes more nipple erosion due to increased pressure is obvious. It will penetrate better but penetration is a poor guide to killing power.
Animals are not bullet proof and the lead RB has proven to work pretty darned good over is several hundred year service life and never was completely abandoned in America and a hunting projectile.
People that hunt or plan to hunt with MLs really should download Forsythe's "The Sporting Rifle and Its Projectiles". This is the 2nd ed. I think
http://archive.org/details/sportingriflean00forsgoog
Its very enlightening.
Does this exactly address the 50 caliber as an elk rifle? Probably not. But the RB was not abandoned as a hunting projectile when the conical bullet came into use in the second quarter of the 19th c. Though the proponents of the modern conical certainly like the think so from the comments they post. But we have to remember that the "naked" conical and the cloth and paper patched versions are really not new. But the modern conicals were easier for moderns that thought the patch was a PITA and the bullets looked more like what the were used to in their 270s. Besides the instant "experts" writing in the slick paper gun magazines told them the RB was obviously no good (they became experts when the companies making the bullets sent them some to shoot and then write glowingly about, maybe with a rifle to shoot them in).
If I want to shoot a bullet I shoot a breech loader. Unless its a picket rifle match. Now that the rules have changed to require a cloth patched picket bullet (a friend and I finished 1st and 2nd last year with our RB rifles) now I suppose I will have to make a mainspring for the "experiment" I shoot picket bullets in...
Dan
