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Food for thought on smaller calibers for hunting big game.

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Guys, I know this is not a great example of what a difference in bullet size can do, but I would like to share something that happened to me last week at the range.

On this trip I took my .50 New Englander and wanted to do some testing with different rounds. For a backstop I took a metal real estate sign. I put a target on the front of that and placed it out at 100 yards. I shot a few Maxi Balls, then some lighter 240 grain unmentionables that holds the bullets that were actually .44 caliber. When I was finished shooting I went to check out the target and pull the sign. I was amazed at the difference in the hole sizes in the metal was. The 365 Grain Maxi Balls blew a large hole through the metal with large tearing and jagged metal facing rearward. The 240 grain unmentionable holes were much smaller and cleaner. I also had some other unmentionable rounds that were bore size but a little lighter than the Maxi Balls. For whatever reason, even though the Maxis and the bore size unmentionable were the same dia, the Maxis left a much more wicked hole. Both the other rounds were no doubt traveling faster as they are lighter than the Maxis.

Conclusion............the heavier bullet proved to be much more damaging. Even though it was traveling slower than the other two and was the same dia as one of them. I have no doubts what so ever that the same would apply to game.

Not an apples to apples comparison to the discussion, but nonetheless noteworthy.
ETipp, your 240 Gr. bullet punched that cookie cutter hole due its high velocity (and shape). If you could push your 360 maxi to the same velocity you would have another cookie cutter hole in that sheet metal. That torn protruding metal is just indicative of low velocity.
 
ETipp, your 240 Gr. bullet punched that cookie cutter hole due its high velocity (and shape). If you could push your 360 maxi to the same velocity you would have another cookie cutter hole in that sheet metal. That torn protruding metal is just indicative of low velocity.
 
ETipp, your 240 Gr. bullet punched that cookie cutter hole due its high velocity (and shape). If you could push your 360 maxi to the same velocity you would have another cookie cutter hole in that sheet metal. That torn protruding metal is just indicative of low velocity.

Lets just say that the 240 is a smaller dia hollow point. :)It was not a total cookie cutter hole, it had some jagged edges.

To further illustrate this, those unmentionables are known for blowing big holes in deer and/or overexpansion. Whereas the Maxi Balls were hard cast and all the critters I have ever put one through puts a .50 caliber hole coming and going. That is until solid bone is hit. The amount of damage they do then is unbelievable. I suppose I should have mentioned that.

Now to even further prove this, lets go back to the other unmentionable. It was a 300 grain made of another alloy and is an extreme hollow point. So much so that many people will not use them and they are not known for penetration. Even the manufacturer states this. It was traveling faster than the Maxis, made of thinner extreme hollow point, same bore diameter, but did not do near the damage in the metal as the Maxis did. All were shot with the same powder charge from 100 yards.

Considering the above, one can only come to the conclusion that it is a larger, slower, heavier projectile that is most damaging on critters, even if they do not expand.

There is some very good ML penetration tests on Youtube by I Love Muzzleloaders. He shoots different ML projectiles into lined up water jugs. All with the same .50 ML from 100 yards. All with the same charge. Out of many different projectiles he tests, the average ones penetrate about 4 to maybe 5 jugs. He shot a 500 grain conical using the same powder charge. It destroyed and went through 9 jugs. About double the other ones did. And that particular one did have some expansion.

Indeed, there is something about a heavier ML projectile that is no doubt traveling slower that is superior upon impact.

My .02
 
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Lets just say that the 240 is a smaller dia hollow point. :)It was not a total cookie cutter hole, it had some jagged edges.

To further illustrate this, those unmentionables are known for blowing big holes in deer and/or overexpansion. Whereas the Maxi Balls were hard cast and all the critters I have ever put one through puts a .50 caliber hole coming and going. That is until solid bone is hit. The amount of damage they do then is unbelievable. I suppose I should have mentioned that.

Now to even further prove this, lets go back to the other unmentionable. It was a 300 grain made of another alloy and is an extreme hollow point. So much so that many people will not use them and they are not known for penetration. Even the manufacturer states this. It was traveling faster than the Maxis, made of thinner extreme hollow point, same bore diameter, but did not do near the damage in the metal as the Maxis did. All were shot with the same powder charge from 100 yards.

Considering the above, one can only come to the conclusion that it is a larger, slower, heavier projectile that is most damaging on critters, even if they do not expand.

There is some very good ML penetration tests on Youtube by I Love Muzzleloaders. He shoots different ML projectiles into lined up water jugs. All with the same .50 ML from 100 yards. All with the same charge. Out of many different projectiles he tests, the average ones penetrate about 4 to maybe 5 jugs. He shot a 500 grain conical using the same powder charge. It destroyed and went through 9 jugs. About double the other ones did. And that particular one did have some expansion.

Indeed, there is something about a heavier ML projectile that is no doubt traveling slower that is superior upon impact.

My .02
Lt James Forsyth addressed this same question in his “Sporting Rifles and Their Projectiles”, a slim book that summed up the challenges of different black powder projectiles. He compared the new Minie slug and other elongated lead bullets to the round ball. Trajectory, range, striking power and results on flesh and bone etc were all analyzed. For hunting pretty much everything in India, Forsyth concluded that nothing could beat the round ball at sporting ranges up to 200 yards. It’s pretty interesting to see the same discussion today, albeit with some different projectiles included. Funny how in the 160 years since Forsyth’s book, sportsmen still face the same challenges. Forsyth did not anticipate smokeless powders or hypervelocity small projectiles with huge shock value. I don’t know if any of these modern systems would have moved him away from the round ball, because he was a sportsman giving wild game animals a sporting chance. He put real value on fieldcraft, and he was not sniping them from six hundred yards away. Seems to me the people on this website are cut in the mold of Lt Forsyth. We like challenging ourselves and meeting the animals on their own territory. I can admire and respect this spirit of the hunter. It’s a real antidote to an unfortunate trend with modern arms and optics.
 
In reading many posts on deer and bear hunting, I am very surprised at the number of contributors that down play the use of smaller caliber rifles like the .40 or .45 ( if legal in your state). Historically it been proven that these smaller calibers harvest deer, bear, and hogs cleanly with a single shot. Yet so many push for the larger .50, .54 calibers. Now don't get me wrong, the larger bores work Great!! and I love hunting with my .54 caliber, but have harvested deer and hogs easily with my .45 rifles with patch and round balls. After all hunters killed Bison with 45/70s ( .45 cal conical bullet with 70 grains black powder). History has showed us this can and does work on LARGE game yet so many are nervous about hunting deer with them. Now I'm talking about solid lung shots at reasonable distances (80 yards and under). I guess I'm curious why folks feel they have to go to bigger calibers for Med size game? At most of the Museums I've been to that had displays of muzzleloading rifle most of the guns from the mid west and south were .35 to .45 calibers. So anyways just my two cents worth, and would love to hear success stories with small caliber rifles and or why you prefer a larger caliber. Not trying to start anything as I don't believe there is a wrong answer. I look forward to hearing from you all. :)
Probably cause folks shoot longer ,I do with conicals and deer are scarce where I hunt ,I like to eat (regular)/Ed
 
There have been many stories/photos posted here over the years of whitetails taken with .45's...including some really whopper bucks. Clearly the .45 is effective whitetail medicine! A number of those, however, mentioned a lack of good blood trail.

Being "color blind" I can tell you that I want two large open holes spewing blood.

I have never used a .45 but over 22 years have taken many northern whitetails, several of them being large bucks, with .50, .54, .58, and .62 round balls and .50 & .54 conicals. I settled on the .54 with PRB as the most "efficient" for what I desire. Nearly always pass through with solid blood trails, not as expensive as conicals, not as much lead or powder as my .58 & .62 required but virtually the same results.

Here are my largest two bucks with a .54 prb. Both went about 30 yards spewing blood before crashing. A third that is just a bit smaller in rack but was well over 200# dressed weight had the same results. Would a .45 have consistently done that on a double lung hit? Maybe, but for me personally, I want more assurance.

View attachment 187423

Just a side note that a .45 RB with 70 grs is not comparable to a 45/70 except in diameter only...and not really even that. I have been tempted from time to time to get a .45 capper with a conical barrel. But I don't think it would do more than my .54 prb guns.
Probably would ,I use both ,with conicals will do it @ 200 + yds . I got both and the Kibler SMR in 45 stays with squirrels while I'm big on 50/54 Renegades with Lyman Plains (home cast ) as store bought don't work for me and the folks who buy mine/Ed
 
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Lt James Forsyth addressed this same question in his “Sporting Rifles and Their Projectiles”, a slim book that summed up the challenges of different black powder projectiles. He compared the new Minie slug and other elongated lead bullets to the round ball. Trajectory, range, striking power and results on flesh and bone etc were all analyzed. For hunting pretty much everything in India, Forsyth concluded that nothing could beat the round ball at sporting ranges up to 200 yards. It’s pretty interesting to see the same discussion today, albeit with some different projectiles included. Funny how in the 160 years since Forsyth’s book, sportsmen still face the same challenges. Forsyth did not anticipate smokeless powders or hypervelocity small projectiles with huge shock value. I don’t know if any of these modern systems would have moved him away from the round ball, because he was a sportsman giving wild game animals a sporting chance. He put real value on fieldcraft, and he was not sniping them from six hundred yards away. Seems to me the people on this website are cut in the mold of Lt Forsyth. We like challenging ourselves and meeting the animals on their own territory. I can admire and respect this spirit of the hunter. It’s a real antidote to an unfortunate trend with modern arms and optics.

I can and do respect that. One reason why I just purchased a .54 round ball ML. Use to have one and really liked it. Having to move on to Maxi Balls (due to all the other ML I purchased did not like RB) I learned quite a bit from real world testing on critters. It has been quite the learning experience. There is some merit in what you conveyed also, in terms of RB. I hunted with a guy out west that shot an elk with a .54 Lyman Great Plains Rifle using a RB. He said that when he shot the elk he could see dust fly off the side of it upon impact. He said it really thumped when it hit. I helped pack that elk out.

Not long after that I shot an elk with a .50 using a Maxi Ball. It was much further than what the above hunter had shot his elk. I would reckon it was about 150 yard shot. Hit the elk, it took about 5 slow steps and stopped behind a downed pine tree and stood there for a bit. I reloaded and put another Maxi into it and it was dead. When quartering it up I found one of the two Maxis in the far side hide where it almost exited. I still have that hard cast Maxi with only one small dent in the tip.

When correlating with some very avid elk hunters out west, some here on the forums, they use a large 500 grain conical wrapped in a paper patch. They are sized to the bore of their rifles. They contend that has provided them with the most success especially with those way out yonder shots on elk.

For out to perhaps 150 yards, I welcome the soon to be for me .54 caliber RB shooter. RB is all this ole boy ever wanted to shoot.
 
I have no doubts of the effectiveness of a 45 PRB on a deer however, I go with mostly a 54. Killing game with a ml is more analogous to killing with an arrow. A wound channel that results in rapid loss of blood pressure is essential for both. Members here regularly effectively kill everything from coyotes to moose with balls carrying 500 FPE or even less. Suppository hunters are mostly anchored to the velocity/energy concepts that rule their world. In the process they throw away a lot of destroyed meat!
I think a lot of this goes right back to modern guns and a modern hunter mind set. Most of us shot some sort of suppository gun before learning about real guns.
We see the Ft pounds of modern gun and want that for our front stuffer. No can do.
But we try.
So we go in to the deer woods wanting a 30-06 or even a 30-30. So the closest we can get is a .50 or bigger loaded for bear.
Conical is a little better than ball, but not much. And we just don’t get that power even then.
Ml is archery on steroids. Get close eat venison.
That’s the rules of our sport. And in its range a ml even in smaller size does the job.
Besides picking up a ml, and shooting well with it we have to get past the mindset of modern day hunting, we have to put on an eighteenth century mindset even if one is not wearing a riflemans shirt.
Boone killed a deer or two with his .47 rifle.
 
I was with a friend when he shot a nice buck with is .45 long rifle and 70 grains of BP. The Buck limped around for a while in a corn field. The RB probably hit a rib and didn't have enough power to punch through for a killing shot. Deer here in Ohio are large bodied animals. I tracked the deer to the edge of a river where he jumped in and was washed downstream to never to be seen again. That turned me off to using a .45 for deer hunting. I have a .40 just for target shooting. That diminutive RB I don't feel has the humane power to effectively take deer. The .40 would make a dandy turkey gun if that was allowed here in Ohio. Minimum of 50 caliber, and the 54 is better. The .54 is probably the best caliber minimum.
Ohio Rusty ><>
 
As this topic wanders here and there, question for the more experienced guys. I've been shooting 100% lead projectiles in .530 and .570. Typically I top out at 90-100 grains of Swiss ffg in both rifles. Most shots on whitetails and mule deer are under 50 for me though as long as 110 at times. They are all emphatically dead pretty quickly.

All that said, I don't always get exit holes even on the closer shots. Massive energy dumps and quick death but no exit seems odd sometimes. I've read about guys shooting balls that are hardened up a bit. And the results seem to be more consistent exit holes on game. So my question to those on here would that type of hardened ball help or hurt roundball performance of 45, 50, 54, etc?

I've been lazy and just bought the lead bullets but knowing what each rifle prefers, I could see getting into pouring my own for better performance.
 
Using a harder alloy will lighten that ball a bit. Not a lot. But you have to remember the round ball is the worst shape for retaining velocity and lighter weight equals less energy. As stated above, a bow hunter's mentality goes a long way in successfully killing deer with a ball. Get close and get the ball where it needs to be.

The deer I've killed with black powder have all been inside 40 yards. There is a good possibility that people that claim a successful 200 yard shot with ball have not used a range finder.
 
As this topic wanders here and there, question for the more experienced guys. I've been shooting 100% lead projectiles in .530 and .570. Typically I top out at 90-100 grains of Swiss ffg in both rifles. Most shots on whitetails and mule deer are under 50 for me though as long as 110 at times. They are all emphatically dead pretty quickly.

All that said, I don't always get exit holes even on the closer shots. Massive energy dumps and quick death but no exit seems odd sometimes. I've read about guys shooting balls that are hardened up a bit. And the results seem to be more consistent exit holes on game. So my question to those on here would that type of hardened ball help or hurt roundball performance of 45, 50, 54, etc?

I've been lazy and just bought the lead bullets but knowing what each rifle prefers, I could see getting into pouring my own for better performance.
Interesting question. I know for a fact that a larger, heavier, solid point conical are superior penetrators in big game, this is especially at longer distances. With round balls weighing less, by a lot in some cases, my guess is that alone will be a major factor when comparing them to a heavier conical. As I have said, there's something about a big solid, heavy chuck of lead shot out of ML that makes the difference. Penetration is often directly related to ball/conical weight, as well as design. Hollow point ML conical type rounds tent not to penetrate in larger game as much due to the fact that they often heavily expand. So again, a heavy solid chunk of lead wins in that department. However, those same over expanding conical type projectiles can and do make very good performers on lighter game and at moderate distances.

With that said, it would be interesting to find out how a fairly hardened round ball would perform on medium and large game at moderate distances. Considering the ball never touches the lands, I do not see where it would hurt anything, other than the critter hit smashes into. However, there's also the fact that we are not shooting bore diameter projectiles.

MY recent purchase on a ML was, for the most part, due to my hankering to go back to shooting RB. And I wanted it to be in .54 caliber. At my happy hunting grounds here and when considering the size of game, as well as the average distance of my intended shooting on deer, a larger RB makes perfect sense. I still have my .50 that's a conical shooter in case I have a change of heart.

I can promise folks that as thick as the area is, as well as steep, at my happy hunting grounds, if I encounter more than a couple of times where I have to join the Upper Cumberland Hiking Club to find a hit deer, it will be back to the good old and proven conical for this ole boy. I've yet to have any critter go more than a very few yards before falling over.
 
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I never saw this thread until today.
To the original post.
I shot 5 does 21/22 season here in PA with my 45, .440 RB with 65 grains FFF behind it.
I built a .58 this summer and shot 2 with it this past fall.
They were all dead the same. I do shoot my 45 better. Is it the gun or the fact I have shot the 45 more, I can't say for sure.
I love them both.

I wondered about a guy who could shoot a bunch of different guns, all well. I mean they all gotta hold a little different and so on, some things have a different sight picture.... But I like what another guy at the club said, a good shooter can shoot em all.
 
I never saw this thread until today.
To the original post.
I shot 5 does 21/22 season here in PA with my 45, .440 RB with 65 grains FFF behind it.
I built a .58 this summer and shot 2 with it this past fall.
They were all dead the same. I do shoot my 45 better. Is it the gun or the fact I have shot the 45 more, I can't say for sure.
I love them both.

I wondered about a guy who could shoot a bunch of different guns, all well. I mean they all gotta hold a little different and so on, some things have a different sight picture.... But I like what another guy at the club said, a good shooter can shoot em all.
Thanks for the real world testing report. For many applications, a .45 RB will suffice. No doubt about that one. I would very much like for my next ML to be a .45 caliber, most likely a long rifle. Just a good all round caliber for taking small game and medium size game out to moderated distances. I would not hesitate to use it as my primary squirrel rife and and at closer distances I have little doubt it will put down the average size deer in these parts.

However, if/when the size of game increases, as well as the distances shot, a larger bore is superior. I have no plans on getting rid of my big bore ML's just in case.
 
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There is a major statistical difference between small caliber round balls and large caliber round balls when traveling down range. You can verify it with a book like the Lyman black powder handbook, 1st ed. a 36 caliber ball loses approximately 64% of it's muzzle velocity by the time it reaches 100 yds. A 40 caliber ball loses approximately 60% A 45 caliber ball loses about 55%, a 50 caliber round ball loses about 50% a 58 caliber round ball loses about 42% of it's muzzle velocity at 100 yds. There is some variation depending on charges, etc, balls moving faster than sound tend to lose more velocity by 100 yds the faster they start out.. This inverse proportion is not a hard rule, but is close to the trend if you examine the velocities in the book.

Now I don't believe for a second that ft pounds of energy down range is the end all, but since energy is a factor of velocity squared, the smaller the ball, the more energy loss by 100 yds. A 58 caliber ball not only packs more energy, it makes a hole 3 or 4 times the size of a 40 caliber hole. ie more blood loss and shock. Better chance of an immediate kill and certainly a better chance of a blood trail.

Some people like to compare it to fishing and using 2 pound test line. The difference is if the fish breaks the line, it gets away barely injured. Better than a mammal dying days later of sepsis from being gut shot.

I owe it to the game to kill as quickly as possible. That can mean only close well placed shots or somewhat less well placed at greater distance with something still likely to kill.

I don't know how good a marksman a person is. No doubt some could take an elk with a 32 caliber. But by far, most could not. If I were to be fortunate enough for a large game hunt, I would want every advantage possible. A moderate hunting load in a 54 or 58 caliber does that for me without sacrificing accuracy..
 
Traditional Hunting this Sub Forum is about. So what is or isn't in this time frame. I have read some modern products that some use n some don't, would n would not be traditional. ML's n the cal.'s smaller on up i suppose it would be the users discretion of what he/she were comfortable using to kill the deer/Bear that were n are here. Well i can not afford to be traditional my clothing n all of my ML's n hunting equipment is from 1940 n newer. I don't use .25/.32/.36 cal's to hunt Med. sized game with. I do n have used .40 n 45 n will base my exp. with them. The farther you try to shoot game the more chance of a mistake n bad shot happening. I have seldom got a long shot in the woods/timber where i live. The long shots if you call them that are around meadows n clearings n pastures. For me n the .40 n .45 are very good for hunting deer n Bears. My eyes are not what they were in my younger years. So i prefer all of my shots this side of 75 yards. To say a .50- on up is over kill is not correct, you can only kill a game animal dead, not over dead. Choose what you like n can shoot well get it
 
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