Hunting loads for my .58 black powder rifle

[cjgregory]

What you should do is google how many grains of powder did a civil war soldier use in his Muzzle loader? You don't need 100 grains of powder.

I tend to agree with that. From my research, they shot 60 grains behind the mini ball. There’s a whole thread on it here. I read the whole thing. Very good thread. Fully testing the 1853 Enfield before the war. More than 60 increased the recoil but had no velocity or accuracy benefits. Thus 60 grains of what we would consider to be 2F powder. I alluded to this earlier that increasing powder charge in a .58 will net mostly nothing. An 1853 musket had a longer and progressive rifling. Starting off as a slow spin and the further it got down the barrel, the rifling tightened up. Kinda brilliant. The musket had a long barrel. Unlike the hawken.
I am going to say you are correct. You obviously have experience.

 

[cjgregory]

A futile quest is what the fellow is on? There isn't much you can do to flaten the trajectory very much.

Nope. It’s a ballistic problem due to ball mass. A .50 caliber and a long barrel? Much better chance.

 

[lou puleff]

A futile quest is what the fellow is on? There isn't much you can do to flaten the trajectory very much.

Prove it !

 

[lou puleff]

Well we will all have to disagree for now but I will get back to this thread in a bit after I do some load testing until then It's turning into a **** show so you guy's can continue if you like but I'm way too busy to keep on this thread at the moment. But I have a plan to prove my point but talking is one thing doing is another so we'll catch up in the near future. I am surprised it went on for seven pages though.

 

[cjgregory]

Prove it !

I think you will prove or disprove this Lou. It’s all on you. You and I have philosophical differences but I want you to kill the deer.

For me, I would rather low crawl at 4:00am to one of those stands of trees I saw in the pictures.
I’ve crawled into the middle of three bucks with my recurve in the dark and didn’t see them until enough light started to show my surroundings. I never got a shot. Too close. Any movement would have blown them out of there. So I contently watched them until the wind shifted and they were instantly gone.

My best shot at distance could never equal that. The best lessons you learn come from failure. I’m a hunter. My match shooting is personal military skill. They are not the same or the same subject.
Just like archery and hunting are not even related subjects. Both are completely different skill sets. A jack of all trades is a master of none.
Forget all that…I was just yacking. Not preaching. Go have fun.

 

[nkbj]

Lou, now that everyone has told you that you can't do it and that it'll be unethical when you do, why not go ahead and set up there off season shooting a cardboard deer? Once you went through the process of load development, doing whatever might be needed to the sights or other hardware, getting zeroed in, there wouldn't be no more questions. You'd know all about what to do and how far you could do it.
I haven't had eyes that good for over forty years.