More on Snowshoe Hares

[BrownBear]

I made the mistake the other day of letting my wife shoot my little 36, and as a result I'm now using my GPR 54 for snowshoe hares. I guess you could say I gained a hunting partner while losing a rifle, and darned if she isn't a better shot with it than I am!

Anyway, the GPR has only been in the house a week and I'm just getting acquainted. I started out with 60 grains of FFFg behind the round ball, and since it shot to point of aim at 25 yards and is really consistent, I haven't messed with any other loads.

I'm willing to bet that load is overkill for what I'm doing. If the shot drops a little low into the neck, there's nothing left above the shoulders but a stub. Anyone out there acquainted with lighter loads, or am I wasting more time than powder wondering about it?

 

[Haggis]

I've used a .50 PRB for squirrels and loaded it way down. If I had a .54 I'd start with 15 or 20 grains and work up or down from there with whatever would maintain accuracy out to 20 or 25 yards.

I always figured that I could kill a varmint with a rock if I could hit it hard enough and still not break the hide.

The point I'm making is, if you can get that big .54 ball to crack Brer Rabbit on the noggin and just knock him out that's good enough; as long as you can get to him before he wakes up.

Think about traditional archers who use "blunts" for small game. These points are designed to stun the little fellow, or kill on impact; we can do the same thing with our big bores if we get rid of all of our preconcieved notions about power.

A word to the wise; I once gave this information to a fellow who was new to ML. He put in about a 5 grain load (or so he told me later), walked right up to a seasoned White Oak fence post and shot it; point blank. The ball hit the post, bounced back and hit him dead in the center of the chest and knocked the wind out of him. He drove to the hospital and got x-rays and then to the gun shop and sold the gun.

When he told me about it later I tried to be concerned and he sensed my compassion by the way I turned from him and fell against a nearby tree shoulders heaving and tears running down my face. He told me not to cry, he was going to be fine.

 

[BrownBear]

Makes good sense. I have lots of experience whacking snowshoes with blunt arrows @ 300 grains and 300 fps or so, but I never made the correlation.

The account of your friend reminds me of when a friend and I were using 430 RB's in 44 special cases with a grain of Bullseye powder behind them for plinking. You could seem them in mid-air and they would just penetrate a spruce 1x10 from about 15 feet. He had the bright idea to shoot at a knot, and the RB richetted back and hit him in the forehead. Made a pretty good knot on him, too!

 

[musketman]

Wrabbits can be killed with air guns too, so load that muzzleloader down...

When using reduced loads, be carefull not to reduce it too far so the patched round ball goes past the bottom edges of the riflings...

My Lyman muzzleloading book only goes as low as 40 grains of FFFg (so I won't recommend andthing lower), but that yeilds 1110 fps with 329 FT/lbs. at 100 yards, more than enough for the snowshoe wrabbits...

 

[Haggis]

Elmer Keith, in talking about black powder cartridges, used "cream of wheat" to increase the volumn of powder. Soft wads of cloth or plain old TP can be used over the powder to seat the ball farther up the barrel.

Powder - soft wad/cream of wheat - patched ball

 

[musketman]

quote:Originally posted by Haggis:
Powder - soft wad/cream of wheat - patched ball This reminds me of using corn meal in black powder revolvers to take up any excess space, I guess the same princible would apply to the rifle...

This would make reduced loads safer, I remember reading about adding a tuff of hollow-fill to reduced cartridge loads, mostly to hold the powder near the primer area inside the brass case.

 

[Haggis]

I used reduced loads long before I knew that anyone but a few oddballs were shooting the old guns. I never heard of loading charts and books till I was about 30. Of course, it never hurts to play the odds if one is concerned about where the ball sits in the barrel.

I wonder if Indians using reduced loads may have been the reason some Mountain Men wrote about Indian guns "going pop, pop, pop?"

 

[musketman]

quote:Originally posted by Haggis:
I wonder if Indians using reduced loads may have been the reason some Mountain Men wrote about Indian guns "going pop, pop, pop?" I would suspect they did because of the fact that powder was hard to come by in the mountains...

When they did trade for it, it was 1 1/2 times the price for an Indian than it was for a white man... (from the sales records of Ashley)

Oops, this may have to continue in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade section...

 

[Stumpkiller]

My favorite bunny/squirrel load in my .54 is 42 grains of FFFg (I use an empty .45 Colt case as a measure). I also have a 48 gr measure made out of a fox femur that shoots a .54 round ball with no noticable difference. In doing some distance tests I was splitting 2" thick shale rocks at 100 yards (across a ravine - a favorite shooting spot of mine). The balls were splattered and torn to pieces even at that range with the light loads, so even half charge loads have plenty of oomph in the .54. The only living thing I've ever hit at that distance (100 yds) with the half-loads are woodchucks, and they are in agreement that it still has enough whollop to work; though chucks ain't rocks and it tends to drill through.

The early breechloader Spencers and such fired rimfire cartridges in the mid 50 calibers with 50 grains of black powder, and the old Henry .44 was no barn-burner, but they gained a reputation as sure killers. We newcomers tend to load pretty hot as we're using much better steel in the barrels and are used to higher velocities (and can measure them). Once the ball is on the other side of the animal the remaining energy is wasted.

 

[BrownBear]

Sounds like I can reduce loads quite a bit, keeping in mind the start of the rifling. I messed with all sorts of fillers in cartridges, enough that I'm a little reluctant to start the same hassle with a muzzleloader. Anyone ever use reduced loads of FFG, say 40 grains, to keep the bulk up while slowing down the ball? Maybe crazy, but it would be my first choice over using fillers or extra wads, if possible.

 

[musketman]

Do you have a ball puller?

It may be a good idea to run a patched ball down the barrel with the sole purpose of finding out where your riflings end... (if it gets stuck, then I didn't suggest it, unless it works.)

If they go all the way to the breech plug, then you should be OK to do 20-25 grains of powder without using fillers...

You would be able to tell where the riflings end, it would get loose and the ram rod would move without much force, just measure where it got loose...

I get around this by using smoothbores...

 

[BrownBear]

Good suggestion. I'll have to do some reading, but as I recall Lyman said something about using a 35 caliber brush once in a while to clean the "powder chamber" or some such. It made me believe that there is a sizeable step or hollow into the breech plug beyond the barrel. Doesn't make sense that they would turn out the rifling for a ways as part of installing the plug, but who knows. Easy enough to test. I tried running a really tight patch on the jag, but couldn't feel enough difference to learn anything. Thanks for the ideas. If I learn anything worthwhile, I'll post it here.