Passthroughs By A Ball

[Walkingeagle]

.490" round ball through and through this bull elk.

If you have time sir, would you mind sharing the particulars of this elk kill. Specifically the load used, distance of shot, etc.
I’ve been around absolutely dozens upon dozens of elk kills/recoveries, and one thing is certain, if you do not do it right, you better have a ton of tracking skill and good boots. Yur gonna need them!
Anyhow, I’ve always been a little nervous about the .50 prb and much prefer the .54 for the elk. Being said however, in skilled hands of a patient and experienced hunter I know its more than capable, so don’t get me wrong.
Walk

 

[firestick]

Haven't killed many deer with a ML'dr but I have never found a lead ball. Every kill resulted in a "passthru". Of course I only took chest shots and never hit a shoulder. Never had one run far either.

 

[appalichian hunter]

I will wait on a broadside shot heart, lung. put the right shot in the boiler maker if the deer does not go straight down wait a bit follow the blood trail never had one shot that way go over 30-40 yards and left plenty of blood. The quartering chest shot is deadly but I feel you are limited to target area. A bit off to the left on Daves picture and you have a high liver shot a bit low and you have a gut shot deer both leading to a long recovery and a suffering animal.

 

[Spikebuck]

I have used .50, .54, .58, and .62 on whitetails over the last 21 years, but the vast majority have been with a .54. My normal load is 90 grs of 2F with a .530 PRB. I have also used the Buffalo Ball-et on two and the Hornady Great Plains on several (.54 on most of the conicals and same 90 gr charge of 2F).

My shots have been from 8 yards to 115 yards. Deer size has ranged from "normal" sized adult whitetail does that are usually around 120# field dressed, but the largest was 156# dressed, to large mature bucks exceeding 200# dressed weight. I have only had three shots, that I recall, that did not pass through. I am normally a broadside to quartering away lung shooter, but will take a quartering into frontal at closer ranges if I think the gig is up and a broadside shot will not become available.

Only one of the three non pass throughs was with the PRB and was a quartering into shot. This shot went through a lot of shoulder bone and frankly the ball ended up in pieces all over along with a ton of shattered bone fragments. It was a .530 ball, but pushed by 105 gr of 2F because that's what that particular rifle likes to eat.

The other two were conicals. One was a 50 all lead hornady on a steep uphill quartering into shot. That one entered low on one side was found at the top of the shoulder on the other side. It was a yearling spike buck. The other was a large 203# 7 1/2 yo buck (cross section tooth aged) with a .54 Hornady GP at 83 yards broadside. It broke ribs on both sides and blew the heart in half. It was just under the hide on the off side.

This picture shows the one used on the deer and an unshot one for comparison:

This is the heart damage done...and he still made it about 30 yards uphill!

Based on all the broadside passthru's I've had (somewhere around 20 or so over the 21 years) and an examination of the exit wounds, I'd say normal expansion is very little on my shots. My projectiles are pretty much going in one side and out the other, even when breaking ribs on both sides. I have only used production balls/bullets which are claimed by the manufacturer to be pure lead OR ball I have cast myself from purchased commercial lead claimed to be pure.

 

[Capn'D]

Just a story to go with this:

In the Choe Stoe valley where I have my 2nd home, the habit in the 1820s was to turn all your pigs loose to fatten and fend for themselves all summer long and most of the fall. When killing time came in late October, everyone in the valley would herd them all up and move them en-masse to a set of holding pens at the top of the only road out of the Valley (known as Hog Pen Gap today) where they would sort out one family's pigs from the others, decide what to kill for meat, what to keep for breeding and the ones to be taken two days down the mountain to sell in Gainesville. It was also the local habit to scratch your initials on your round balls in case there were disputes over whose ball killed which deer or bear. At the end of one fattening season, a local farmer decided that his boar hog was too big and too dangerous to be kept in the Valley. It had done damage to local farms for two years, chased people, eaten food crops and was generally a menace. It was the 1820's and they were using large balls, mostly from smoothbores left over from 1812 and the Rev War. With difficulty they got the boar home ( a whole story in itself) and he shot it dead with a .74. But in cleaning cutting and smoking the pork he located 13 round balls with the initials of half the folks in the valley who had been shooting the pig as it ate their corn or chased their kids. Large pigs are hard to stop even with big balls...And that can result in a story itself!

 

[toot]

.490" round ball through and through this bull elk.

now that is an impressive engine room!! well I guess it was?

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I don't like that shot either. Go for lungs and it's not going far.

I used to think that, but I've found that when you engage a deer, especially a buck that has been spooked within the last 10 minutes or so..., they can go very far.

The last buck that I harvested was pushed over onto the farm where I was hunting because of a pack of hounds and fox hunters. He came over to my side of the roadway, and apparently slowed down, but you could still hear the fox hounds and the guy on the horse with that tiny horn that they use...,

So the buck fast-walked up a hill through a wood lot (where I was located), pushing four doe in front of him. I saw the doe first, and set up ready to take one, when he came up behind them. He was almost running and it might've been a tricky shot, but all of a sudden he stopped, broadside to me at 60 yards, and looked back over his shoulder at the other farm where the guy with the tiny horn was a blowin' a signal. [Thank you God!] I moved my sight picture a little to my left, onto the buck's lung area, and squeezed off a shot. BANG!

So through the smoke I saw him stumble, then trot over a little rise behind him where the woods opened into a field. The rise had served as a backstop. I expected to find him just over that rise. I reloaded, and then waited 20 minutes. I then headed out to collect my deer.......,

...'Cept he wasn't there. the grass was ankle high, and he was nowhere to be seen. There was a shed about 40 yards beyond, so I figured he went behind that and I checked. Nope..., not there, and no blood trail. So I picked up on the path the doe took, and figured they'd be near him and not too far away. Found them 200 yards away, but not the buck. When I was headed back to "start from the top" I spotted his tail. He was lyin down behind a tiny bush, and I figured I must've poorly placed my shot for him to be down 100 yards from where he was hit.

As I field dressed him I found my .530 round ball had smashed through a rib, shattering it and the bone fragments had caused lung damage as well as the ball, then the ball exited by passing between two ribs and out the other side. Lungs were chewed to bits, but..., all that left-over adrenaline and he could still go. That's the farthest I've ever had a deer go when hit in both lungs with an entry and exit wound.

LD

 

[Griz44Mag]

Also the hardness of the lead used. Home cast balls are often not pure, but salvaged from wheelweights, range scrap, etc. Even the smallest amount of tin will affect the hardness.
Walk

I think you meant to say antimony -
My hardness tests have not shown that to be true with tin. An ounce if tin in 8# of pure lead will produce balls as shiny and slick as ball bearings, and the hardness change cannot be detected using the very consistent CabineTree hardness tester.
Now - make that an ounce of antimony instead of tin and there is a big swing in hardness.
I have cast pure soft round balls and on the top end 26+BH hard hard bullets for the gas checked K31. Hard enough they shatter on impact instead deforming. Wheel weights are all over the charts - testing ranges from 8BH all the way up to 18BH. They have many impurities in them including zinc which can ruin a caster's day really fast. Testing and verifying lead alloy hardness is something I was exposed to at an early stage - my grandfather's casting business was casting and machining babbitt bearings for large diesel engine main and rod connectors. I wish I would have had more time with him as an adult to absorb a lot more of his knowledge about lead and its many alloys. IIRC he used copper in his alloys as a hardening agent. He used one of this babbitt formulas to cast bullets for his "unmentionable" rifle. (Hint - it had a saddle ring on it)

 

[rodwha]

Just a story to go with this:

In the Choe Stoe valley where I have my 2nd home, the habit in the 1820s was to turn all your pigs loose to fatten and fend for themselves all summer long and most of the fall. When killing time came in late October, everyone in the valley would herd them all up and move them en-masse to a set of holding pens at the top of the only road out of the Valley (known as Hog Pen Gap today) where they would sort out one family's pigs from the others, decide what to kill for meat, what to keep for breeding and the ones to be taken two days down the mountain to sell in Gainesville. It was also the local habit to scratch your initials on your round balls in case there were disputes over whose ball killed which deer or bear. At the end of one fattening season, a local farmer decided that his boar hog was too big and too dangerous to be kept in the Valley. It had done damage to local farms for two years, chased people, eaten food crops and was generally a menace. It was the 1820's and they were using large balls, mostly from smoothbores left over from 1812 and the Rev War. With difficulty they got the boar home ( a whole story in itself) and he shot it dead with a .74. But in cleaning cutting and smoking the pork he located 13 round balls with the initials of half the folks in the valley who had been shooting the pig as it ate their corn or chased their kids. Large pigs are hard to stop even with big balls...And that can result in a story itself!

I’d love to hear more of the story if you don’t mind.

 

[kemart17]

From when I was first becoming interested in hunting with a patched ball it seemed that what I read of others experiences was that a common medium game caliber (.45-.54) would typically expand and create a nice sound with the ball often found just under the hide out to about 75 yds, but that after that the ball tended to not expand and was typically found to give a complete pass through. Some have claimed otherwise with one feeling it takes a heavy animal such as a buffalo to trap one.

So I’d like to get a better idea of what people tend to experience along with powder charge if possible.

i hunt with a 58 and 110 gr 2fg and PRB, never found a ball in 1 yet.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I think you meant to say antimony -
My hardness tests have not shown that to be true with tin. An ounce if tin in 8# of pure lead will produce balls as shiny and slick as ball bearings, and the hardness change cannot be detected using the very consistent CabineTree hardness tester.
Now - make that an ounce of antimony instead of tin and there is a big swing in hardness.

Yeah tin drops the melting point from that of pure lead a bit, and makes for an easier pour from a ladle. Antimony, or some tin/bismuth alloy mixed in gives you much harder results.

LD

 

[Spikebuck]

My hardness tests have not shown that to be true with tin. An ounce if tin in 8# of pure lead will produce balls as shiny and slick as ball bearings, and the hardness change cannot be detected...

Interesting....I wonder if the shiny/slick surface would help keep oxidation off the outside? Nothing I hate more than to open my container of cast lead ball after not shooting for a while to see a bunch of oxidation. Any observations on that? Maybe yours don't sit around long enough.

 

[rodwha]

Has anyone ever recovered a pristine ball?

 

[hanshi]

A few recovered balls from the off-side deer hide,

Bad photo, but these are unfired ball for comparison.

 

[Howard Pippin]

I think you meant to say antimony -
My hardness tests have not shown that to be true with tin. An ounce if tin in 8# of pure lead will produce balls as shiny and slick as ball bearings, and the hardness change cannot be detected using the very consistent CabineTree hardness tester.
Now - make that an ounce of antimony instead of tin and there is a big swing in hardness.
I have cast pure soft round balls and on the top end 26+BH hard hard bullets for the gas checked K31. Hard enough they shatter on impact instead deforming. Wheel weights are all over the charts - testing ranges from 8BH all the way up to 18BH. They have many impurities in them including zinc which can ruin a caster's day really fast. Testing and verifying lead alloy hardness is something I was exposed to at an early stage - my grandfather's casting business was casting and machining babbitt bearings for large diesel engine main and rod connectors. I wish I would have had more time with him as an adult to absorb a lot more of his knowledge about lead and its many alloys. IIRC he used copper in his alloys as a hardening agent. He used one of this babbitt formulas to cast bullets for his "unmentionable" rifle. (Hint - it had a saddle ring on it)

I find this to be a very interesting post, and I see by looking on Amazon, that tin isn't really expensive, around $25 # It seems like I have trouble when I'm casting and the pot gets about half empty, I start picking up trash in my round balls. Do you think adding a small amount of tin would help this? I'm not a quantity shooter, so a pound of tin would last me a long time.
Squint

 

[Griz44Mag]

Interesting....I wonder if the shiny/slick surface would help keep oxidation off the outside? Nothing I hate more than to open my container of cast lead ball after not shooting for a while to see a bunch of oxidation. Any observations on that? Maybe yours don't sit around long enough.

Unfortunately not........ but they sure are pretty when they hit the towel....
I know one guy that sprays his balls with contact cleaner after casting.
It leaves a micro-coating of protectant on them. They stay shiny.

 

[Griz44Mag]

I find this to be a very interesting post, and I see by looking on Amazon, that tin isn't really expensive, around $25 # It seems like I have trouble when I'm casting and the pot gets about half empty, I start picking up trash in my round balls. Do you think adding a small amount of tin would help this? I'm not a quantity shooter, so a pound of tin would last me a long time.
Squint

I bought a dozen 5# rolls of 90% tin/10% lead fluxed solder at an electronics store closeout sale.
I add about 1oz of this to 8# lead. The flux does help clean the lead - after stirring the melted mix I scoop off the burned flux and other crud and discard.

 

[Ben Meyer]

I shot a big doe last year with a .490 PRB atop 80gr of 2F Goex at 42 yds. Double lung shot, complete pass through. She ran 30yds and flopped over dead. I doubt I use anything BUT a PRB for deer ML hunting from here on out.

 

[rodwha]

I shot a big doe last year with a .490 PRB atop 80gr of 2F Goex at 42 yds. Double lung shot, complete pass through. She ran 30yds and flopped over dead. I doubt I use anything BUT a PRB for deer ML hunting from here on out.

I’m certainly looking forward to personally seeing what a PRB can do. Prior to finding this site I was at a loss for how these could even be ethical beyond maybe 50 yds. It didn’t help that the modern sites often had people saying the same things.

On the flip side it was mostly this forum that was adamant about revolvers being far too puny to be ethical with, that at best all one could hope to achieve would be .38 Spl performance from a .44. Found out that wasn’t true at all either...

 

[longcruise]

I’m certainly looking forward to personally seeing what a PRB can do. Prior to finding this site I was at a loss for how these could even be ethical beyond maybe 50 yds. It didn’t help that the modern sites often had people saying the same things.

On the flip side it was mostly this forum that was adamant about revolvers being far too puny to be ethical with, that at best all one could hope to achieve would be .38 Spl performance from a .44. Found out that wasn’t true at all either...

Yup, plenty of people have fallen dead on the spot when hit by a ball from a 44 revolver. Hickock was happy with a 36.