Question on angle trajectory

[50cal.cliff]

I am not sure this is the right place for this but here goes! I just read a story about a hunt in Nevada for Mule deer, http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/...p?tid/269948/pid/1154212/post/last/m/1/#LAST,
( a good read) and the story opened some questions in my mind that had not been there before.

I have a question that has bugged me for years. I shot at deer the first time I ever used a muzzle loader for hunting and missed cleanly, here in Florida!

The experience really got me hooked on muzzle loading as it made me want to learn everything there is too know about shooting a muzzle loader.

I have always chalked the miss up too, inexperience. The following is a story of what had happened that morning and I feel it necessary to relate the story to be able to give enough background into the miss that morning!

I was using a TC 50cal.Hawken. Not being really into muzzle loading at the time I had borrowed a rifle to be able to use for early muzzle loading season.
The friend I had borrowed the rifle from had schooled me on shooting one. Very briefly and how to clean a BP rifle.
Since he had explained about cleaning it in the kitchen sink (which at the time I was sure he was pulling my leg), and I thought it sounded like a real hassle. See I told you I was still a pilgrim when it came to BP, back then! :grin:

The friend I had borrowed the rifle from, had several pre-made hunting loads in tubes. I do not remember exactly the charge but it was around 110 grains if I remember correctly.

I took the rifle home and shot about 5 rounds through it. Hitting everything I aimed at out to a 100yds. I felt I was good to go! :redface: Next mistake!

Not wanting to burn up a bunch of his powder as at the time, as it was almost impossible to find real BP around here, (still is but now I order in)! :wink:

I had not cleaned the rifle. I always felt this was my next mistake!

The morning I got the shot. It was early season and there were six bucks all walking/feeding thru the woods together. One was a six point and that is the one I attempted to shoot and missed.

Here is where the angle trajectory comes into play. I had used a climbing stand that morning and was somewhere between twenty feet plus range, up into a pine tree!

I always felt like I missed for a number of reasons. One of the first was I didn't know the rifle well enough and maybe I had jerked the trigger slightly in my haste that morning! It had a hard trigger even after setting the set trigger. Or perhaps the dirty barrel had changed POA was why I had missed!

Now that the story is out let me fill in a few more of the details of the shot. I said I was about twenty feet in the air and I am pretty sure of that as that was normal for me too hunt at this height at the time. Plus I had a pull rope I used to hoist gear with and it had a knot every 5 foot so and was a maximum of 25". So the height is pretty sure. However I was shooting into a hill side that angled up from where the tree I was sitting in.

So I am going to say I was probably shooting from an elevated position of 15'+, at a target that was approximately thirty foot from the tree I was sitting in!

It was very cool that morning with a rising thermal. I think I did everything right, for a (high power rifle, remember no prior experience with a muzzle loader)! That was another mistake!

I aimed in at about three inches below the top of the shoulder blade. Steadied my breathing and tried to squeeze off the shot. As the smoke begin to clear the six point bucks front knees appeared to have buckled.
I am thinking great he is going down right on the spot! Wrong he begins to stand fully upright and him and the other deer do not seem to be too spooked, and he appears to be also not hit!

I begin to try and reload without quick movement and no noise as I said these deer were only about thirty feet from tree I was in! And although on alert these deer were not spooked, ( I have since learned that early season deer often think of a BP report as lighting and not a gun shot).
After loading I recapped and looked up just in time to see the last whitetail as they disappeared down the trail!

Even though I have shot may deer since then with a muzzle loader they have all been shot from ground level. After my wreck my balance when climbing to heights was never the same! I have never even shot at one from a tree stand since that time!

So here is my question finally after all that!

How much of factor is elevation like 15' up, thirty plus feet out on 50 cal. with a patched round ball and about a 110grams of powder?

I have always thought I shot over the deer! Given the circumstances with a high powered rifle I would have been pretty much on, (my only previous experience). But with a BP muzzle loader how much should I have adjusted my POA by?

I am thinking the dirty barrel threw my POA off and now that I think about the elevation may have had more to do with it than I previously thought about! :hmm:

Anyone got any thoughts on my questions as to how much angle trajectory affects a muzzle loader?

 

[BrownBear]

I wouldn't consider 15' to be an issue over normal hunting ranges. You don't say how far away the deer was, but I'm going with the dirty barrel.

 

[roundball]

Agree, too close and not enough height for a miss in terms of any change in POI due to change in gravity.
What can happen without even realizing it is in the excitement of getting off the shot, you can be crowding the stock, head not 100% fully down, end up seeing more of the sights than you should, and the shot ends up high going over its back.

Also, in the excitement, get looking at the "whole deer" or the "whole front of the deer"...instead of picking a tiny precise aiming point at the front elbow for example, and the shot ends up going high over it's back.

Or a little flinch or jerking the trigger without realizing it.

Pretty sure that stuff happens to most hunters at one time or another, I know it has to me

 

[crockett]

If I had to bet I'd say you shot over the deer. You mentioned a hard trigger pull- probably caused the shot to be slightly off. Missing a close shot- I've done that a couple of times. The danger of a close shot is assuming it is a "done deal" and not taking the same care as with a long shot.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

15 ft up isn't a game changer. But it does change the point of impact at 50 yds by perhaps an inch or two. Add trajectory over the line of sight and it may stretch to a four inch difference over line of sight. Add just some slight "buck fever" flinch and.... well it goes on and on.

Powder fouling in the barrel.
Any number of things. Powder getting slightly fouled by lube, Florida humidity, thermocline in the air causing a mirage, sun heated barrel causing a mirage at the front sight, contrast on the sights changes due to lighting changes. (Bright sun, hazy bright, cloudy, woodland shade)
Sun behind or sun in front.

 

[George]

If your estimates of the distances involved are correct, the angle is certainly steep enough to be considered. But, in order for the incline angle to be a real problem there are three things involved. The error gets worse with slow bullets, long range and steep angles. Your angle is steep enough, but your velocity and distance probably wouldn't be a problem that close in.

You had a bunch of stuff going on which could have made you shoot over the deer. I'd say the angle was one of them, but not a big one, certainly not enough by itself to make you miss the deer.

Spence

 

[50cal.cliff]

Brown bear the deer were appox. thirty- forty feet from my tree.

Yeah I guess I will never explain that one for sure.

I guess I was just wondering how much of a factor angle is on trajectory now that I was thinking of it!

 

[Rifleman1776]

Trigger jerk (we would never call it 'buck fever' :wink: ) could be the reason.
Or, you might have hit it with a clean pass through and he ran off.
From what you tell us, a good hit should have happened.

 

[matt denison]

Considering the short distances involved I don't believe the angle or the dirty bore could make enough difference to miss a whitetail size target. Excuse me for saying this but I think you blew it. ..somehow. It's easy to blame the gun but not in this case.

Anybody can, and everybody has, missed. I missed the same deer twice one day. Using a highpower rifle with a quality scope. I blamed it on the gun/scope thinking I must have bumped it on something hard enough to knock it out of zero. Had to be, I couldn't miss that easy shot TWICE. I finished the day hunting using a back-up open sighted lever gun and did get a nice doe.

Next day I took the scoped rifle out to see how far off the sights were. They were dead on. Nothing left to blame but myself.

 

[Stumpkiller]

15 ft vertical over 50 ft horizontal. The height of your sights over the bore and he range you are sighted at will make a difference, but I would say at 50 ft you might have a half inch difference in impact point between level and 15 ft elevated.

It's not very much difference at 50 ft.

What does mess you up is the angle of the deer's body. I think about where the ball (or arrow) will exit and that helps get through center lung instead of too high. Deer also can move incredibly fast and the action to spring starts with a drop of the torso. When they spot movement . . . zoom.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

A local outdoors black powder writer, intimated in the state game magazine a year or so ago, that there is sufficient time between the click of the flint hitting the frizzen and the bullet's arrival out at the deer, for the deer to jump out of the way.

Maybe with some of the cheaper production guns that go click shhhhhhhhhhhh boom. Frankly, there is no humanly discernable time between the hammer fall and the boom in flinters that are correctly set up, loaded and cared for.

Some newbies in the beginning of their muzzle loading learning curve just don't realize a slight hang fire when they occur. And even cap locks can hang fire.

(That's excuse number 23 for missing a deer)

 

[don hepler]

I don't know how the height angle changes things but I can tell you,(from my experience, shooting a bow)shooting high,on a downhill target is very often the case.

When you look at a deer, it looks one dimensional, but to put in perspective it's like looking at a "world globe", instead of looking at the kill zone which would be below the equator, you're actually looking at the north pole, so to speak. (I hope this makes sense)

When I was young, and hunting the mountains in western Virginia, I had a often shot low on up-hill shots, and high on downhill shots.

A few years ago, I went to a private archery club to get a little tune-up before deer season. A member was assigned to walk with me. The final shot was from a high elevated platform. He seemed surprized, when I shot a perfect heart shot. He said almost every amateur shooter he'd seen, that day,.. had over shot the target.

He liked the "world globe" analogy, and said he planned to use it, to teach with.

I think he was shocked, by an old man with an out-dated bow.

 

[50cal.cliff]

Guys I have looked at this from all sides. I missed there is no doubt about it. Could have been all on me or it could be a lot of small things.

Because what I am hearing that no higher than I was and no further away the deer was the POI is not going to be that different!

I have shot deer on the run, this one was basically still that is what has always puzzled me so about the miss. Anyway it has led me to pursue all their is too know about BP muzzle loading. Not that I got it perfect by any means but the quest has given me all I need to know to get it right. Now I just got to do it!!!!!!!!!

:grin:

 

[hanshi]

At your height in the tree stand and the distance the deer was from your tree, nothing in this situation would have affected the shot as far as leading to a miss. When I shoot at deer I've always tried to imagine a basket ball filling the deer's chest. Disregarding the deer's position relative to me, I aim with the idea of hitting the basket ball. Sometimes, though, we just simply flat out, old fashion, country miss.

 

[50cal.cliff]

OK OK I can admit it I just flat out missed! :shocked2: :redface: :shake:

There I said it, now at least one of us feels better!

I really did want to see what the effect the angle may have had. I really didn't feel that it was going to make that much of a difference.

This BP ride has been a great one. I haven't fired a modern firearm in longer than I care to admit! You would think I have found my niche or something! :idunno: :rotf: :rotf: :rotf: :rotf:

 

[jethro224]

I agree with the others that the angle shouldn't have been an issue at the distances you mentioned. Without the video we will never know for sure what exactly happened. Probably the buck fever. It happens to everybody from time to time.
A couple years ago I shot over a BIG buck when the fever took a hold of me. Raised my head off the stock and pulled the trigger. :redface: :surrender:


This

Now I just got to do it!!!!!!!!!

makes me wonder tho. Have you since killed a deer with a muzzleloader?

Or, you might have hit it with a clean pass through and he ran off.

This could be the case. Sometimes they will go quite a distance with no blood sign at all. Especially with a high hit. A doe I killed a couple years ago went a good 75 yards before the first blood hit the ground. She piled up soon after. Double lungs, kinda high.
Some drop right there, some go amazing distances dead on their feet. :idunno:

 

[50cal.cliff]

OK I didn't respond to this one when the question was first asked.

Trigger jerk (we would never call it 'buck fever' :wink: ) could be the reason.
Or, you might have hit it with a clean pass through and he ran off.
From what you tell us, a good hit should have happened.

After I missed the shot that morning I was so un-nerved that I came down out of the tree I was in. Walked to where I had shot at the deer and looked it over for sign. Not convinced yet that I had missed I walked the trail the deer had left the area on/walked away on that morning, for a distance of 75' or so and not a drop of blood!


Still irritated and cold I decided to walk the mile back to my truck and have a cup of coffee from the thermos in the front seat.
After the cup of coffee and feeling slightly better about the miss I decided it was still early, maybe I would go back to the tree. I had left my stand still around the tree, and just sit out the rest of the morning!

On my way back to the stand I worked along quietly and within about 50 yards of my stand the dense woods broke off and it was fairly open from there to my stand. I suddenly hear a deer blow. I turned just in time to see the same six bucks go running off down the trail. The same six bucks that contained the six pointer! Absolutely no chance for a shot at any of them, this time.

So that is how I know it was a clean miss! The very reason I had chosen the tree I was sitting in that morning was because I could cover three separate trails that were heavily traveled from that one tree!

The deer had gone out into the woods and picked up another trail and made a big loop. Taking about an hour and half to complete. They would have came right back by my stand on another trail offering about a 50 yd. shot this time!

If I had not gotten down and walked out of the area and back in that morning

I would still been in the tree and would not have spooked them on the trail! :shocked2: :redface: :shake: That just seemed to add insult to injury that morning. I was so irritated I pulled my stand and went to another area to hunt!

So as Paul Harvey used to say and now you know the rest of the story!

OK go ahead I can already hear the laughing! Sometimes it's better to laugh than cry! :rotf: :rotf: :rotf:

 

[jethro224]

OK, I mighta laughed a little bit... :haha:
Still, it's much better to have spooked them off and be sure it was a clean miss than to have to wonder. It's a good story that you'll always have to tell. Most (all except the liars :wink: ) deer hunters have a similar story or two about a missed opportunity.
Good luck out there this fall. :hatsoff:

 

[roundball]

And anyway, IMO, that's just part of the whole hunting experience...if we could all just park, walk in, and take a good buck every time we'd get bored and take up bowling or something...LOL.
Hunting can be a long learning curve and you just filed away a couple more things in your experience bank for possible reference in the future.
Enjoy the journey.

 

[hanshi]

Such things are fond memories made of, at least the funnier ones. I got a million of 'em.