roundball performance

[Hoyt]

I have not shot any deer with my muzzleloader yet,
so i have no first hand experience with this.
I shoot roundball in 50 cal and i am wondering if i hit the shoulder of a whitetail would I get acceptable penetration?I always aim for the lungs but the shoulder is right there . I have read posts here before stating that they dont allways get complete penetration on broadside lung shots so i am curious about your opinions on this.
I also realize that distance ,size of deer and shot angle are always variable.

My mistake..I guess..I thought the above was what the post was about..since he's the one who posted it.

You and he both said you've never killed a deer with a PRB, meaning zero experience killing deer with a PRB...is that a mistake?

I've killed just as many as you have with a hard cast roundball..which happens to be what I've posted about. If you have experience in that I'd be interested..other wise I'd like to hear from someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

 

[Runner]

I use 70 grains of 2f under a 495 Hornady ball. Deer hit properly will run like their tails are on fire for a few seconds and pile up. If you use the shoulder shot, often you will recover the ball under the hide on the off side. I killed two with roundballs two years back. I did not kill this year. I shot both in the spine to put them down since in both cases I was close to the proerty line. One shot was at about 23 yards, and one at 10. Roundball hunting is not a, "if you can see them" kind of hunt. It is a close range hunt.
Hard cast round balls work just fine if you can get accuracy with them. They are a pain to load, and you have to make your own. They are best left for bigger game than deer.
The only problem with roundball is that the blood trail often does not start for a good ways after the shot. In thick brush, that can be a pain. Luckily, most will go down inside 100 yards if hit right.
Large powder loads with roundball do not create much more damage to the critter, or kill quicker in my experience. In fact, when I used 100 grain 3f loads, I recovered more balls than I do today with 70 grains of 2f. You are aiming to do specific damage to the anmimals system when hunting with roundball. You can not just put a ball in the deer. You have to put a ball in the boiler room or the spine. Me, I don't shoot past about 75 yards with roundball at deer, even tho it is good past that range. I am not 100 percent past that range in hunting conditions, so I don't do it.
Pick a spot. Bigger is better. No blood or hair at the site of the shot is normal, even for pass thrus. The blood trail will be a few yards down the trail, making knowing the last spot you can positively put the animal at more important than the site where he was standing when you shot. If you want a guaranteed bloodtrail, more effective range, more damage to the critter, and all the other things modern guns provide, then you need a modern gun!
The 385 Great Plains HB HP is a very effective deer bullet and is pretty accurate out of every 50 caliber barrel I have ever tried them out of. They are 100 yard deer stompers most of the time. Hit by a truck is a good description a lot of the time using them! Those deer often went just as far as the roundball deer I have killed, but the blood trail was not hard to find!

 

[BrownBear]

I gotta weigh into this uninvited because I've killed truckloads of deer (literally) with a wide assortment of hardcast as well as soft using modern handguns. They're not roundballs, but the experience is relavent because for hardcast to do much in the penetration department high sectional densities and big meplats are required.

At low sectional densities, along the lines of RBs, soft lead at moderate velocities has the edge due to upset and production of a larger meplat and tissue damage. Consider the hard RB to have no meplat (and never will due to lack of upset), much like a hard cast RN bullet. Penetrate well, but leave you tracking a long, long ways (and I know that from testing RN hardcast against FN hardcast). Neither hard or soft is going very far into the animal at low SD, compared to high SD, but the soft is going to do more damage.

In order for hard cast to really mean anything you need high SD's and a big flat nose (not round!) to go with it. In a ML I'd have every faith in a hard conical with a big flat nose and no faith in a hard RB with it's "round nose." Given my choice I'd take the soft RB over a hard one any day.

No, penetration isn't going to be as great as a hard conical with a high SD, but that's why we're having the discussion about bullet placement.

 

[BrownBear]

After reading my post, I thought I should add a specific example drawn from handguns and soft versus hard, round versus flat.

Modern handgunners always talk about what a whomper a 45ACP is. Goes to show how much tougher deer are than people, I guess.

Poke a deer with a hard cast 230 grain RN at around 800 fps from a 45ACP, and you better be a dandy tracker most of the time. The deer isn't going to drop, and it isn't going to slow down for the first 100+ yards.

But move to a 45 LC with a 250 grain FN bullet at the same velocity, hard or soft, and the deer is likely as not to drop in its tracks. Now, 20 grains of lead isn't going to make such a big difference, but get that flat nose to pushing around flesh instead of needling through like a RN, and it makes all the difference.

From my poking around bloody bullet holes, I see that the ability of a soft RB from a ML to expand or upset and grow is pretty critical to its performance on game. The extra penetration you get from a hard RB is akin to that you get when switching from the 45 LC to the 45 ACP. It certainly penetrates further, but it isn't doing enough along the wound channel to slow the deer down or stop it as quick.

If you insist on shooting deer up the poop shoot and going long ways to get to the vitals, then hard cast would certainly be an advantage. But at that point a flat conical is going to be so much better than a RN or and RB, you wouldn't even think of using the later.

 

[Hoyt]

Thanks for the hands on info. BrownBear, your posts explained a lot I didn't know. My purpose for using a harder roundball...not all wheel weights, but like I posted 60/40 lead/wheelweights..was not for any type of shock, but for an exit hole and bone damage..like through the shoulders.

 

[Walks with fire]

Rather than use hard cast rb's just slow the speed down; as in less powder. I took a doe once at about 30 feet and it went right down with a shot placement behind the shoulder-no bone hit and that ball did not exit. I was unable to recover that ball (which I really wanted to examine) because it was donated to another on the spot for a game dinner. The charge was 80 grains 2f with .490 Hornady rb.

The point is that with that much speed it expanded a great deal and reduced penetration. Other deer taken from 50 to 90 yards with the same load will go thru. I also agree that with conicals the big flat meplat is the way to hit the hardest but still believe soft lead is the best. As others have said; shot placement is key with any weapon.

I have said this before but I feel I should say it again because many new rb hunters don't realize how improtant it really is. Many new shooters take a shot at a deer and then go to the area the deer was standing and don't see any blood or deer so they figure they missed even though they believe there is no way they missed.
Many times they didn't miss. Get down on your hands and knees and look for hair which will be cut and laying there if you did hit it. Many times they won't bleed for a good ways even if hit well. Follow up on your shots and you will find evidence of a hit in most instances.

 

[Walks with fire]

Kirrmeister,
When I first started hunting my father gave me a 30-30 lever action Winchester with which I took several dozen deer over the years. Not one deer (all under 100 yards with open sights) ever took so much as one step when hit with that rifle and a 150 grain bullet; they all went straight down. These were taken with the behind the shoulder heart and lung shots.

As I got older and dummer; I bought various faster and longer range centerfires with scopes on them but the deer didn't go straight down all the time with the same behind the shoulder shots. They all were dead on their feet of course but most did travel a short distance. My current centerfire .308 with 150 grain and a behind the shoulder shots a whitetail will travel sometimes 65 yards but will go right down on a shoulder hit.

A soft lead roundball behind the shoulder with a modest charge is as good as it gets for the sidelock and real black.

 

[Hamourkiller]

First I have never killed a deer with a RB. (Working on this grave condition and should fix the problem this deer season)

It has become abvious to me we are limitted to 1200 to 2000 fps out of the various calibers. Assume any caliber is making 1600 fps (just for discussion) If you want a quantum leap in power you can't get it with more powder, harder ball etc, you must go with a bigger bore and more powder to get the bigger ball at the previous velocity. (1600fps for this discussion)

If you want to take shoulder shots and be assured that enough disruption to the internals takes place to sink him at once, start around .58 caliber and work up. 270 gr soft lead at 1600fps will cook his goose. The .62 is 320 to 340 grs or so. I dont know the 16ga or 12ga weights for round ball but they are close to 500grs.

The problem is that to acheive the same muzzle velocity with these bigger balls you must increase the powder charge by a hefty percent. Recoil becomes a real limitting factor as well as gun weight.

So I would recomend looking at a .58 caliber rifle and load it to the 1600 to 1800 fps range and blow a nice big hole in the deer. He will be close by. Search for 58 and 62 hunting result comparisons. The guys that shoot both .58 and .62 state that the .58 has the most imediate impact upon the deer than even the .62 does. (I suspect they are not willing to push that .62 ball to the same speed as the .58 for recoil reasons)

The men who shoot 12ga and 8ga balls are in a totally diferent league.

I have set up my four BP rifles for .58 and .62, I feel comfortable that I have the required energy for deer plus some. I would rather have to big a gun than to small a one. We all know that in BP shooting size counts!

Hope this helps

Hank

 

[Stumpkiller]

If 100 percent lead roundballs don't have any knockdown power..why go with pure lead?

They'd have more "knockdown power" than a harder ball because pure lead is heavier. Knockdown power is a myth, by the way. You could hit a deer with a 20mm cannon bullet and it wouldn't knock it down. May be four legs tipping out with nothing but raining meat in the general area but the deer is not knocked down by a projectile. The muscle/nerve impact will cause them to jerk or jump, but anything shoulder fired weighs way less than a deer and won't knock it off it's feet.

I don't like ground-level shoulder shots as there is no organ behind the high shoulder. Miss the spine and you could be in for a long trail. I shoot to pass the ball through the center of the lungs from any angle offered for the frontal 270º, passing on rear shots with m/l. I like the earlier post stating to use a round ball as you would a broadhead. That's the way I do it. The m/l is a bow with 3X or 4X the range that you can hold at "full draw" a lot longer. :grin:

 

[Runner]

As the balls get into the large end of the range, you don't need anywhere near 1800 FPS to do the job on deer. A .690 ball at 1200 FPS will plow right on thru most deer that ever lived and the one behind it too! Don't get hung up on the velocity thing. Hunting results with soft lead roundball do not translate into energy descriptions that modern shooters are familiar with very well.

 

[PreglerD]

So until now I have hunted many deer (roes) with modern rifles and cartridge, most .308 Win with 150 grs soft point bullet. In most cases the deers weren't killed in the tracks,many of them walked a few steps after being hit. I always shoot behind the shoulder blade to get a loung or high heart hit. My expirience is also that it depends on what the deer has in mind in the moment it was hit. Deers who are not in stress while standing and eating in most cases could be killed in the tracks, but if there was any stress around they run after being hit, sometimes so far until they had no more blood in their body. I think with PRB it would be the same. The most necessary thing is where you hit the deer. So while ML hunting can be done now in GE too, I will start right in may when hunting seasons on roes starts. I will give you many report and pics.

Gretings from GE.

 

[playfarmers]

I have shot lots of whitetails with my .50 cal Deerstalker and a .495 soft round ball traveling at 1745 fps. I am a huge fan of the round ball, and find it kills as good as anything within it's range. Like it has been mentioned, I like to put the ball through the boiler room, and avoid meat waisting shoulder shots. One shot I will never take again is the so called Texas heart shot, with any rifle. My very first whitetail was dropped by such a shot, and what a mess to such a fine animal. Muzzleloading is a style of hunting that brings you closer to your prey, and that is the way it should be.

 

[longcruise]

One shot I will never take again is the so called Texas heart shot, with any rifle. My very first whitetail was dropped by such a shot, and what a mess to such a fine animal.

You got that right! My wife took a nice mulie buck with a .58 caliber "flying trashcan" with a tx heartshot. She was perfectly willing to let me handle the field dressing and butchering! :winking:

 

[roundball]

"...Texas heart shot..."

Do I assume correctly this refers to a shot in the south end of a north bound deer?
:grin:

Or just a bad broadside shot too far back, in the gut?

 

[jethro224]

You assumed correctly.

 

[Slamfire]

I did that, ONCE! :youcrazy:

 

[tg]

"Do I assume correctly this refers to a shot in the south end of a north bound deer'

I read an article in ML mag sometime ago that a guy wrote and took this shot and followed the deer and did it again, I could not belive he took the shot let alone write and publish an article about it.

 

[roundball]

"Do I assume correctly this refers to a shot in the south end of a north bound deer'

I read an article in ML mag sometime ago that a guy wrote and took this shot and followed the deer and did it again, I could not belive he took the shot let alone write and publish an article about it.

We humans are strange creatures for sure...reckon he was proud of it?
:shake:

 

[tg]

I will see if I can find that issue and send you a copy Bill, it was unreal, this was undoubtedly common in the 18th century when life and death was a possibility when hunting for food but this article really torned me off.

 

[Rat Trapper]

Runner,
This is a pretty good post. Tells it like it is, with good info for all who read it.