Marc Adamchek said:
Reading about modern hunting in Africa with Muzzleloaders. Esteemed BP hunter Don Kettelkamp is one of the authors. He relates the following:
In 1966 a gent named Charles Wilcox went hunting in southwest Angola. He "used 2 custom rifles, a Lancaster style flintlock in .577 calibre and a .50 calibre Hawken style percussion, both with Wm. Large barrels".
To take a black rhinoceros "he used the flintlock .577 with two patched round balls in front of 400 grains of FFg (not a recommended load or practice)".
Now gentlemen, I ask you, have you EVER heard of such a thing before, and what degree of insanity would you assign to this "practice"?
Am I missing something or wouldn't there be a possible chance that the 2 prb's could not clear the barrel and the rifle could turn into a bomb?
At any rate, I'm interested in hearing some voices of experience address this.
If I were silly enough to shoot a Rhino with a 58 caliber flintlock I would use a ridiculous powder charge and two balls as well. Better to use a 12 bore or larger rifle in the first place with one hardened lead ball as was done historically. Kentucky rifles were never used for this purpose back in the day. Bore was too small.
RBs are perfectly adequate for any game on the planet
if sized properly for the game and cast of hardened lead for the larger species.
IIRC he shot about 200 gr of powder in the 58 but would have to dig out the old Muzzle Blasts issue to refresh my memory. Wilcox was a Hollywood stunt man who did several hunting articles for MB in the 60s.
The 19th century English considered the 58 (24 bore) to be a medium bore deer rifle certainly not a dangerous game gun. The 16 bore (.662 ball) was minimum for anything dangerous and 12 bore was thought to be minimum for stuff like African Elephant and 8 or 4 was better still. 12 would be marginal from my reading good only for lung shots. But shooting animals backed by a PH with a dangerous game rifle to settle any emergencies is different that someone hunting alone in Africa with maybe one gun bearer who does not even know how to shoot. Thus large game guns were often 8-6-4 bore and many were not even rifled since the English makers usually over twisted the large bore rifles and game like in the African Bush is often shot at 10-15 yards.
Basically two balls will be more effective on game than one but using a bigger ball is better.
Two 40s does not equal one 54 IMO. "Loaded for bear" is often thought to mean two balls and an increased powder charge and is documented I believe but I have no citation at hand.
I have probably shot a double ball load at sometime just to do it. But maybe not. I always considered it to be silly and impractical.
"Wait Mrs. Gbear I need to put an extra ball in my rifle".
Loading this way all the time makes no sense at all since general utility suffers. So if something occurs suddenly the single ball is going to have to do.
There were a number of ML hunters in the 1960s in Africa. Wilcox, Val Forget and even Turner Kirkland who shot an elephant with a 4 bore.
But not having done proper research he used soft lead balls like he was shooting Squirrels and the PH had to finish the Elephant off when the soft lead balls produced inadequate penetration. Or so I have read, exact details are only known to the participants.
Forgett was just trying to sell his Navy Arms Minie Ball rifles. Since he did not sell 12 or 10 bore RB rifles he used what he sold regardless of its actual utility. I never paid any real attention due to the firearms he used. But Minie Balls will not work hardened and likely will not penetrate well enough for really large game, such bullets were tried for this back in the day and proved dangerous to the
user when they failed to work as well as a RB from the same rifle.
Wilcox and Kirkland
did hunt dangerous game with round balls. The danger and their willingness to confront it cannot be disparaged. Their "silliness" was in improper choice of calibers and/or bullet alloy.
I get the idea they did not read Baker, Selous, Forsythe or even John Taylor or if they did they failed to heed what was there to be learned.
Lyman did limited testing of double ball loads in their first BP Loading Manual IIRC.
Dan
