Has anybody here had much luck using #8 shot in black powder shotguns/smoothbores.
Most shooters say they go with larger sizes with increased individual pellet energy at the expense of pattern density to make up for the lower velocities attainable with BP.
Do you guys agree?
Is that a good trade-off?
First, I'm not so sure the black powder always gives lower velocities....
I just did a survey of 8 different loads, from 28 gauge up to 12 gauge, and from 1/2 ounce of shot up to 1.25 ounces of shot. The average MV was 1210 fps. The slowest speed was 1165 fps and the fastest was 1330 fps. All were using lead shot.
Now some of us remember when shotshells were sold with labels that listed "dram weight eq" or "dram eq" which was a very old reference to that particular load compared to black powder shells. It became normal for smokeless powder shells to list this information, rather than the fps, because the smokeless powder was competing against the established black powder loads of the time. THEN as black powder shells phased out, the shooters were used to certain "dram equivalents" when selecting shells, even when they may not have understood the origin was in black powder. Slowly as the 21st century arrived, the "dram eq." listings changed to listing the fps of the shot column.
So the pellets in a lot of cases in modern guns are not going any faster than their kin when launched from black powder muzzleloaders.
I submit that the difference between the two, muzzleloader vs modern shotshells, is due to choking of the barrels.
A lot of smoothbore muzzleloaders, especially flintlock smoothbore muzzleloaders are cylinder bore, meaning no choke. So as Brit Smoothie pointed out, he likes for several pellets to hit and overwhelm the game..., and when a choked barrel is used, there is a much greater chance that this will happen.
Now the cylinder bore shooter has a problem in that his shot is spreading very wide, over a short distance, so the pellets that arrive on target are fewer in number.
So one solution is to use less but heavier pellets, so that if two or only one pellet hits, the idea is that pellet will do enough damage to harvest the game. So while #6 pellets will work on pheasant from a modified choked barrel, some people want to use #4 pellets from a cylinder bore barrel on the same bird.
The other solution is to use more pellets, so instead of using an ounce or an ounce and a quarter, the shooting will use two ounces. The powder then is upped to move that much mass up to a good speed to get the job done.
I thin through testing, the shooter can determine a combination of more pellets and pellet size to get a good pattern to get success in the field.
LD
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