2nd artillery
32 Cal.
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- Oct 31, 2004
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I have a first modle brown bess and I wanted to go get some game with it this year. What would be a good load to use in a bess for hunting squirle sized game?
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squirle hunting with a bess
- Thread starter 2nd artillery
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#5 shot, maybe even #4. Squirrels have tough little hides and don't give up easily...
80-90 grs of powder and an equal volume of #5-or 6 shot should work good on them.
I always thought #5 chilled shot would be the berries, but all I can ever find is #6. It works very well but takes a bit more picking to clear the meat of tooth-crackers.
My Bess was a carbine caliber (16 ga/0.662" bore). Your Bess I'm assuming is an 11 ga. A good, mild 12 ga load would be 82 gr. FFg (3 drams) and about 1-1/8 to 1-1/4 oz shot. You could start there and maybe head up to around 90 gr. and 1-3/8 oz. shot. By happy coincedence, your powder measure throws about the right amount of shot at a given powder volume. A little more shot and less powder (opposite of what you might think) gives you a tighter pattern and stretches your range. No matter what, you probably won't be patterning reliably past 35 yards, but that's plenty. Shoot at some paper and see how she patterns.
My Bess was a carbine caliber (16 ga/0.662" bore). Your Bess I'm assuming is an 11 ga. A good, mild 12 ga load would be 82 gr. FFg (3 drams) and about 1-1/8 to 1-1/4 oz shot. You could start there and maybe head up to around 90 gr. and 1-3/8 oz. shot. By happy coincedence, your powder measure throws about the right amount of shot at a given powder volume. A little more shot and less powder (opposite of what you might think) gives you a tighter pattern and stretches your range. No matter what, you probably won't be patterning reliably past 35 yards, but that's plenty. Shoot at some paper and see how she patterns.
