Your rifle will either like a 490 gr ball or a 495 depending on the bore tightness. Round balls are effective on close range big game animals. It might be helpful to know what rifling twist your rifle has, to determine whether a prb patched round ball or a conical would work best in your rifle. The patched round ball challenge hunt shooters forum. Several side hammer round ball guns are available in. Deer hunting forums hunting forums muzzleloader hunting pennsylvania flintlock season. The patched round ball challenge hunt page 2 hunt talk. Minimum deerkilling muzzleloading loads for young and small. Patched round ball gun and game the friendliest gun. A white tailed deers heartlung area is about 9 to 10 inches in diameter, an elk or caribous 15 inches while a moose has a heartlung area of about 21 inches. If you have a really loose bore a 495 ball may be needed.
Now im not sure if the patch gets spun off the ball or if patch and ball just skims the rifling but either way a round ball wont shoot for squat out of a fast twist barrel unless you cut the powder down to an absolute minimum which makes it impractical for most purposes. Of the larger bore round ball rifles suitable for taking big game, more have probably been sold in this caliber than any other. Flintlock hunting in pennsylvania on the last day of the season. Ive shot 10 elk with blackpowder and a bunch of deer. This evening i skinned and quartered the carcass of the deer. I was reminded of this fact last month when i used an original. But in the little 45 the maxi at 220 grains is no heavier than the larger round balls. Flintlock muzzleloader hunting deer in pa with kill shot. Light muzzleloader loads for patch and round ball, a lot of ole timers used to tell me that for a patch and round ball all you really need was just enough powder to cover the ball in the palm of your hand. Using a traditional muzzle loaders round ball, the only shot at a game animal that should be attempted is into the animals heartlung area. Hunting moose, elk, bear, feral hogs and big mule deer demands the game. Traditions hawken woodsman muzzleloader deer hunt youtube. Remember that any ml with any bullet will have much less knock down than a modern, high velocity high powered rifle. The waterfowl had been shot with the required nontoxic bismuth or steel shot, and the big game with a patched round ball.
These recipes are touted as deadly, but surely many good ones are not included. The shot i took was no more than 20 yards and did not pass through. I have taken deer with both but never studied the numbers on these. More shooting means more confidence and less flinching. For deer hunting i still prefer the patched round ball in a. At ranges from 100 to 200 yards either will do well, depending entirely how an individual rifle works with them. The patch round ball challenge long range hunting forum. Traditionalmldata1 north american muzzleloader hunting. A cheap 12 gauge single shot shooting a slug is the very worst choice to introduce a person to deer hunting based on the recoil energy. Dec 25, 2010 the lightest projectile in this caliber is a patched round ball. They have always performed well on everything from squirrels to deer. I to have been hunting the last 2 years with a patched round ball in a tc rengade. The only time i still load a conical for deer is out in the desert for mulies where anything closer than 100 yards is a rarity. I just bought a nice, used lyman great plains rifle with the 1.
Large boars shot in the lungs often run 200 yards or more. Ball, patch, powder combination to start deer hunting forums. Hawkins loaded with 83 grains fff goex and a patched round ball. It was by far the most accurate load in that gun, and while labeled light by a lot of guys, it killed with alacrity. I have bagged three whitetails so far with patched round balls and see no reason change.
This habit has been cause for derision from some of my hunting companions, who believe that round balls are marginal andor obsolete, and that i must therefore be daft to use them. I have been hunting with muzzleloaders for four decades and can tell you from experience that patched round balls can and will kill quickly and efficiently. I started black powder hunting in new york almost 40 years ago and when they first started a muzzle load only dear season it was all primitive period only iron sights and patched round ball only that was when i found that finding the right load was very much part of the fun of building and shooting front stuffers and i have stayed with. When our state started our first muzzle loader deer season state wide every one was raving over the tc maxi ball as a hunting bullet. Not much has been written recently about the effectiveness of round ball loads on deer and larger game. Tight patched round ball over the heavy powder charge is still the best shooter at 100 yards in my tc hawken. Why thrash around in the brush and pollute the hunting when you saw the deer run away. Reasons are because of the size of the animal, and the variable conditions while hunting, the main ones being distances and what the deer might be doing in that moment between the sear breaking and the ball arriving. Also, traditional muzzleloader only shooting orgnizations generally require the use of patched round ball only during official muzzleloading target competition.
That ball isnt made for big game all the typical brain washed fubar where some think you need plastic, ss, scoped and high priced pretty shaped bullets in order to down game. I quit using conicals for almost all deer hunting years ago and switched to patched round ball in either 45 or 50. Shooting roundballs costs half as much as anything else. It seems i am the only one who doesnt believe round balls to be the an efficient way to harvest deer. The first deer i ever shot with a muzzle loader was with a. Got back into conventional muzzleloaders in 2012 after hunting with same in the 1960s70s. Obviously, deer are much tougher than they used to be. I had used that double to take geese, ducks and deer in the u. In other words an equal amount of powder especially for target shooting. Ever since i started hunting with a muzzleloader about 15 years ago, ive been using patched round balls. The patched round ball group was two inches and the maxi ballet group was. Use whatever gives you the best 100 yard groups at a recoil level you can live with. Nov 14, 2014 i cant say i made it, but what i put together was a thompsoncenter hawken stock with a getz.
I once used about 25 years ag a bp substitute in my sidehammer rifles, but inconsistent ignition read. Ff powder, pillow ticking patch bore butter, from a deer. A hunter can take feral hogs or deer at moderate range very effectively with a patched round ball and a modest powder charge. In the typical lightweight rifles that a young hunter can handle 67 lbs. First deer with a patched round ball hornady manufacturing, inc. This evening i skinned and quartered the carcass of the. Many different viewpoints on caliber, powder charges, and projectile weight for deer. Back during the 1960s and early 1970s, when interest in shooting and even hunting with a muzzleloader began to win over more and more modern day shooters, the patched round ball was still the most widely used muzzleloaded projectile. Most hunters are easily seduced by the siren song of the. Out of a quality bore, a properly loaded patched round ball can prove deadly accurate at the ranges it was truly intended for and that is 25 to 50 yards. Useful advice on calibers, loads for hunting with muzzleloaders. I have been fortunate enough to have taken a deer with a rifle, compound bow, longbow, shotgun, single action pistol and now a traditional muzzleloader.
At those ranges, a big ole patched round ball will reliably and consistantly kill deer if you put the ball where it should go. Arms with their firestorm and by traditions with their pa hunter. A round ball doesnt touch the rifling itself, the patch does. Black powder deer hunting using a patched round ball from the ground. I chose to start with patched round balls to get a feel for the rifle before i decide if i want to experiment with conical bullets.
If i had a larger bore mz rifle id not hesitate to use a round ball for deer. Since 20 ive killed about 10 deer and a few dozen wild hogs using. Our group shot several deer that year and spent a lot of time tracking deer, even deer shot side to side through the ribs would go up to 200 yds. I do believe that larger calibers such as 5462 are more suited to larger game, such as elk or moose. On this page, north american muzzleloader hunting will bring you the loads and ballistics for the.