Using Civil War Carbines For Hunting

For the various breech loading Civil War carbines, are there any you would want to use as a hunting piece?

My Maynard would do the job, light and easy to reload. Ballistics about on a par with the .44-40. My Sharps is probably a better choice as I could put more powder behind a heavier bullet.

I would feel comfortable with any CW carbine for shots 50 to the 60 yard range providing the are accurate and I can see the sights. I’m not a spring chicken and the eyes are not as good as they once were.

CW breech loaders can only be used in regular rifle season if the state‘s minimum power level is meet. Check your regulation. Of course they aren’t considered a muzzle loader.

Knew that but there are a lot of folks that don't.

Phil Coffins said:

CW breech loaders can only be used in regular rifle season if the state‘s minimum power level is meet. Check your regulation. Of course they aren’t considered a muzzle loader.

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Not in NC. Any gun can be used that does not use fixed ammunition, meaning no centerfire ammo during "primitive weapons" seasons. I wanted to use my Sharps or Smith and got that cleared up with the NC game dept. During regular gun season, it's wide open.

Back when the full stock paper ctg. Sharps came out , I found it very fun to shoot in dry situations. Very accurate , reliable to a fault , as long as the action was dry. I sold mine because even on sunny days in the Pa. deer woods , ignition was unreliable. I had so many other options to use , I just didn't want to take the time to research , why it would hang fire on even sunny days. ........oldwood

The question of course should be premised by clarification of; hunting for WHAT? Big dangerous game like grizzly bears? Probably not. Deer and possibly elk within reasonable ranges? Probably.

My earlier post eluded to using the paper ctg. Sharps in the humidity of a December deer hunt in Pa.. I would figure the Sharps would be remarkably more reliable in the dry , arid western states than the damp east...oldwood

Getting at the wrong end of a real muzzleloading .58cal carbine, like, fer'instance, a Musketoon, will surely spoil your day. That 535gr missile at 1150 fps would be like getting hit by a Mack truck.

Have carried an original Smith deer hunting a number of times, but have never had the opportunity to take anything with it. Have debated using it with an original paper wrapped rubber cartridge, but have just saved the original cartridges so far. The thought of using a cartridge that was loaded over 150 years ago to take an animal is intriguing, but once it’s been shot......

Interestingly, the Smith Carbine did cause me some grief a few years back. Got invited to ‘blackpowder’ hunting club (blackpowder, no modern guns, Civil War or earlier guns) and decided to bring the Smith. While putting the Smith in it’s case at the end of the first day, the Grand Poobah of the group noticed the break open action and had a meltdown. I was breaking one of the club’s cardinal rules with my breech loading ‘modern’ gun on my very first hunt there. The gentleman who had brought me as his guest made the comment that I had the only original pre 1865 gun in camp, as everyone else had TCs, Lymans or CVAs. Didn’t matter, because everyone knew it was a ‘muzzleloader’ only club..... Buddy and I packed up our stuff and left. Got invited back a couple of times after the ‘misunderstanding’, but didn’t go. Group lost their lease a year two later when they could not attract enough like minded high drama members to keep things affordable.

Lots of deer have fallen to a .22, and lots of bad guys too. But we think of .22 as too small for deer hunting.
And .22 hasn’t been put to use by police or military even though it’s cheep and accurate.
The military did find the .44 a good side arm during the late unpleasantness between the states. Though this was made for close shooting, Wild Bill Hickock not withstanding.
Those old carbines were made for man killing at medium range, a hundred yards or so, maybe out to two hundred.
A deer mostly stand in adult male human size. As a deer gun I think any of these carbines would be plenty, and often deer rangers at least in the east are well under a hundred yards.

A coworker regularly used his Enfield carbine for deer hunting. I made up some .575 minies for him to try.

The 577 Enfield or any 58 cal rifle will put the smack down on any game in north America. Loaded with round ball and patch over 70 to 100 grains powder (which ever load is accurate) is a grand hunting weapon on any grounds.

So yes ... military rifles would do the job.

Study's long ago determined that to test power and reliability for a military rifle ... take it hunting for deer (they are typically the same tenacity as a human) and if they do well in the deer fields, they will kill human's. So just reverse engineer ... if it were good for human's ... then it will sho nough do for deer ... or elk ... or moose ... or smaller black bears ... or antelepy ... cariboo ... you get my point.

Shot a big whitetail doe once. She was facing me at about 20 yds.. The 480 gr. Lee target minie hit her just south of where the throat ends in the breast bone. I was using 75 gr. FFG , and before the ball stalled , it had passed through 17 " of bone and chops. She just sat down dead. The .58 will mash through most anything. .....oldwood

No doubt a .54 Sharps breech loader would work with a flatter nosed bullet.

I have found round balls to have “better” terminal effect than slugs.

I have used Williams bullets, Pritchett bullets and Burtons. They go through and through, but it seems to me that round ball transfers more energy.

When I first started playing with rifles muskets about 3 years ago I missed more shots than I care to admit due to trajectory and poor range estimation. The nature of the sights and ballistic arc of the heavy bullets is much different than round ball.

My spencer carbine was used for years in pnw oak where 100 yRds was max and it gave exemplary service in modern hunt, in later years switched to snider carbine

dave951 said:

Not in NC. Any gun can be used that does not use fixed ammunition, meaning no centerfire ammo during "primitive weapons" seasons. I wanted to use my Sharps or Smith and got that cleared up with the NC game dept. During regular gun season, it's wide open.

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I'm so glad I live in NC.