.45 cal. for deer hunting

I am getting a jim chambers kit with a rice barrel possibly in .45 cal. that I can use for both hunting deer and target shooting. Do the members here feel this is an adequate cal. for both? thanks for the help and feedback!

yes. BUT what will you do more of? If target its a good bet but if you hunt, and ever wanna hunt a larger animal (elk etc.) you will want a bigger ball. If not shooting a sh_t ton consider a .54 as it will buck wind better than the .45 and drop bigger pieces of meat with ease. Cost a bit more in lead but well worth the benifits in my opinion :idunno:

Yes! Know your limitation and those of the rifle and you will do fine,Hunt, do not just shoot.

I have killed a pile of deer with a .44, my only complaint is it doesn't leave much of a blood trail and the deer always run 50 to 100 yards after the shot. I always hear the deer crash though.

All the deer were shot behind the shoulder, this one went about 75 yards after the shot.

I’ve not ever hunted deer with a .45, but I know a lot of folks do. Many rifles were made in the old days in that size for a reason, just stick with shot placement, and only take good shots

tenngun said:

just stick with shot placement, and only take good shots

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That is great advice no matter what you hunt with.
I have let a lot of deer walk away because I could not get a good broadside shot. It has been 50 years since I had to shoot a deer twice. After my grandpa got done with me on that one, it never happened again.

After my grandpa got done with me on that one, it never happened again.

:haha: :rotf: yep grampa's "instill" character fer sure, dang I miss mine

A .45 shooting a .440 diameter lead roundball works great for target shooting.

Some of us feel for hunting deer up to 200 pounds it also is very effective out to about 80 yards.
Beyond 80 yards, the roundball will have lost quite a bit of velocity so it won't have quite as much energy as a .50 caliber gun would at a similar distance.

The most important thing with using any muzzleloader is to find its most accurate powder/patch/ball load because placing the shot where it will do the most good is the most important thing.

A good shot thru the chest cavity with a .45 is far better than a poor shot with a .54.

I am getting a jim chambers kit with a rice barrel possibly in .45 cal. that I can use for both hunting deer and target shooting. Do the members here feel this is an adequate cal. for both? thanks for the help and feedback!

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The Chambers lock will do very well, and the barrel should be accurate too, so the basic answer is yes. You're in PA so you will be using a patched round ball in black powder season, and you might as well us it in any season (I do).

Just South of you, where I live, they allow hunting of deer with a .40 caliber flinter. Lots of folks say, "That be way too tiny a pellet", and then there's the folks who actually hunt with those rifles and as a result have lots of venison in the freezer..., the trick for them is not to push the rifle too far. WHICH is the trick with any rifle, eh? :wink:

I know several respected hunters who use .440 patched round ball, and have no trouble taking deer. All of their rifles are highly accurate. They harvest deer at under 100 yards, but..., so do I with my .54. In 1867, Lt. James Forsyth writing in his book The Sporting Rifle and Its Projectiles, advocated patched round ball over conical bullets, and observed, that only in large open places did one perhaps get shots beyond 100 yards, and he further wrote, "In the jungle, at least one-half [of shots at big game] are under 50 yards, three-fourths under 75, and all, with scarcely an exception, under 100; this is to say, these are the distances at which animals are usually killed in jungle shooting, and I imagine that the case is very much the same in other forest countries."
So things were not that different more than a century ago, and half a world away. :wink:

YES the .440 is probably too light for Elk, but if you don't forsee such a hunt in your future, then you have no concerns. IF the situation changes, you have an excuse to get another rifle..., what's wrong with that? :grin:

LD

Be sure to double check and make sure you're getting a flintlock kit so that you can hunt PA's flintlock season as well.

In the old days we see a lot of smaller caliber guns, when the western areas opened up to fur trade, Santa Fe and western settlement trails and the settlements of Texas bigger bores became common, but; that didn’t stop the eastern makers stayin in the 36-49 range.
When ml had its rebirth folks mostly shot originals, then Dixie started importing guns and parts. Through most of the 50s and 60s .45 was the most common. Elk and moose were rare targets. Deer was the main big game.
Bigger caliber became popular because people looked to compare their gun to a modern rifle. Back in the 70s I remember reading in a hunting magazine that a .50 will do everything your old 30-30 will do. However a 30-30 considered a pretty whimpey gun.
A .50 isn’t a 30-30. I wouldn’t go after elk with anything less then a .54, but a .54 ain’t a .300 mag.
A .45 will do or a .40 will do provided it’s used in the right setting. A 110 lbs deer at 25 yards here in the ozarks ain’t the same as a 250 lbs deer at 100 yards on the Wyoming stepps.

Actually, in the "old days" pre rev war the calibers tended to be on the large side. There are many suppositions about why calibers shrunk going into the 19th century so take your pick.

One thing is for sure though. American hunters continued to kill a bunch of deer and black bear with those smaller bores and if they weren't doing the job they would have gone bigger.

One thing to watch out for are the regs in any of the states you might journey to. Especially out west. As of this year Colorado hunters shooting round balls for elk must use a minimum .54 caliber and for deer, bear and antelope a minimum .50.

Plus, you always have the option of doing like Eric and getting a good stout rope around their antlers before you shoot. :haha:

marmotslayer said:

Actually, in the "old days" pre rev war the calibers tended to be on the large side. There are many suppositions about why calibers shrunk going into the 19th century so take your pick.

One thing is for sure though. American hunters continued to kill a bunch of deer and black bear with those smaller bores and if they weren't doing the job they would have gone bigger.

One thing to watch out for are the regs in any of the states you might journey to. Especially out west. As of this year Colorado hunters shooting round balls for elk must use a minimum .54 caliber and for deer, bear and antelope a minimum .50.

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Yup. Seems like a lot of folks were annoyed that they upped the caliber requirement for traditional round ball shooters and not across the board for all muzzleloader types. It seems arbitrary, at best, as I don't recall seeing any published data suggesting that there was a glut of wounded game caused by smaller balls doing insufficient damage.

As a guy who killed a large mule deer doe with a .50 cal flinter just last year, I can tell you that I would've had zero issue taking the same 52-yard shot with a .45 cal ball. I'd bet a paycheck that she would've been just as dead, and with no fuss. As has been said, it's far more about imposing acceptable limits on your weapon rather than randomly selecting an acceptable ball size based on game type.

More than adequate....A .45 will kill deer, is a great target caliber and even works well on small game.

The 45 is my favorite.Thats why I have 5 of them.

The air gun crowd shoots deer and bigger game with 45 caliber rifles and the projectiles are a whole lot slower than you can get. Shot placement and range are the most important things.

None of the deer I have killed with my .45 prb ever complained they weren't ded enuf. :wink: Same with those my wife has killed. Never had to track one more than about 50 yards. The ball goes in as a .45" ball and flattens to about 3/4" diameter. Very deadly on the internals. Answer: yes, adequate.

Back in the 70’s it seemed like everyone owned a .45 cal.

Then everyone went to a .50 , then a .54 and now I’ve got em’ ranging from .32 to a .653 smoothbore.

Depending on the territory and distance of your type shooting, but on an average size whitetail out to 75 or 80 yards with a well placed shot a .45 cal is bad medicine.

As for paper , I’ve never had a piece walk away after being shot with a .45 cal Roundball . LOL

Back in the 70’s it seemed like everyone owned a .45 cal.

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Back in the '70's TC published data on shooting a double-ball load for patched .440 round ball and whitetails. :wink:

LD