smooth bore info

Hi All, I would like to explore smooth bore accuracy and how to make it better .. i will start by saying that a shooter here has a smooth bore that wins matches against rifle shooters even another who has an original English target rifle in NIB condition shooting prone off the elbows at 100 yards .. I have witnessed this on multiple occasions as Range officer so know that it is not a fluke and that the gun is a smooth bore :idunno: Rob

That is a much discussed subject here. Some searching will bring up a lot of info. But, if I were there I would ask that guy with the accurate smoothie what he feeds his.

Mine shoot 5/8” at 100 yards.
One shot at a time :haha:

We have a local Olympic Shooter that can make a Charleville smoothbore musket with no sights (Miquelet Match) sing like a bird.

Won't beat a rifle at 100 yards, but I wouldn't bet against him at 50 yards. ;-)

Hi again , I thought that I would get a few answers from shooters who had done some experiments in this field but since no one , as yet , has posted I will give it a bit more time hoping that smoothie shooters would really like to do better than 2 or 3 inches at 50 yards , if one guy has cracked it more must have tried

Did you actually ask a question?

Practice, practice, practice.

If it is a smoothbore in rifle style the sights will help immensely past 50 yards . . . but those don't help wingshooting with lighter smootbores at closer ranges.

What can you do to beat rifles at 100 yards?

Cheat? :idunno: Shoot against lousy rifle shots?

My Fowler has a rear sight and I get under 3 inch groups consistently at 50 yards off the bench. I don't even shoot my rifles much past that. So I don't waste time, lead or powder trying.

About 1600 smooth bore matchlocks were contesting at 250 yards, riflemen at 300.
With patch or waded ball I can cloverleaf at 25 yards and get four inch groups at 50, patched shoots a little better but wad is plenty good deer charge. At a 100 I wouldn’t try deer. Shooting at a deer sized target I can hit 100% of the time, but it’s likly to be a gut shot as a chest.

tenngun said:

About 1600 smooth bore matchlocks were contesting at 250 yards, riflemen at 300.
With patch or waded ball I can cloverleaf at 25 yards and get four inch groups at 50, patched shoots a little better but wad is plenty good deer charge. At a 100 I wouldn’t try deer. Shooting at a deer sized target I can hit 100% of the time, but it’s likly to be a gut shot as a chest.

Click to expand...

emphasis added




there's the tricky bit - 'minute of deer' doesn't necessarily mean a clean kill.

My limits a paper plate, if I can’t hit it five for five it’s too far to shoot for hunting. Fifty yards is my limit and I’ve never went that far.

Hi, Say that is mighty good shooting and I bet you can do it offhand at 100 yards but with your level of skill I am sure you could really extend your bragging rights to .36 why stop at .58 when .36 is well within your range

I’m missing your point, I don’t shoot my smoothies at game over fifty yards with about four inch groups. Under field conditions I think twice as big, but they still puts me in the chest.
At a hundred yard I can hit a deer sized target, front leg one shot spine next ham on the third chin the forth. Two to three foot groups from a rest at a hundred yards. I wouldn’t try a deer at that range.
Fifty is my limit and infact I don’t think I’ve taken one over thirty five yards in the last twenty years.
I never shoot off hand unless I’m shooting at an event that requires it. I shoot off my knee or braced on a tree or what have you.

Hi all I am not talking about hunting with a smooth bore I mentioned a guy who shoots a smooth bore and gets rifle like accuracy and wondered if any body on this forum had any idea how he did it and if anybody had tried a different approach to what is considered normal to increase the accuracy of their smooth bore If you are happy with the results you get well and good but once again the question is not about at what distance you choose to shoot or hunting but about what if any improvement could be made to the group size of a shooter wishing to do better than is considered possible by the majority at present .. :v

This is all hearsay but a gentleman in New Zealand and some folks in southern Michigan claim to get great accuracy out of smoothbores by getting a close fitting patch.
The idea being that all the powder goes into driving the ball with no blowzy. A good tight fitting patch might show you something.

Dutch Schoultz

Right now all my smoothies are fusils, and I hunt in their range. This winter I am building a smooth rifle. I don’t expect it to out shoot my fusils but I understand the heavier full octagon barrel in a smaller caliber shrinks groups with a tight patch combo,
However I can’t se myself pushing my range past fifty yards anyway.
What do you mean by rifle like accuracy? I had a .54 that from a rest got 2” groups at ahunndred yards, most rifles I’ve owned were about 3”, and one was about 5.

Right now all my smoothies are fusils, and I hunt in their range. This winter I am building a smooth rifle. I don’t expect it to out shoot my fusils but I understand the heavier full octagon barrel in a smaller caliber shrinks groups with a tight patch combo,
However I can’t se myself pushing my range past fifty yards anyway.
What do you mean by rifle like accuracy? I had a .54 that from a rest got 2” groups at ahunndred yards, most rifles I’ve owned were about 3”, and one was about 5.

Stumpkiller said:

What can you do to beat rifles at 100 yards?

Cheat? :idunno: Shoot against lousy rifle shots?

Click to expand...

Do what I do, when they aren't looking bend their sights.

:thumbsup: :applause: :rotf:

Hi again , I may have the answer to how the guy with the smoothie can compete with rifle shooters at 100 yards and win .. By accident I mentioned this to a guy who knows the said shooter and he told me that the shooter had come up with the idea that all things considered that a ball running the length of the barrel ,in spite of what we all think , was leaving the barrel with some part of the ball getting more friction than the rest resulting in random spin so he came up with the idea of making 3 grooves equally spaced around his thick wad which would completely surround the ball with gas moving straight down the bore (controlled blow by if you will) would have the desired result ... Now my informant did not have any more information about the rest of the load whether the ball was patched naked under size or a much closer fit but the results speak for themselves the groove or slots around the edge of the wad which was cork are about 1/32 of an inch deep .. I have been the range officer at several competitions and witnessed his winning performances against some very good shooters

I got my first smoothbore in 1979, it was a 12ga English Fowler made by Jud Brennan. I loaded it with 80gr's 2ff and a prb and it shot like a rifle out to 50yds.

They were just starting to have primitive Trade Gun matches. Back then there was not many guys shooting smoothbores so they started letting rifle guys shoot in the TG matches.

I whipped the snot out of the rifle shooters with that big 12ga ball. I shot the egg off the pedestal, buttons off the board and cut the string every time.

It turned out to be a heck of a turkey killer too with a load of #5 shot