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Buck and Ball Load?

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Actually, buckshot is legal in some states for deer. In fact it is legal in some areas of VA for deer and required, no rifles or slugs allowed in those areas. I believe the idea is to lower the chances of missed rounds or over penetration of rounds, going into populated areas. Funny in that buckshot was removed in Maryland due to folks shooting too far and crippling many deer..., now that the population of people and deer have soared, perhaps it will return.

All you hog hunters out there might consider it as well, for it is reportedly a good load and legal for feral hogs, even when a no no on deer.

LD
 
Stumpkiller said:
It was also a standard picket duty load for night watch.

Shoot first and ask "who goes there" later.


A good answer Stumpy but remember that the US military issued 4 basic types of ammunition for the smoothbored musket as of 1844:

(1) Ball - .65 cal. round ball with 144 grains of powder (flint) or 120 grains (percussion).

(2) Buck and Ball - .65 cal. round ball and 3 .30 diameter buck shot with the same powder charges as ball cartridge.

(3) Buckshot cartridge - Twelve .30 cal. round balls and the same powder charges listed for ball cartridge.

(4) Blank - no ball and 117 grains of powder. For drill and firing practice.

On Picket, the buckshot cartridge, was used.
 
Va.Manuf.06 said:
Stumpkiller said:
It was also a standard picket duty load for night watch.

Shoot first and ask "who goes there" later.


A good answer Stumpy but remember that the US military issued 4 basic types of ammunition for the smoothbored musket as of 1844:

(1) Ball - .65 cal. round ball with 144 grains of powder (flint) or 120 grains (percussion).

(2) Buck and Ball - .65 cal. round ball and 3 .30 diameter buck shot with the same powder charges as ball cartridge.

(3) Buckshot cartridge - Twelve .30 cal. round balls and the same powder charges listed for ball cartridge.

(4) Blank - no ball and 117 grains of powder. For drill and firing practice.

On Picket, the buckshot cartridge, was used.

The Buck and Ball load was used for the most part. Probably issued 3-4 to one over the ball load.
Would have to read the relevant part of "Firearms of the American West 1803-1865" to refresh my memory. But generally if American infantry was shooting at someone with a SB musket they almost always used buck and ball to increase the hit probability.
This was true of the American Revolution as well and the Lobsterbacks didn't think this was fair either, but not frowned upon as much as shooting officers at long range with a rifle.
Dan
 
Dan you are correct - in most cases. However, buck and ball cartridges were relatively short range cartridges and anything over 50 to 60 yards would call for use of the ball cartridge, the buck shot would be useless at any range beyond that. At 25 yards the buck cartridge could be used most effectively.

Remember that the buck and ball and buckshot cartridges (sometimes double loaded with projectiles) were what decimated Picket's Division at Gettysburg. The smoothbored musket was more common in ranks of the Army of the Potomac than in the Army of Northern Virginia at that time.
 
Va.Manuf.06 said:
Stumpkiller said:
It was also a standard picket duty load for night watch.

Shoot first and ask "who goes there" later.


A good answer Stumpy but remember that the US military issued 4 basic types of ammunition for the smoothbored musket as of 1844:

(1) Ball - .65 cal. round ball with 144 grains of powder (flint) or 120 grains (percussion).

(2) Buck and Ball - .65 cal. round ball and 3 .30 diameter buck shot with the same powder charges as ball cartridge.

(3) Buckshot cartridge - Twelve .30 cal. round balls and the same powder charges listed for ball cartridge.

(4) Blank - no ball and 117 grains of powder. For drill and firing practice.

On Picket, the buckshot cartridge, was used.

Following the Revolution and up until the US Civil War, buck and ball cartridges with .32 buckshot on a .69 caliber musket's ball were formally adopted as standard i.e. the 1838 Ordnance Return with 2.3 million cartridges of which 2.1 million are such “musket ball and buckshot.”
 
Spence that's great documentation! It's amazing to know that sometimes people were as idiotic in 1738 as they can be today. Amazing.....and sad.
 
Today I met six enthusiastic volunteers at the range and we fired around 10 shots of buck and ball at IDPA silhouette targets at 25 yards.

Our Pedersoli Brown Bess has a bore of .73. Our load was a newsprint cartridge with a .69 ball and three .32 buck under the ball, and over a card wad, with 75 grains of FFG.

I encountered some problems. The buckshot jammed in the bore, in one case so deeply that I had to pull the ball and break the jam. Later, as the gun became more fouled, the a paper-wrapped ball was hard to ram down.

Any suggestions? Should I try a .66 ball? Should I try only two buck or reduce the size of the buck? Suggestions welcome.
 
Once it becomes difficult to load with the .68 ball do what they did "in the day", do without the cartridge paper. Drop the naked ball down on top of the powder and ram the paper down on top to keep the ball in place.

Sometimes it is just time to use the bayonet. Remember, even in a serious fight, they rarely fired so many rounds that the barrel became fouled enough to make it impossible to ram.
 
.69 Ball in .73 Bore sounds a little big to Me. I shoot a .662 Ball (Paper Cartridge) out of my .69 Charleville. Depending on the Humidity I can usually shoot quite a while before things get too tight...

Eric
 
So, if a .662 is good for a true .69, wouldn't a .702 (no less a .69, the military standard) be OK for a .73? Still, a tad smaller, i.e. .68 s/be fine.
 
Well, doing the Math I guess the .69 Ball doen't sound all that tight after all in a .73 Bore. I shoot the .662 out of the .69 Charleville for a couple reasons; (1) The Regs about that time often refer to a 1oz Ball (.69/16ga) and (2) That's the size Mould I could get my hands on at the time. I've shot Paper Cartridge .675's, but they're tight from the Git-Go & rapidly get too tight to work with - not a practical combat load. I know I can get through an entire Cartridge Box and then some with the .662 Ball in my .69 before needing to swab the Bore - a lot depends on the Humidity and F granulation I'm using. I've shot a lot of Besses, but never owned or worked up a load for one. Seems to me I hear a lot about using a .715 Ball in the .75 Besses though. No question the more undersize you go the easier the Ramming under sustained fire - question is at what point does accuracy begin to suffer unduly vs the priority of Rate of Fire vs Accuracy....and that debate can go on & on....
 
Typo in my last Post - When I said the Regs at the time often referred to a 1 oz Ball (.69/16ga) it should have read "1oz Ball (.662/16ga)."

Sorry - Trying to do this on the Sly at work...uh oh...here they come....
 
Va.Manuf.06 said:
Dan you are correct - in most cases. However, buck and ball cartridges were relatively short range cartridges and anything over 50 to 60 yards would call for use of the ball cartridge, the buck shot would be useless at any range beyond that. At 25 yards the buck cartridge could be used most effectively.

Remember that the buck and ball and buckshot cartridges (sometimes double loaded with projectiles) were what decimated Picket's Division at Gettysburg. The smoothbored musket was more common in ranks of the Army of the Potomac than in the Army of Northern Virginia at that time.
Muskets and the loads used are of only passing interest to me. But there are places to look for info.
A great many muskets were not capable of reliably hitting a man at 80 yards, either due to the inherent inaccuracy of the load, the quality of the barrel/its state of repair or the lack of skill of the shooter. (General markmanship training did not appear until the 1850s-60s and was sporadic into the 1870s.)

Actually in some looking I find:

"...three buckshot atop a .64 caliber ball. With the standard powder charge the buck and ball load had greater range than the buckshot cartridge, and made the musket more effective against individual targets that it was with a single ball. Tests at West Point in 1837 showed that from 9 buck-and-ball cartridges fired at 3 shots per minute, 16 out of 27 buckshot hit the target at 80 yards." [no mention of the 64 ball]
"...from 1835 to 1840, the Ordnance Department issued the regulars 2,700,000 buck-and ball loads, as opposed to 950,000 ball..."
In the 1820s there were apparently serious problems with the musket's quality in America.
Further soldiers, worried about passing inspection were taking the muskets apart with the result that parts, even trigger guards were bent so as to no longer fit the stock, if not actually worn down. Bent barrels were a problem and certainly would not enhance accuracy. Some soldiers were actually annealing the frizzens (as near as I can tell from the description), so as to polish them better. These muskets were relegated to garrison duty and workable muskets issued for field duty.
Thus it was thought that with the wear and tear that the average musket was only good for about 6-8 years before it was rendered unserviceable just from the constant polishing.

It was also found in testing that reducing the powder charge greatly increased accuracy with the musket fixed in a rest. The French found that reducing the windage (using the biggest ball that could be loaded easily) greatly increased accuracy at 100 meters.
I don't know of any shooter who uses a .64-.65 caliber ball in a .69 caliber arm today.
It would be interesting to test one with a .648 ball in a paper cartridge to see how it shoots. This is likely the 17 to the pound diameter I see mentioned for the musket in one place.
Hanger, speaking of the British Muskets of 1814 states that many were so ill bored as to not be able to strike a man at 80 years. Though a good one would and might at 100. But Hanger was a better marksman than the average infantryman of the time who, I suspect, might be firing with his eyes closed.
See"Firearms of the American West 1803-1865" Chapter 7.
In America "pressed" rifle and musket balls were being used by 1845-46 made at the Washington Armory. These apparently gave better accuracy than other balls at least in muskets.
I have read that shot towers were dropping musket shot by this time and thought this was probably how musket balls were mass produced, but apparently "pressing" was also used and perhaps dropped shot was abandoned? Or the material I had read on shot towers was wrong.
We are often at the mercy of what we find written down.
Dan
 
At times in the 18th centurty the bore size was not the same as the balls per lb and a considerable range of bore sizes was acceptabe for a given gun of x balls pr lb as a gun of a bals pr lb thta equalled a .562 ball could be a bore from .577 thru .623
 
Another thought would be to dip the ball end of the cartridge in your personal lubricant of choice (I happen to use melted bore butter out of convenience). I am typically able to shoot a full cartridge box of 0.715 musket balls out of my Pedersoli BB without difficulty in this manner. I do swab out the bore with a couple damp patches when I flip the cartridge box over for the second 18 shots but otherwise encounter no problems.
 
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