Buck or shot from a Brown bess

Britsmoothy said:

I never really see the need for buck shot...at the distance it is reliable it would be easier to just use a ball!

Click to expand...

A book I had told of the murder of a government official by a hiway man with a blunderbus. An autopsy was done on the guy and was found with five ‘pistol balls’, through him. Liver and lungs were hit and mortal. One fat ball through lungs or liver would likely have been mortal too. I doubt even today any .45 and up ball delivered from a blunderbuss size shoulder gun would cause death before help could be gotten to him.
So dead is dead.
However I wonder if it’s more incapacitating. Shot guns were used in the trenches of WW1. Would a man hit with a load of buck shot be less able to return fire or bayonet thrust in that time between hit and unconsciousness?

tenngun said:

A book I had told of the murder of a government official by a hiway man with a blunderbus. An autopsy was done on the guy and was found with five ‘pistol balls’, through him. Liver and lungs were hit and mortal. One fat ball through lungs or liver would likely have been mortal too. I doubt even today any .45 and up ball delivered from a blunderbuss size shoulder gun would cause death before help could be gotten to him.
So dead is dead.
However I wonder if it’s more incapacitating. Shot guns were used in the trenches of WW1. Would a man hit with a load of buck shot be less able to return fire or bayonet thrust in that time between hit and unconsciousness?

Click to expand...

Dunno, besides, I have no need to ambush other road users or to dig a trench so as to pick a fight with others wanting my new trench!

My only interest is about hunting sorry.
A single ball in the hunting field at buck shot range is all that is required and easier to load. In my opinion of course....

Agree with both. But the change of a hit with a spread, however slight, with buckshot is much greater than with a single projectile. Increase the range and the chances of hitting more than one adversary with one shot are very good. Effective? Yes, in the right circumstances.

Britsmoothy said:

Dunno, besides, I have no need to ambush other road users or to dig a trench so as to pick a fight with others wanting my new trench!

My only interest is about hunting sorry.
A single ball in the hunting field at buck shot range is all that is required and easier to load. In my opinion of course....

Click to expand...

I wasn’t arguing with I was just thinking. It’s not easier to hit with a load of buck and your unlikely to hit more then one target, and that target won’t get any deader from useing buck.... so I don’t know why it became popular. But they loaded it in muskets and sea service guns and hunters police and military never gave them up.
Maybe it’s short ranged aspect. A .33 ball loses energy pretty fast. Deadly at thirty yards, unlikely to kill at a hundred

Britsmoothy said:

Dunno, besides, I have no need to ambush other road users or to dig a trench so as to pick a fight with others wanting my new trench!

My only interest is about hunting sorry.
A single ball in the hunting field at buck shot range is all that is required and easier to load. In my opinion of course....

Click to expand...

I wasn’t arguing with
Posted twice ,I don’t know how I did it

tenngun said:

I wasn’t arguing with I was just thinking. It’s not easier to hit with a load of buck and your unlikely to hit more then one target, and that target won’t get any deader from useing buck.... so I don’t know why it became popular. But they loaded it in muskets and sea service guns and hunters police and military never gave them up.
Maybe it’s short ranged aspect. A .33 ball loses energy pretty fast. Deadly at thirty yards, unlikely to kill at a hundred

Click to expand...

I know you weren't arguing friend. Thanks.

If you read Grant's Memoirs you will find him mentioning a battle behind Vicksburg after the Federals had managed to cross the Mississippi. The Federals were armed with smoothbores and the Confederates all had new Enfields. In one battle the two lines were about 50 yards apart. Grant gave the smoothbores the advantage because they were shooting buck and ball and were sending 4 ball downrange while the Rifles were only sending one back. If you are doing close in battle, buck and ball or buckshot is not a bad choice. For hunting it's illegal in many places and useless at longer ranges.

A Buckner said:

If you read Grant's Memoirs you will find him mentioning a battle behind Vicksburg after the Federals had managed to cross the Mississippi. The Federals were armed with smoothbores and the Confederates all had new Enfields. In one battle the two lines were about 50 yards apart. Grant gave the smoothbores the advantage because they were shooting buck and ball and were sending 4 ball downrange while the Rifles were only sending one back. If you are doing close in battle, buck and ball or buckshot is not a bad choice. For hunting it's illegal in many places and useless at longer ranges.

Click to expand...

It’s hard to argue with the guy who was there. On the other hand ol’ boys often credited a thing A for having an effect but in later testing didn’t really aid. Bob wins a shoot using olive oil as a patch lube, but that doesn’t in of itself prove olive oil is best lube, even so, Bob won and credits his success to olive oil.

tenngun said:

It’s hard to argue with the guy who was there. On the other hand ol’ boys often credited a thing A for having an effect but in later testing didn’t really aid. Bob wins a shoot using olive oil as a patch lube, but that doesn’t in of itself prove olive oil is best lube, even so, Bob won and credits his success to olive oil.

Click to expand...

I use chapstick and Burts Bees hand balm, has always worked well for me.

During the 1775 preparations for armed resistance to British regulars enforcing his majesty's edicts by his obstreperous 'subjects' in North America, the Massachusetts militia were to keep their good fire lock handy, have a cartridge box/pouch, a pound of powder, and lay in 40 balls for the piece plus 100 buckshot... Most of these militia arms were smooth bore fowlers and muskets... And quite a few were the British "Brown Bess" type muskets. So as with smooth-bores, a solid slug round ball? Yep. Buckshot? Yep. Birdshot? Yep. Buck and ball? Yep. The versatility of the smooth bore is why shotguns continue to be popular arms.

As for hunting, one might pattern the musket at various ranges to see if it might be an effective game getter. Using buckshot for hunting bucks has been popular, particularly in the U.S. South, while other hunters decry the practice and insist on the use of slugs.

Your musket. Your choice.

Probably heresy but anyone try using one of those plastic piston wads preloaded with buck and ball? Maybe held closed with scotch tape?

Have used those shotcups with the cushion part cut off over a card wad in my m/l shotguns before but wound up using just a hard card minus the shot cup. I imagine it would help keep the shot from scrubbing inside the bore. You could even sprinkle dry sawdust in as a buffer I'll bet. Some people use little paper cups. Never had any troubles with plastic fouling like some folks say. I just found I could load faster without using the plastic cup. When the birds are coming in fast and all your friends are shooting those new repeating breech-loading abominations, you have to go for speed in loading.

Is it legal to speak of the plastic cups? Here's the trick, put the cup (with cushion attached) inside a paper tube/cartridge. Load the whole deal as a single projectile, don't tear it open and pour in the shot or anything like that. (be careful not to load it upside down!) Load it as a self contained unit. The cups are small enough in diameter that the whole unit (cup inside of paper tube) will be a perfect fit in the bore, depending on how many wraps of paper you use. Pour in powder, ram shot unit down, prime and fire. Super duper fast.

tenngun said:

A book I had told of the murder of a government official by a hiway man with a blunderbus. An autopsy was done on the guy and was found with five ‘pistol balls’, through him. Liver and lungs were hit and mortal. One fat ball through lungs or liver would likely have been mortal too. I doubt even today any .45 and up ball delivered from a blunderbuss size shoulder gun would cause death before help could be gotten to him.
So dead is dead.
However I wonder if it’s more incapacitating. Shot guns were used in the trenches of WW1. Would a man hit with a load of buck shot be less able to return fire or bayonet thrust in that time between hit and unconsciousness?

Click to expand...

Most likely true. However, I doubt the range was much of 20 or 30 feet when shot. I have an antique buss and the accuracy is like tossing a hand full of rocks. Close range, a lot of rocks hit you at a distance, maybe none.

tenngun said:

A book I had told of the murder of a government official by a hiway man with a blunderbus. An autopsy was done on the guy and was found with five ‘pistol balls’, through him. Liver and lungs were hit and mortal. One fat ball through lungs or liver would likely have been mortal too. I doubt even today any .45 and up ball delivered from a blunderbuss size shoulder gun would cause death before help could be gotten to him.
So dead is dead.
However I wonder if it’s more incapacitating. Shot guns were used in the trenches of WW1. Would a man hit with a load of buck shot be less able to return fire or bayonet thrust in that time between hit and unconsciousness?

Click to expand...

to effectively kill a human quickly, you can use a number of methods. If exsanguination is your goal, you want (to borrow from the late great Keith Elmer) to let a lot of air in and a lot of blood out, so two holes are better than one. If hydrostatic shock is your goal, you want as big a projectile going as fast as possible. When stationed in a situation where my primary concern was 'bad guys in the wire,' I bet my personal safety on a 12 gauge pump with a screw- in full choke firing three inch #4 copperplated buckshot. Luckily, I was never in a situation where this was needed, but others who had been there and done that agreed with my choice. I decided that this system offered both advantages of massive blood loss and the possibility of neurological damage, if not to the cerebral cortex, quite possibly to the systems enabling coordinated effort to do anything other than fall over and pass out. Remember that if you want to kill someone, regardless of what you use (unless you can decapitate the person, or cause massive neurological damage) he or she will have a about five or six seconds of residual blood pressure during which time they will be conscious, even if not very well coordinated.

so much for the gruesome.

hope this sheds some light

Just my two cents worth for what it's worth. The Brown Bess musket with a smooth bore is just a big old shotgun. And I load shot in it just like I do my muzzle loading 12 gauge. The powder I use is 1FG because it has been proven to give better patterns in guns 12 gauge and larger. So, I load my powder....followed by a wad of wasp nest packed tightly over the powder.....followed by two thin stiff cards....followed by my shot of choice....and of course topped of with a card or more wasp nest. In my humble opinion, a thick fiber wad is not needed since some pressure is vented through the touch hole...unlike in a shotgun shell. Wasp nest is an excellent wadding material as it it light and does not interfere with the flight of the shot in any way. My gun likes it this way....yours may not...so to each his own and then some. Merry Christmas to you and yours....and keep your powder dry, etc.