Hello, again.
First of all: No, I´m not a hunter. Where I live (germany) a hunting license is not quite easy to get; it´s expensive and an expensive “education” is needed with a lot of things to learn that not really belong to hunting. Germany is a small country with lots and lots of people.
Not much space for (big) game and hunting ”¦.
However, I did some hunting in Ukraina (a western part of Russia) where our relatives live near the carpate mountains. We shot some ducks and bagged a smaller wild boar. (Nice barbarque!)
At the present time I have a invitation to hunt brown bear and wild boar at Bosnia but it will take me some years to go there. I want to take a rugged double barrel side-by-side shotgun in 20-76 with mobil chokes. There is a rifled mobil choke and a 350 Grains Slug will do the job while I can hunt birds and hare using the other choke tubes.
I ´m an experimenter and I like to understand what a specific rifle can and can´t do and take the full potential of it.
It´s possible to shoot a hole in a paper board with a round ball and 50 Grains of Blackpowder but where´s the sense of it ? The Kodiak is a hunting number and so paper punching with the Kodiak makes only sense if you prepare hunting.
“The 72 Kodiak isn´t a cannon” one guy said. And he is right !!!
I don´t know what he did and why he get such poor velocity. The Hogdon 777 Data shows that my figures make sense. However, I used plastic sabots as gas sealant which makes a world of difference.
But it is for sure that such a big bore muzzle loading double rifle has quite a lot of limitations!
A double rifle is a short range weapon (especially with this big bore) and its trajectory is like a short rainbow!!
Only an expert marksman can make his shot count at 100 meters distance with this rifle and this should really be the longest shot!
However, the rifle has a lot of advantages, too. The heavy bullet travels at reasonable velocity and the mass of the bullet is quite high. What I expect from such a large diameter bullet is just to stay together (loose no weight) and punch a hole through the game.
There are lots and lots of modern hunting bullets. All of them a expensive, sometimes very expensive ”“ and we all know that some of them never worked. Other bullet makers have quality problems from lot to lot. In my opinion the more complicated the bullet design is the larger is the possibility that the bullet will fail. And these chances will rise with the bullets velocity !!!!!!!!!
I know a man who nearly lost his live in Afrika because an A-Square Lion Load Bullet (375 H&H) failed and a proper hits wasn´t enough.
So, why spend a lot of money and still be unsafe ??
There are some traditional ways which are much better than the ultra-super-fast magnums. Some of the poorest hunting rifles I ´ve ever seen where extremely expensive Wheatherby´s ”¦.. so there´s no reason to assume that their ammo is better !!!!!!!!
Back to Kodiak:
The big .72 has several disadvantages like the limitation to short range ”“ but, at the other hand, a double rifle is always a short range number.
A muzzleloader needs lead or alloy bullets which don´t expand like premium expanding bullets do (if they don´t fail) but don´t act like solids either.
But with an 72 bullet I don’t want expansion!! I want weight retention and if the bullet stays together, its OK!
Another word about sectional density ”“ this is quite poor because of the bullets shortness. We may use a heavier bullet but there are limitations because of the large bore. The 770 conical is better than a round ball but it´s still miles away from “length of four times the diameter”.
A heavier (longer) bullet can´t be safely used in that rifle because twist rate / stabilisation and pressure (recoil !!!) won´t allow it.
The twist is very long which is bad in words of penetration. We all know, the 460 Weatherby with its 16” twist penetrates less than the 460 A-Square (10”) same bullet weight, same velocity.
However, the Kodiak 72 was made to shoot ROUND PATCHED ball. It dosn´t take a lot to stabilize a round ball. And the twist has to be long because the round ball will jump over a shorter twist.
There´s no way to change it.
So I deceided to use shotgun slugs like the lyman foster type or the lyman new model “waistet pellet”. These bullets fly stable even if you shoot them from a shotgun barrel because of the different construction. This added stability may or may not give better results on the paper target but it will add a little penetration.
For some reason, the Lyman “Waistet Pellet” Slug has a better penetration then then round nose Slug. Some guys say this is because the flat point causes a “supercaviation” but I really don´t know if it´s true. But it is tried and true so it isn´t really important why it does work!
Next thing is the alloy I use. If I need to use a sabot (shotcup) for a slug, there is no contact from barrel to bullet.
Why not use a harder alloy and get more penetration from the same bullet ??
A shooter, who was in the paper printing business, gave me a metal they call “TEGO”. This is a mixture of Stannum (SN), Stubidium (SB), Copper and small amounts of other metals I don’t know ”“ it’s a special kind of bronze but it can be melted in a standart melting pot at home, because it´s nearly 70% Stannum! When papers where printed with lead letters, they mixed one part TEGO with 20 parts pure lead. Today, he uses TEGO to make alloys for bullets like 45 ACP, 45-70 Government.
I try to cast very hard an durable hollowpoints (lyman mould) for the 45-70 with a TEGO and lead. Why not give a try and make 72 sabot bullets from TEGO or a hard alloy ???
I tried another thing: I made 520 grains 54 caliber maxi ball lead bullets. They fit in an 20 gauge shotcup. The 20 gauge shotcup fits inside a 12 gauge shotcup.
I testfired four “bullets” at 25 meters and the holes in the paper were round; no keyholing.
With this bullets, the sectional density is much better and they is still the advantage of the better interior ballistics: In a 54 with e.g. 120 grains blackpowder, the blackpowder column is much longer than in a 72.
But the shorter powder column will give much better ignition and ensures the full consumption of the powder which is especially important with blackpowder an bp substitutes because the powder mass is much bigger if you compare nitro catridges.
I plan to test a kind of forward ignition but that’s complicated and I will do some drawings to explain it.
What makes me wonder is that one guy wrote he want´s to hunt a cape buffalo with the Kodiak.
I feel this is quite dangerous, because even the strongest load is not much better than an magnum shotgun slug!!!!!!!
Books say, the African Cape Buffalo is about 1500 ”“ 1600 pounds, sometimes 1800 pounds.
Ok, the Asian Water Buffalo is much bigger, but the Cape offers still a lot of bad tempered and aggressive meat.
To reach the vitals you have to penetrate at least three or four feets of meat, maybe bones!!!
Are you sure you want to do it ???
An oryx is quite strong but it isn´t dangerous. As far as I know a buffalo is really dangerous ”¦.. I would feel more comfortable with an 500 NE at least!!!!!
@christiaan: Where did you order the Peep Sight ?
It´s not a Lyman Sight. T/C offers a Peep that looks similar but I can´t find a german importer.
