Recovered roundballs anyone??

[Eterry]

My hunting buddy and I were talking and wondering what a round ball looks like when it passes almost thru a game animal. We suppose it flattens out, but arent sure. Does anyone have experience with recovered PRB's from game? How do they look, what do they weigh compare to pristine condition?
Thanks,
Eterry

 

[Josh Smith]

Yup. They get flat.
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/252433/

However, I personally hard cast most of mine. I prefer some expansion, but the "splash" of a round ball and penetration are more important factors to me.

This comes from studying gunshot wounds on animals and humans.

Josh

 

[BrownBear]

Here's one of the few I've managed to recover, a Hornady .530 launched by 80 grains of 3f if I recall the charge correctly.

It passed front to back through the base of the neck of a largish buck, completely severing the spine and stopping under the hide at 55 yards. Near as I can estimate, it passed through around 18" of muscle and bone. Interesting enough, it retained virtually all of its weight.

 

[roundball]

I’ve only recovered a couple balls as most are pass-throughs from broadside heart shots.
One I did recover was this .600” cast ball out of a .62cal Flintlock...sitting down at ground level in a natural ground blind, shot the buck in the chest at 30-40yds, ball traveled full length of his body, broke through the right rear thigh bone, and stopped bulging out under the hide on the back of the ham.

 

[ohio ramrod]

A stack of wet newspapers will give a very close approximation to flesh. Shoot you hunting load into a stack and see what you ball and load does at your hunting range! Different alloys at different velocities will react differently.One inch thick oak boards are a good approximation to bone as well.

 

[Dave K]

I recovered one from one of the deer I had taken. The .490 rd. ball was flattened and now has a dia. of .720 and lost 7gr. of weight. I would say that is real effective and the deer didn't argue.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Near 100% weight retention, and This kind of expansion are the Hallmark Characteristics of a pure lead ball, and how it expands in living flesh and bone.

Since deer are so small, only those shot from end to end, will give you an opportunity to recover a ball, and with the large caliber guns, even that is mostly a 50/50 chance. RoundBall's recovered .62 Lead round ball from under the skin of the hind leg is very typical of what happens to a heavy ball passing through a light -skinned animal like deer.

Wet newspapers, bound together with string, or placed in a sturdy box, make an excellent test medium when trying to see how your ball performs. The great thing about newspapers( and magazines) is that its fairly easy to pull them apart and find your ball.

( I learned this checking in deer for a couple of years for the State, where most of the deer were shot with 12 gauge( .72 cal.) slugs. We had more and more hunters use MLers during the second season, so I had plenty of opportunities( 600+ deer) to examine entrance, and exit wounds, where they existed, in the deer brought into the check station. This was 10 years before I became active in BP shooting.

The first year, the required list of questions to the hunters included asking about how many shots taken, how many hit any deer, where the shot struck( entrance wound), did the slug exit, and if so, where, etc. We didn't have to ask those questions my second year as a checker. But, successful hunters then, just as now, like to explain the hunt, the shot, the hits, the wound channel, etc. so I heard it all the second year, but didn't have to write it all down! PHEW!)

My very first penetration test( when I was 10 years old) was shooting a conical bullet into an Elm tree stump. This is a tough wood to split, and it took a couple of hours to find the slug. It entered the stump about 2 inches, then made a turn to the right and followed a growth ring around the right side of the stump, before coming to rest almost exactly Opposite the entry hole. Total length of penetration was 14 inches! Since we destroyed that stump finding that first bullet, and didn't have another stump available to do more testing, that was the end of my first penetration testing work.

Oh, the bullet was about 1/8" shorter, .020" smaller in diameter, but still retained its round nose shape and you could see the remains of the grease grooves in the rear area of the bullet. Weight retention was good, losing about 20% of its weight in that long passage through the stump-- Not bad for a cast lead bullet hitting a very tough medium. :hmm:

I will use wet newspapers to test balls and bullets any day instead of shooting at tree stumps!

 

[Keith T]

I realize this doesn't count..... But my mother in law lives in texas and years ago during a visit to the alamo, she bent over and picked up a roundball. It appears to have never been shot. I'm sure she broke all kinds of laws sticking it in her pocket, but now it lives in my safe.

 

[Tom Compton]

The ONE I've recovered was near 30 years ago. No pics but it was a .401 dia 98 gr cast ball (including the sprue)pushed by 75 gr FFg. Ball was under a patch of loose skin on the off side of a broadside shot to the boiler room.

At the widest, it measured .62" and weighed 95 gr.

Very effective
TC

 

[Eterry]

Thanks guys, we figured the ball would flatten based on exit holes in game shot, but have never recovered one...yet. I guess this confirms we need to be hunting moose, elk, or some such game with our M/L's. I'll tell momma thats why I need to go to Colorado this fall!!!

Eterry

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Velocity at point of impact has a great deal to do with expansion and penetration. Close shots, where the velocity is still high, will expand a great deal and penetrate less than a shot at longer range where velocity has dropped off.
I've only recovered three balls. One .50 caliber broadside .50 yard heart shot was found just under the hide on the far side and looked like a pregnant nickle. One .50 caliber straight on chest shot with only 50 grains of powder was recovered from a ham and looked like it could be used again. One .648" ball cast of hard alloy and fired from a 12 gauge shotgun for a "Texas heart shot" cut off the tail bone, pulverized the hear 8" of spine and was recovered about the middle of the back. It was very scratched up on the front from penetrating so much bone but was not expanded. One elk where the .50 caliber ball exited showed the exit wound as a narrow slit, which tells me the ball flattened on impact but tipped edgewise before exit.

 

[Dave K]

Actually, I did mention the one that I found intact. It was a broadside 65yd. shot. The roundball went through the boiler room and when it hit the hide on the other side, it then traveled forward for about a foot. It was a wicked wound channel with the flattened ball. My load for that 50cal. was 70gr. of 2F Swiss. One other ball I recovered was a total mess. It was a 20 ft. shot head on and I sighted on and entered the deer at the base of the white throat patch. Since I was sitting on the ground, the ball traveled at an uphill angle and then destroyed the spine which just plain turned the pure lead ball into fragments. That deer went down as if hit by lightning. This was the same load as the other one.

 

[hanshi]

I totally agree with CoyoteJoe on the velocity/expansion/distance issue. I have taken much flak in the past by posting this idea but it is a fact that can be proven.

Of the few balls I've managed to recover all were from 50 yards and under shots. Most close shots created total penetration as did ALL longer shots. Recovered prb were found dramatically flattened under a skin bulge on the off side when no bone of any kind was hit. The balls were surprisingly symmetrical with almost no weight loss. When a large bone was hit the ball expanded but was much misshapened and carried bone fragments. No doubt the ball still expands some as distances increase but with less flattening occurring. Of course at some distance the ball will not flatten at all. I will go out on a limb and suggest (only suggest, now) that once the ball has slowed down too much to expand, that it will not exit either.

 

[hoochiepapa]

Yes, I'm gonna do it!!
.54 cal rb recovered from a pronghorn buck shot at about 70 yds, 110 grs. bp, .018 patch, mink oil. Went thru both shoulders, and lodged in the skin on the opposite side.

 

[buttonbuck]

On head shots with squirrel and coon I recovered the 32 cal balls they flatten out about as thick as a nickel but smaller than a dime. I thought about saving them but the get cast into new balls, that seems like the right thing to do.

 

[Stumpkiller]

This one came out of a whitetail buck. Frontal heart shot (from about 11 yards) & lodged behind the leg on the back of the hip just under the skin. It's the only ball I've ever recovered.

Expanded all the way from 0.490" to 0.520". Woo hoo.

'Course, it is a pretty hard lead (solder in with the lead).

 

[Maynerd62411]

Although I've seen RB's flatten out anywhere from the size of a quarter to totally scrappnel apart, the one I recovered from the deer I took this year only flattened out slightly on the front side.
I caught the side of a rib on the left side, took out the bottom 1/2 of the spine, and completely shattered a rib on the right side. I recovered the ball on the inside of the hide , on the right side.
It held it's shape on the backside of the RB. It doesn't seem to have lost much of the weight, but I don't have a scale to measure it , accuratly.
.54 cal. 80 gr. T-7. I was shooting downhill from almost 40 yd.

backside

front side