I would LOVE to see someone hunt White Tailed Deer or Antelope with an Atlatl. It would be pure dumb luck to get either with an atlatl. Way too much arm movement to make this work. Just the sound of the bow string will cause a WT to "duck". I have had Mule Deer who had me fixed in a stare move at the pan flash, sometimes enough "dodge" the ball at 50-60 yards. I think this is why that weapon died out with the megafauna. It was great for huge critters not so great for something like an Antelope which is not only prone to leave at high speed but seldom lets anything get within a hundred yards and they have about 8x vision to boot.
Smooth bores were with every large group going West. However, the hunting, for the most part was with rifles. Lewis and Clark had muskets, they had some "fusils" including at least one "elegant" fusil they lost in the flash flood at Great Falls IIRC. But they hunted with rifles from all accounts. When going overland during the Great Falls portages the people with arms were using the "short rifle".
I was not stating the natives were stupid. For whatever reason a great many in the East and the West liked the Trade Gun or other smoothbore. And as previously stated the Traders and the Miltary from at least 1740 on preferred it that way. Military officers said they were bad due to the way the natives made war. Chapter 6 in "British Military Flintlock Rifles" covers native use prior to 1783. Chapter 16 extends to 1840. In fact I believe it was illegal to sell rifles to the natives at the time of the French and Indian War and probably later. But most people ignored the law.
Actually the standard bore trade gun would use a 1/2 ounce ball if it were patched. And if you DIDN'T patch it and carried it muzzle down horse back its likely going to unload itself. The 1/2 ounce trade ball was a stock item. If you try to patch a 1/2 ounce ball in a 54 smooth I wish you luck. Meek told of the Natives using blanket wadding but if it was a patches or wadding it hard to say. But the complaint of cavalry officers of ALL the military smooth bores was that if "slung" as carbines were going to unload themselves in a few miles. And I am sure this is why there was never a Minie ball Carbine. Now civilians were unlikely to carry any long gun on a sling horse back. But they will tend to hang muzzle low if carried on a loop in the saddle horn and barrel heavy guns would go vertical or nearly so from 1870s photos I have seen. So if carrying the gun in this way it might be a good idea to patch the ball. Shooting small game with a shotgun takes a lot of lead for what you get, especially with open bored guns and unless they are flock shot on the ground on water its a great waste of lead. If you were at a post or on a keelboat the weight was of little importance. But if you were out on your own and buying your own powder and lead it might be a different matter. "Firearms of The American West 1803-1865" covers smoothbores very well. Sill most mentions of smoothbores is in the reference of night guards etc and they are not the primary arms in any expedition so far as I can tell. If you are in a small group of 2-3 people you better not let the natives find you shotgun or not. It was common practice to stop, build a fire, eat, then after dark pack up and go another 3-5 miles or more and sleeping in a "cold" camp so that there were no surprises in the night.
The English..... The English makers almost universally used the idea that a larger ball needed a faster twist and many 62-72 caliber rifles had twists in the length of the barrel. And since the barrels were often under 30" by the 1830s it made these rifle nearly useless for hunting since they could not use more the may 60-70 grains of powder without stripping the patch making the rifle low velocity and almost useless for hunting anything at any distance with the "proper load". This even though the slow twist 20 bore was well proven by Baker. As a result many, many Englishmen used smoothbores for heavy game in Africa and India until the advent of the metallic cartridges. Selous was using 4 bore smoothbore percussions in the 1870s. If you read Forsythe's "The Sporting Rifle and Its Projectiles" from the 1850s you will a much better explanation of this problem than I will bother with here. If we read "The Oregon Trail" we learn the Parkman and his guide were rifle armed while Shaw, Parkman's companion, had poor eyesight, IIRC, and had a shotgun he shot balls from. But when the guide went off to kill buffalo for meat he took Parkman's rifle along with his own. Not Shaw's double shotgun.
Clerks and such around posts and forts often used smooth mores to hunt birds and other game. However, the balls for a 16 or 12 bore shot gun weigh a LOT more than those for a 50-54 rifle. I have a rifle that uses a 16 to the pound, one ounce, ball and its not a good idea to toss too many in the pouch. A 69 is worse. Now if a 54 caliber rifle will kill anything you are likely to hunt why pack around the extra lead? 5 pounds of lead will run quite awhile at 32 to the pound at 16 to the pound not so many. J.J. Henry tells us from 1775 when he was enroute to Quebec that he had 70 balls in his pouch and the rifle was apparently smaller then 48 caliber. 70 balls at 45 to the pound will weight about a pound and 1/2. Seventy 16 to the pound balls will weigh 4 3/8 pounds and will require about twice the powder. My rifle with a 1 ounce ball needs 140 grains off FF to make 1600 fps with a Knock breech and 30" barrel. Which gives it a decent trajectory to 110-120 yards. Now will it kill better than a 45 or 32 to the pound rifle? Yeah. But in shooting deer its not twice as good. I would prefer it for Elk over a 50-54. But both these kill elk well with proper shot placement so why carry the extra lead and powder if you are maybe 1000 miles from a resupply? 1840s at Ft Union is a far cry from 1830 at Jackson Hole or Three Forks of the Missouri or even out on the plains of Kansas or Nebraska.
Then we have the self-defense aspect. For details I suggest you look to Osborne Russell for his accounts of fights with the natives, including Pierre's Hole and look at the casualty rates. The Pierre's Hole fight was pretty close range thus supposedly negating the rifles advantage. It was still grossly one sided. Then we have Tecumseh trading in his trade gun for a rifle before Fallen Timbers. Apparently he though the rifle was a better idea. So far as nooks and crannies. Yep I use terrain a lot. But when you are sneaking on some deer and one gets up you did not see and she is 100 yards or just a little more. I'm stuck, in full view. Since I'm hunting a doe anyway I do a 100 yard offhand shot. Trust me I have tried this with a smooth bore too. But the results were not the same. I hit her a little higher than I was holding but when went down in her tracks. I have killed deer and antelope from 30 yards or so to 150 over the years. And since I don't know how far the shot might be I gave up on the Trade gun about 40 years ago and for several reasons. It was great at breaking rocks out to a pretty fair distance and shot good on paper. But after all the work it takes to get a shot, like crawling across a stubble field. Knowing the gun and still missing, shooting from prone rock solid? Nope... Have not shot at a critter with a smooth bore since. At the distances many shoot deer in the East from stands I can kill deer with a rifled pistol and have in the past.
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While is earlier than the Mtn Man era these paragraphs make some of my points, including that the rifle is more efficient. Its from "Bailey".
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