Smoothbore killing power

[roundball]

I know you weren't...I was just adding the bit of news.

You know, you have to have some stones to go into the bush like that carrying nothing but a .12ga pump, etc...unless there are 4-5 others ALSO armed with .12ga pumps that don't show on camera when TV occasionally airs something about an African hunt...cause you're only chance is to stand your ground and start making aimed fire at whatever is charging you...and if you don't get it done there the party's over

 

[Stumpkiller]

A couple guys like Sealous and Bell would stand an elephant charge with bolt action rifles like 7X57 Mauser and .303 Enfield. Stones for sure!

I'm not sure where I would have to look up the 12 ga. accounts. Buckshot would make sense, but I was pretty sure they were discussing the "Paradox" style of slug (like the Brenneke with the "shuttlecock" wad attached). I'll have to check, but most such books would have been public library. I have a few, well thumbed "Double Gun Journal"s (pitiful when you can hardly justify the $16 magazine that discusses those beautiful old doubles). The clients would clip a cat and the PH would have to track it and follow up with a M-97 pump. Weeee!

 

[Grizzled Roberts]

My First Model Bess is 77 cal. I shoot a .750 round ball and a 10 thousand patch on top of 100 grains of Goex Cartridge ( a high test 2F ) I think it cronies out at 1400 fps. It is death on metal targets with poor welds. If the target has good welds I spend most of the time unwrapping the targets from the frame. It was banned from two trail walks in South Carolina years ago.
I would love to report the damage this beast could do to big game critters. But the word must be out in the animal kingdom. When I take Dreadnought into the field I only see deer 150 yards away. On the other hand most of the deer I kill are at 50 yards or closer. Perhaps one day I will have the big musket out at the right time and place. After I get through with the squeegee
I will make a post on this event! :wink:

 

[Stumpkiller]

When I take Dreadnought into the field I only see deer 150 yards away. On the other hand most of the deer I kill are at 50 yards or closer. Perhaps one day I will have the big musket out at the right time and place. After I get through with the squeegee
I will make a post on this event! :wink:

:hatsoff:

I have a .690 patched round ball load developed for my 12 ga. New Englander. Actually, I built that as a kit back in 1988 to see if I really could stand a smoothbore musket as a hunting gun (sure wish I had this site back then). Out to 50 yards it throws a good ball. Have not tried it on anything living, but it splits rotted firewood well in the log pit I used to have set-up behind my house to recycle lead for recasting.

I was loading it a tad heavier but it certainly seems to hit harder than the 16 bore Bess (light infantry fusil) I did end up getting. That hit with all the authority of a 12 ga. 2-3/4" max load slug from my centerfire 12s. I never recovered a fired 0.648" ball in a deer with that one and 80 gr FFg.

 

[rabjr]

I know the .715 ball with 82gr 2F knocks the snot out of deer for sure. :grin:

 

[shortbow]

Pretty sure that was Peter Capstick talking about buckshot in the thick stuff for wounded game, but as I remember (a dubious undertaking) he said it is used only on thin skinned cats. You need heavy solids for bigger stuff. In my experience, buck shot is only useful where distance is measured in feet not yards. But slugs...OMG. :shocked2:

 

[ronrryan]

I remember reading that Bell shot a charging elephant in the EYE with a 7mm, it kept coming,. so he selected the remaining PUPIL and shot him there. BINGO, Merry Christmas, Ron

 

[jmdavis]

Hello,

After hunting with it in Eastern Virginia for 33 years, my experience is that buckshot can be very effective at distances far more than a few feet. I have taken deer at up to 85 yards with a tight choke and 00 or 000 buck shot.

Granted the gun in question uses an ultratight choke and will put all 18 3.5" 00 buck pellets in a paper plate at 40 yards and barely spreads to newsprint size at 75. I went for the head of the deer at 85 yards and hit the head and neck with 10 of 18 pellets.

This is the deer in question:

For dangerous game, I would want slugs or a rifle. But I have lost only two deer that I hit with buckshot. One of those I found the next day and the other was likely a leg shot. It traveled for a mile and swam a river to get away.

 

[oneeye]

Hello,

After hunting with it in Eastern Virginia for 33 years, my experience is that buckshot can be very effective at distances far more than a few feet. I have taken deer at up to 85 yards with a tight choke and 00 or 000 buck shot.

Granted the gun in question uses an ultratight choke and will put all 18 3.5" 00 buck pellets in a paper plate at 40 yards and barely spreads to newsprint size at 75. I went for the head of the deer at 85 yards and hit the head and neck with 10 of 18 pellets.

This is the deer in question:

For dangerous game, I would want slugs or a rifle. But I have lost only two deer that I hit with buckshot. One of those I found the next day and the other was likely a leg shot. It traveled for a mile and swam a river to get away.

Awesome picture! Albinos are illegal to kill here in Michigan.

I have only shot a couple of deer with buckshot, and they were VERY close. I wouldn't think buckshot would have enough energy to be "reliable" very far down range.

Dan

 

[Stumpkiller]

Interesting they would protect albino deer??? That's a recessive gene trait and not something I would think they'd want to encourage. We have a passel of them up at the former Seneca Army Depot in NY where the herd has been contained for 70 plus years. Occasionally albinos and skewbalds (brown & white) get into the regular heard and last not long at all with our hunters.

Here's one I've been saving for the right moment. This was in my wooded acreage when I was grouse hunting this fall. I had already taken a button-buck with my bow and was using some of the end of bow season to grouse hunt and scout deer (best time of the year to be in the woods). Turns out a farm a few miles off wanted to raise exotics but couldn't get the permits for whatever their plans were. I did not know this at the time. They had several escapes in the past few years. This is a fallow deer. I knew it was no whitetail, and I was fairly sure it was unprotected as an introduced species (we frown on them in NY after zebra mussels, carp, gypsy moths, english sparrows, Long Islanders and longhorn beetles). I had a 20 ga. SXS double loaded with #7-1/2 low brass in the Imp.C. barrel and #6 high brass in the Mod. barrel. This was a cull. I claim no sporting was done here. I waited him out from a spot behind a tangle of wild rose on the edge of a clearing and, as he spotted me from 20 feet I blinded him with the 7-1/2. I then ran up as he was crashing into brush and trees and put the #6 into his heart from four feet. At that distance a smoothbore with shot is pretty darned effective!

As I say, this was death and not sport. I love "my" whitetail dearly as only a hunter can understand, and this creature represented a four-legged chemical spill for potential enviromental calamity. Not on my watch.

Immediately on getting it home I called the DEC and threw myself on their mercy. The DEC game warden showed up. He called in the State Dept of Agriculture biologist, who had the warden confiscate it and take it to a deer processor who could isolate it in a walk-in cooler, she then called in a Federal biologist. They all ended up testing it for rabies, chronic wasting disease and, of all things, tuberculosis as well as other diseases and parasites. They confiscated most of the head and several other (non-meat) parts. The conclusion was healthy but slightly under size and the rack was underdeveloped for it's age. It was released to me with an "all clear" to consume or do as I wished. They suspected it had spent at least one winter in the "wild" and had escaped more than a year ago. I can't say they were back-slapping happy I shot it. The DEC guy spent some time cross-examining me with questions like: "Why did you shoot it? What with? What was your shot loads? Do you hunt deer year round?", etc. I suspect he'll be hereabouts in a ghullie suit with a robotic deer hoping to hook and reel me in like a fish now that the deer season is over.

Anyway, it tastes . . . lousey. The meat all has a "liverish" tang to it (I say, THE ADMIRAL says it is "muskie"). The rack is now holding my recurve. We'll eat it eventually. I don't waste food. :wink:

Boy. I sure hope they take to raising and losing elk next!

 

[roundball]

Interesting photo...a little ghoulish with a doe's head laying on the floor behind you :grin:
Might want to photo shop / crop that out before the Antis get hold of it... :wink:

 

[Stumpkiller]

Life is hard. They should see what's to the left in that image. ;-) That's at the deer butcher's shop and the "chamber of horrors" meat hook overhead trolly has about 15 carcasses hanging and a walk in cooler with a half-dozen more. And that's during bow season.

You'll note that none of my game images EVER has a tongue hanging out or shows the wounds. I do give the deer some respect in my "hero" shots. This was taken by my butcher.

Photo Shop? I ain't got no steenkin Photo Shop. I just got a digital camera last year. :-D I prints 'em as I takes 'em.

Careful what you wish for. Now you have my ugly kisser in SenserounD!

 

[roundball]

Actually, I was just using the term photo shop as sort of a reference...but if you're running windows XP, you already have all that functionality built in...I crop and/or resize everything before I put it up on photobucket...usually improves the images a lot too

 

[jmdavis]

We have fallow deer in VA as well. They are on the Eastern Shore of the state. I've had their backstraps and summer sausage made from the rest and thought that it tasted fine. But, I've always liked wild meat better than domestic.

I've heard of the white herd in NY, but I thought that there was some question about whether they were albino or not.

I had first seen the one that I shot when she was a year old in 2001. I shot her Dec. 30 2005.

Of course all of this is an aside to smoothbore killing power. I hope to be able to get a deer this year with my new .62 fowler. But I've got 25lbs of #5 for squirrels and rabbits, too.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Windows ME, a dial-up 36,600 bpm modem and a seven year old laptop. I'm using traditional computer equipment.

 

[Capt. Jas.]

jmdavis,
I am from Virginia also and have taken upwards of 35 with buckshot. It's not to be used as a 100 yard rifle but as buckshot. I witnessed my cousin take a deer at the yardage you did. His gun was choked to pattern as you describe.
Up until 2 seasons ago, we had been hunting deer since 1947 with buckshot.

 

[brew]

Now wait a minute you guys. I think that 54ball might be onto something here. I too have noticed some devastating effects of a smoothbore on game. I've been amazed at how hard they seem to hit. I wonder, just for speculation, if a ball coming out of a rifle spinning like it does has less traction than a knuckleball plowing it's way along. Think of a nail stuck in a board, you can't just pull it out but if you give it a twist to break the traction it comes right out. Maybe I'm screwy too :youcrazy: but it would help explain some of the damage that I've seen on animals shot with a trade gun.


Matt aka LaffinDog

I tell you what.... I plan on finding out next week during the PA Flinter season. I am taking "Ole Smoothie 62" with me and with my thicker patches, I plan on doing some damage. Hopefully I will be posting some photos of the exit wound.
Wish me luck.

 

[Runner]

If you use the CVA shot cups and fill them with shot without cutting the sides at all, they act like a slug until they hit. Prefragmented slugs waiting to blow up! Now that is smoothbore killing power! At thirty yards they print point of aim out of the trapper. I need to shoot a couple of phone books just to see how much damage they actually do with a load of fives or sixes.