Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders 62 cal shooters?

Well, the 600's with 15 patches are sending the patches out as cinders. I guess a 610 may make a better seal, but my next step is the 600 with thicker pillow ticking I got a hold of for cheap (free).

We'll see today how that goes, then go from there. I want to chrono it at some point, too, to see how close QuickLoad is predicting the speeds. It's usually pretty good on smokeless stuff if I feed it good data, but I've never tried it with BP before.

I have stands with shooting rails on field edges, so I'd like to try for an easy "point and shoot to 100 yards" arrangement with this rifle. The barrel I guess cuts it to 99 yards?

That's a gorgeous rifle.

Thank you!

Shot again last night. 100gr with a 600 ball and 024 pillow ticking cut the patch. Dropped it to 90gr and the patches look perfect. I only got two shots with that setup (I have about 30 minutes to shoot after work before it's getting dark, and it was pouring rain, making visibility even worse), they hit about 3" apart at 35 yards with me leaning off the corner of a garage wall to shoot. Not the best conditions, but at least I know that load makes a decent seal and isn't cutting the patch.

I may see if I can scrounge up some 610's and rerun the 015 patches with those, see what comes of it.

The season starts a week from Friday, so I may have to "make do" with whatever shows the most promise, limit my shot distances accordingly, and then do my full work-up with the rifle in the late winter/early spring.

It's been many years ago so my memory might be off a bit, but I did shoot a .62 caliber Jaeger style rifle for a while. The barrel on mine was 36" long with a 1-72" twist rate ad a true .62 caliber grove depth.

This rifle shot best with balls of .610" diameter and denum patches (.225" if I recall correctly). Smaller balls or thinner patches killed accuracy. You "might" get by with .600" balls but your patches will have to be VERY thick to seal the groves properly.

I loaded this rifle with FF powder charges up to 160 grains, but finally settled on a "hunting" load of 110 grains of FFF powder. I chose FFF mostly because I could use the same powder to charge the pan on my flintlock. Load charges with FFF will be a bit lighter than with FF due to greater pressure being produced, but the velocity will be the same.

Any load less than 80 grains seemed to reduce accuracy quite a bit in my rifle and loads above 120 grains became uncomfortable with little gain in velocity. If I recall correctly, my 110 grain load of FFF gave about 1600 fps.

Trajectory with this load was very nice out to 100 yards (as far as I ever shot at game). With zero at 25 yards the big balls hit about 4" low at 100 (or as we used to say..."minute of coffee can")...well within the kill zone of a whitetail.

Those big balls really don't need a lot of velocity to kill well as they rely more on momentum than energy to penetrate. With round balls the drop in velocity at any distance over 50 yards is such that any attempt to gain a flatter trajectory with more velocity is a losing proposition.

I'd suggest you try to get some .610-.615" balls with a heavy patch and a load of 90-120 grains of powder. If you use FF grade powder....maybe 100-140 grains. Somewhere in that range should be the "sweet spot" for your rifle.

If you "have" to use the smaller .595-.600" balls you will need a VERY thick patch. Might consider a thin (.35-.45") patch of leather (as was used sometimes in original rifles) to make the undersize balls seal properly and avoid burn-through.

You are going to love the .62 caliber.....it's the "magnum" of the round ball age as the only effective way to gain "power" with round balls is to step up size.

TexasRick,

Thank you very much for the info. I saw some better results with the 600's and 024 pillow ticking patches. At least, the blowby was eliminated.

I need to get to Dixon's tomorrow (they're closed today) and see if he has 610 balls. If not, I'm stuck with the 600s for now. The season here opens a week from Friday, so the clock is ticking. This isn't normally how I like to do things, but Allen got the rifle done a few months ahead of schedule, so I'm gonna give it my all to get it ready to hunt!

The 600 ball and 024 patches loaded with some resistance, but not bad. About as much as I'd like, really. If it were much tighter, a field reload could get difficult, I think. I just need to get time to shoot and play around with it, and time is one thing with which I'm in very short supply.

My .62 Jaeger was built for me in 1979 by Jud Brennan.it has a swamped Green River barrel and walnut stock. It was especially made for a moose hunt that year. I worked up a load of 175gr 2ff and a .610 ball. I jumped my bull from his bed and shot him running away. The ball caught up to him at 50yds, hit him on the inside of the left ham. I recovered the ball just under the hide of the brisket. It traveled full length of the moose.

"Old Bull Knocker" has made meat many times in the last 35 years, including a Bison. I have three .54cal rifles that I hunt with from time to time but my .62 is my main meat gun. For deer I load it with 110gr 2ff and a .600 ball. This doe was taken last week.



I love hunting in the snow

The long gun on the left is a Brennan gun also in .54cal, the Jaeger on the right.



The business end of the .62

RWL,

Awesome post! Thank you for sharing the stories and the pictures!

I'm looking forward to messing around more with this rifle. I had hoped to shoot around 100-120gr 2F in my rifle. That long 46" barrel will wring a fair bit of speed from that charge, and recoil is about nil in the rifle.

Your rifles are beautiful, and clearly are capable, even if the locks are on backwards.

(I am left-handed, but I'm right-eye dominant, so I shoot righty....just so you know I'm just having a little fun. )

All my 62's have been fusils. 60-70grns of 3FG always got me hogs. .600 ball. .015 patch or wasp nest wad when out of patch fabric.

From Roundball on the The Muzzleloading Forum
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/265741/

That is correct. Likely it's going a bit faster.

DigitalDan, you think so?

I haven't chrono'ed it yet. I figured I'd work for good patches recovered and accuracy, then see what the speeds look like and go from there. If the barrel will do it without cutting patches, the rifle delivers so little felt recoil that I'd happily keep on dumping in more powder...just 'cuz.

Give Fort Chambers Gun Shop, Chambersburg, PA a shout. I know they have .610 balls in stock. I buy them there to shoot out of my miniature cannon. I'm wishing as I type this that I hadn't been so dilatory in buying the .610 mold I've been threatening to do.

Awesome thread! Very nice rifles.

Chambersburg is a pretty good ride from my place, unfortunately. Not sure they could ship them here in time to get this squared away for 12/26 (season opener). I'll have to make do with whatever Dixon has in stock for this go-'round and keep tinkering over time with it.

I'll call them, though, and see what they can do.

Goll dang it you guys!! Especially RWL99 for posting those "wrong side" rifles. A big flinter has always been on my list, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. Still have a couple weeks of deer season and some unused tags. Maybe I'll pull out the old Enfield and see if that quells the desire for a bit. This forum costs me sooo much money.

I have Allen's email address, if you want it.... he's got about a 3yr backlog, so you might want to get a move on. Just sayin'.....

I do. Probably not a lot, but 1400 fps isn't that tall of a ladder for a roundball to climb. Thinking 3FG by the way.

Gotcha.

I've been running 2f, so it'll be a tad slower than 3f.

I want to see how close QuickLoad gets, though. Just for curiosity's sake.