Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Couple Flintlock questions

Very interesting, thank you. Have you ever patterned your shot loads? At what distance are they effective to? This is very interesting, really don't need to get all ramped up over it. But it might be to late.

I’m kinda old school. I don’t go around patterning my guns or even doing a lot of target shooting. Shoot when I have to. Sometimes shoot for fun. But usually I’ve not found the need to pattern although there are lots of folks who do and feel its important and more power to em. I usually do my patterning on squirrels, rabbits, piglets, etc!😁.

kinda small pattern board. Must work just fine.

Ive kilt deer, hogs, turkeys, rabbits, squirrels with no issues with my smoothies. Using round shot, buckshot, and birdshot.

My fowler came to me as the third (or more) owner in its history.

The prior owner handed me his results at patterning.

The load for squirrels I use is 100gr 2F, a nitro card, 110gr by volume of #6 shot, and a thin overshot card. Works well enough and is simple to load.

His turkey load was basically the same, but substitute 711gr (1-5/8oz) of #9 TSS shot. That isn't for everyone. It does leave some minor marks inside the bore. Very few shots are used, and you can remove a charge without firing the gun, so very few shots of TSS are actually used. His patterns were more than sufficient to kill a turkey at 40 yards.

I've shot groups off the bench at 50 yards that were well under 3" using patched round balls (not traditional to load that way, but it is efficient and effective) and 100gr of 2F. Round balls for a 16ga are little cannonballs. 0.648" orbs that feel like artillery rounds, lol.

I toted it for a bit for deer, but never had one inside the 75 yard limit I put on the gun.

I wound up shooting a doe late in the season with my 62 rifle at a touch over 100 yards.

My goal for that fowler is to kill a few more squirrels before the end of the month, and hopefully a bunny or two. A turkey or two this spring, and then a deer next fall. Or eventually. Just neat to tote the same gun for several different critters.

This particular barrel has been jug choked. As I understand that, the bore is slightly larger than intended bore until near the muzzle, where it then "constricts" to stated bore size. This permits use of round balls if desired, and is supposed to improve both round ball accuracy and shot patterns. I can't say definitively if it does or doesn't. The prior owner had it jugged and he said it noticeably improved shot patterns. He didn't shoot it much with round balls, but I've seen it perform very well with them, as mentioned. I don't know what it did with them prior to being jugged.

Tddeangelo!

Shot a doe once with an old 24 bore NW gun I had that all I had to shoot in in were .440 round balls!! So I used 4 balls and about 70 grains of 3fg. Hit her with all 4 balls at about 40’yds! DRT.

Bottom line. I’ve had a lot of fun with flintlocks!! 😊