Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders 45 Flintlock, PRB, and Deer

Whats your experience? Especially want to hear about performance on bucks as they are an entirely different creature when in rut. I believe in bigger is better...use a 50 mostly but have never blooded this .45

Killed a bunch of deer with .45 RB's, out of percussion guns not that it matters. 70 gr. FFFg is my hunting load though not quite as accurate as 60 gr., not that it matters also but you know...

Heaviest was 180 pounds field dressed. He died on the spot. Shot placement caveats apply as with any other bullets.

Any your preferred target area? Heart/lung.., neck?

Only been around one killed with a 45 roundball. Shot behind the shoulders and it ran maybe 40 yards and fell over. Not sure how far a 45 roundball is good for, but it sure did a number on that one at around 70 yards. I didn't kill it, friend did.

Either/or.

If a fella wants to neck or head shoot a deer with a flinter he needs to take careful aim and wait until bambi has one of its front hooves off the ground. They do respond to the flash in the pan very quickly, but having a leg up, so to speak, slows them down enough.

Hear all kind of stories about how good PRBs are,
my experiences with 50s haven't made me as enthusiastic.
Shoulder/rib deer either go right down and jump up, or run.
Either way, 100 yards is a pretty normal run. Between ribs,
lungs only? 100 yards might be where you first find blood.
Don't lose the trail, the deer will bee within 100 more yards.

Not always, some are better.
Some, we don't know because they were never found.

No idea how many deer, two of us killed several per year for years.
Hunted some with full roster+ (25) gr pups driving several days a year for 10 years too.


Dan ain't joking about them jumping the flash,
The shooter have good follow through and not flinching is another thing.

We used to be required to use only round balls, I started cheating, then
the rules changed. I will never use a 50 or smaller ball on a deer
again if possible. Much happier with modern projectiles.

Would like to try a 58 or bigger ball.
Hear enough claims, be interesting to see personally.

Big fan of big balls on critters. 54 and 58 and never had any issue on large bodied whitetails and mule deer bucks. I'd just be pickier about shot placement and distance with a 45.

I shot a large button buck at 60 yrds with a 45 RB out of a Hatfield, went 20 yrds down shot it right behind the shoulder. Clipped bone large exit hole.

Never shot one with a .45 Patched Round Ball

Used to be you could only use a .50 cal and larger for BP season here in TX.

I can however vouch for a .54 caliber patched round ball, though. Kills the heck out of deer and hogs at 100 yards or less. Never lost one.

If you have a .50, stay with it.
PRB is not a good killer, so far as dropping in their tracks. I rib cage shoot so they run a little bit.

I've taken 2 mule deer with a patched .445 round ball out of 42” barreled, flintlock Kentucky rifle. They both died right were they got shot at about 50-60 yards. I guess it comes down to knowing your limitations and that of your weapon.

I no longer own it but it was very much like my wife's rife pictured below.

Odd, I've shot a bunch of deer with .490" balls and have yet to have one make it farther than 60 yards before going down.

Been a while since I shot a muzzleloader. But have killed deer with 54 and 60 cal PRB's. Farthest shot I witnessed was crowding 100yrds with a 40cal flintlock. No issues.

Dont hunt with them anymore, but they are still killing deer and elk with PRB's

There used to be a Country store a few miles from me. The man that owned it said if you're gonna hunt with PRB, use a .54 or bigger. He said he'd killed several with .50 and one or 2 with .45, and unless you hit in neck or solid shoulder shot, be ready to track with very little blood for a while.

I have earned the large part of my living for the last 50 years making muzzleloaders and in so doing I have met thousands of men and women who shoot them. I can't count the number of them that have used 45 cal muzzleloaders with round balls to kill deer. Myself, the smallest caliber I ever killed big game with is a 50, but I am fully confident that a 45 will do well in the brush and the woods where most of those I have met have killed deer with them.
A harder ball is a very good thing to have because 45 cal balls are fairly light (124 to 128 grains) and if they expand much they don't pernitrate as well as you might like. But cast from wheel weight metal and dropped in water, they will shoot clear through a deer and keep going many times. I have learned the same thing with 50s 54s and my 58 shooting pure lead. Even my 58 cal would not exit a deer when shooing pure lead many times. But a 50 will shoot clear through an elk with a hard ball. (7 of them in 7 hunts as a matter of fact) If you roll the balls between 2 files to give them a bit of texture they do not slip inside the patching, and they are as accurate as any soft ball. I won a lot of rifle matches when I was a younger man, and I used hard balls for ALL my shooting, from hunting to plinking to competitions. So the BS you read and re-read about how you need a pure soft ball is just untrue.

So if I had a 45 cal muzzleloader I would not even hesitate to hunt white tails with it.. It's true I prefer my 50 caliber and my 62 caliber, but I can't say I really need the larger bore for deer. I just like it. And I hunt elk as much (or more) so I like the 62 as my main hunting muzzleloading rifle.

I would not try any 150 yards shots on a white tail with a 45 cal round ball, but I have killed many dozen white tails in my life and killed them with many different guns from my 50 cal flintlocks to revolvers to to a scoped 375 H&H and thinking back, I cant recall shooting more then 3 of them that were much past 100 yards. For an man who knows how to hunt, a 45 cal is going to be fine. The hard balls get through them and leave a good blood trail.

I hunt my .45', .50', and .54's the same way. just like i hunt with a stick and string. if i can see their eye lashes I know i can hit them
to me it puts Hunting back into hunting. the satisfaction of a 20-30 yard shot is to me much greater than a 100-300 yard snipe.
a .45 PRB is lite. a .45 PRB is about as poor ballistically as one can get. but it kills all out of proportion to the paper data. kinda like the 250-3000.

I have a buddy who's been killing deer quite dead for decades with a .40 flinter. To me that's getting a little small and I said as much, but to kid me a bit he killed one cleanly with a .36 ball - by poking it high up in the neck behind the head, from a distance he said was less than a hundred feet.

I see this thread is a month old but here's my experience I shot a 4pt at about 80yds with my .40 cal flinter 65grs 3f real black and a .10 patched 401 round ball. That shot went clear through the chest cavity and deer dropped in place. I have shot a number of deer with this rifle all fatal to bamby. There's no replacement for good shooting, a .50 cal that misses still misses. .40cal in min. here in ohio
Klatch