Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Reasons above 50

I shoot left handed, so neither for me. If I had right eye I'd be shooting a 54 Woodsrunner already.

Kibler has done a fantastic job with that rifle.

I've killed a lot of deer with flintlocks.


My first gun was a TC in 50cal. I shot a patched roundball.


After a few deer, I did NOT like what I saw. Yes....deer were dying. But I wasn't getting an exit or much if any blood on the ground. Looking back, I probably left a couple I called misses.






I switched to the 240gr Buffalo ball-et (believe they are discontinued but the PA conical is nearly identical)

It shot well. I killed a lot of deer with it.

One doe I shot 25-30yds away from a stand. Quartering to me...put the sights on her near (right) shoulder and sent it. She took off...I thought I could see her back left leg flopping wildly. Huh. There's no way I missed that bad.

Get down. Long white belly hair and hunks of bone. Every time I've found bone like that has been a leg hit. There's no way!

I snuck to where I last saw her following good blood...looked over the edge of the hill and she was piled up. That ball-et went in right where I put it and exited right where a bucks weiner would be. Proceeded to completely smash her back left leg.


I now build my own full customs. And have settled on 58cal as my favorite. 62 is awesome for me too...I don't shoot beyond about 75yds so trajectory doesn't matter to me.

54 for a roundball gun is as low as I'd wanna go for a hunting rifle.

I know truckloads of Buffalo or whatever someone will say have been killed with 50cals or even less. I don't disagree. I just know what my personal findings have been. I've yet to stop a 58 or 62cal roundball. And I promise deer know they got hit by a 279gr roundball at 1733fps. (That's what I'm getting on my labradar with my 58cal.)


Now....throw a fast twist barrel on and you can shoot bullets and sabots and be happy with a 50cal.



There are some flintlock hunters that absolutely swear by 45cals from deer hunting. Enough guys that have experience that I believe there may be something to it...maybe the speed....idk. I'm hesitant to even try. The 50 left that bad of a taste in my mouth...and, I'm into earlier styled rifles that a big lock and barrel are suitable for so a bigger caliber is no issue.

So people know..........a bit of my personal history:
I am a full time muzzleloader gunsmith and have been for 50+ years. I have been a hunter and a guide in 9 different states and I have hunted in 5 different countries. I also was the chief ballistician for Cast Performance Bullet Co and later it's CEO before it sold and moved to Oregon. So I have some very extensive history in the use of lead projectiles both for accuracy and for killing game. What I can tell you folks is based on many many thousands of tests and feed back from thousands of customers and clients, as well as my own rather deep history in the subject.

Lyman #2 is too hard for best results for balls. Pure lead is getting difficult to get too because of the Dem/Comms and the RINOs, but if you have linotype or #2 and also some pure lead, use 1/3 of either alloy and add 2/3 pure lead and the results for ball casting are good. When dropping the balls DO NOT drop in water or on a flat surface. Take an old towel or wool scrap and drop the new balls onto it so they cool slowly You don't want them super hard. Just about 2X harder then pure. The ball needs to obturate at firing inside the barrel, and a super hard ball will not do it fully. But an alloy that gives a brinell hardness of between 10 and 12 is perfect. It will fill the bore and tighten against the patch perfectly, but is hard enough to not "splatter" on hitting a rib. Pure lead is a 5 Bn, so it obturates extremely well but the balls often turn into disks on impact with game and a disk doesn't go straight when trying to pass with it's flat perpendicular to the direction of travel. (think about a boat propeller and how it works) So when a ball becomes a disk it hinders penetration's and it also invites the projectile to veer off course in some rather extreme angles inside the body which is one reason so many people give a bad rap to muzzleloaders firing balls.

We look at a 25-06 or a 243 and understand the bullet is small but shortens and increases in diameter on impact we all know that these 2 cartridges have a very good rep for their ability to kill deer well, but the 45 cal round ball is as big as the 243 bullet is AFTER it expands...... and also heavier. A 243 bullet usually hits a deer at about 2700 to 2800 FPS but what is not commonly known is that nearly all modern expanding rifles projectiles shed 45% of their velocity in the act of expansion. (High speed photography into clear ballistic gel and calculation velocity loss during the expansion stage of the terminal trajectories was well tested by us and the results were consistent) So 1-2 inches into the deer the 243 bullet (assuming it doesn't break up, but holds it weight) is going about 1/2 of it's impact speed. So, it's going around 1400 FPS and slowing fast as it goes through a deer.
Now lets look at the 45 cal flintlock. MV or about 1700 to 1800 FPS. Kills on deer at 50 yards or closer. Impact velocity of say 1400 FPS (same as the 243 after the 243 is 2 inches deep in the deer) Yet the 45 ball is 28 grains heavier, as large is the 243 is 2" inside the deer, and slowing down at the same rate of velocity decent as the 243 bullet, yet if it's a bit harder and because it's a bit heavier it often works as well or a small amount better in delivering a would and giving a bit more pentation.

MANY men and women who have hunting for decades will tell you that the paper numbers just don't show you the real-world trends on how well modern guns kill as compared to muzzleloaders, and they are 100% correct. The "foot pounds" of energy seem to tell us that the newer guns will be 2X to 4X more effective, but in the real world they are not--------- and any a lot of cases they are not AS effective as the old big bore muzzleloader (I can tell you that out of the 4 moose I have killed the only 1 that fell instantly at the shot was shot with my 62 cal flintlock)

Well, the reason for that is that hunters are mostly not ballisticians and they are looking at the wrong set of numbers. Looking at numbers of bullets in flight or at the muzzle tells us NOTHING about it's effects.

To know about terminal effects we need to look at the numbers of what you have once the projectile is INSIDE the animal. A semi hard ball doesn't need to expand and in fact should not. Any ball, if it gains diameter is getting shorter. So.....a disk. There comes a point when a disk is wide enough to cause a LOT of problems trying to get through a viscous material. A 50 cal ball is going into a deer as big as a good bonded 308 Winchester comes out.

Where balls fall down is in flight. Nothing used in firearms tends to transfer more energy to the air. So range is something you give up. Just like an archer does when he chooses to hunt with a bow and arrow. (not as much as the muzzleloader, but you DO give up range as compared to using a bullet firing modern cartridge's and no one can argue that)

Look at a perfectly expanded Nosler partition bullet and place your thumb over the shank of that bullet. In the best cases where very little weight is lost, what you see looks a lot like like a fired BALL. THAT'S WHY IT WORKS SO WELL AT KILLING THINGS!

A ball going through the vitals of game is a ball....is a ball.....is a ball...is a ball .no matter what direction it turns on any axis. So it's direction of travel varies little, and you hit what you want to hit on the inside. If you have enough ball weight they exit most times too. (I prefer exits, so if I find a ball doesn't exit a particular type game animal most times, I use a bigger gun. My moose had an exit and I cut of the shoulder bone with it, but the ball left the body anyway. .600" ball cast of WW metal and 140 grains of 3 F. I killed 2 moose with a 375H&H and one with a 348 Winchester. All were effective but none of those 3 had any real noteworthy effect for a few seconds after the shot. But the flintlock dropped that moose instantly.

Yet we look at the "foot Pounds" of a 320 grain ball going "only" 1400 fps on impact and it doesn't look all that good as compared to a 300 grain .375 impacting at 2450 FPS.

As I said above, we are looking at the wrong set of numbers.

A 375 bullet when it expands perfectly will get to about 65 cal. So that's larger then the ball diameter of my 62 cal flintier. BUT the 300 grain bullet is 20 grains lighter (too little to really matter) and BOTH are going through the moose's chest at about the same speed The 375 bullet will loose close to 1/2 of it's speed in the act of expansion. So 2450 in flight becomes 1225 in it's act of penetrating. So in both cases you have around 300 grains of weight at around 5/8" diameter going through the vitals at around 1250 to 1400 FPS and the reason 2 of my moose did not fall at the impact of the 375 and the one did when hit with the 62 is that the 62 hit the shoulder bones and the 375s didn't.

But those that have done a lot of killing with muzzleloaders can tell you from experience that they are far more effect then they should be ------if you compare muzzle energy measured in Foot Pounds. The real world shows a different story.

Any time in life, (politics, economics, science, farming, areological study, sociology or anything else) when a theory and a fact disagree.................guess which one is wrong?

This post makes a lot of sense. It seems to confirm what Kieth said about CW vets preferring ball to conical in their revolvers.

Steve, Thank you for a very informative post. Taking notes.

Teal, I dont know if you can find real black powder up there, but if you cant there is Bills sporting goods in Lomira , WIs. it is only about 15 mi. south of Fond Du Lac. He usually has some in stock.

Thanks - worth a trip. Haven't done a Lomira run in ages.

I'll occasionally see real BP here tho.

Caliber is all to the ball.
For conicals, not much need for >.50.
Unless it's a rifle musket! My P53 is a .577

I've got a .54 Woodsrunner on order. Seems to be a great hunting rifle from what I've read.