Sadistic buttstock is killing me!!

[Many Hats]

I agree with what Captchee wrote, and many others, as well.
From my own experance, I have taken a lot of deer in the last 45+ years with 45, 50,54,58cal.  rifles and 12ga. smoothbore muzzelloading shotguns, both flintlock, and caplock. Most everyone of them went down quick. Some right where they stood, and others ran off a few yards before going down. Only one went 70 yards before dropping, and that was because I hit him a little higher then I planed to. I've used balls made from soft lead, med. hard lead, and hard lead, and didn't see a whole lot of differnce in how they went down.
 Like they said above, It's where the shot is placed that counts. I don't take a shot unless I'm 99.9% sure I can put the ball where I want to put it. By doing it that way, I've saved myself a lot of tracking jobs
 Just my two cents of how I do it, someone else may do things a whole other way, and come out with the same results.
How ever you do it, Good Luck with your shooting, and have fun with it.

[mark davidson]

Good morning Gentlemen:  Thannks to all once again for the input. First: Rollingb...the answer is "yes"  I did think the wall gun comment was pretty funny! :-)  I got a good sense of humor. :-)

Mario: The "energy" is not hurting me. It is the darn pointed Tennessee type buttplate that is the problem. I will follow the advice here and move it out on my arm a bit to solve that problem or I will simply round and smooth that top point so it won't dig into my shoulder as much.  

I sense a tad of frustration here on both sides, mine and many of yours. Actually we are beating a dead horse and going in circles.

Captchee, I appreciate your post. I am not at all offended and would not be even if you were poking a little fun my way. I too feel a strange cyber friendship and I know all of you mean well for me and have actually helped me a lot.
   I am not at all new to hunting; killed my first deer with black powder well over two decades ago. I'm well over a hundred kills and recoveries with traditional bows, recurve and longbow, so let's not question my tracking skills OK.  Debunk #2- I am not an impatient newbie who is likely to take the Texas heart shot just to shoot a deer with a gun.
The "shot" I take and the "patience" issue I seem to be questioned about.....It's like this. With a real gun, and a MLer is a real gun, inside 100 yards with no obstruction I expect to take a quartering to or away or broadside shot. It is that simple. I want to place a ball in the front crease of the shoulder quartering to or behind the shoulder quartering away or dead through the shoulders on perfect broadside if I so choose and have the darn projectile come out!!  Now is that too much to ask?? With soft Hornady balls I have simply not had that happen. I have stepped up in caliber to .62 with a little heavier ball and I am willing to up the powder charge to a perfectly acceptable and safe charge of 140 grains on up to 180 or more of 2F depending on what my gun shoots best. Now one more time, men, what exactly am I doing that is so "newbie" so "funny" or so "non-traditional" here that seems to put me on the opposite side of the table from you all's way of thinking?? We've questioned my shooting skills, my hunting skills, my tracking skills, my sense of ballistics...... Am I the only one on here shooting a .62 cal. gun?  Am I the only one out there that really wants the bullet to come out?
   Finally, can we respectfully drop the hyperbole of "why don't I just shoot a cannon with wheels on it or a nice black powder nuclear device" and just answer my question? :-)

[Riley/MN]

Now one more time, men, what exactly am I doing that is so "newbie" so "funny" or so "non-traditional" here that seems to put me on the opposite side of the table from you all's way of thinking??

Okay to add more opinion (in case you haven't received enough) it is this:

I expect to take a quartering to or away or broadside shot. It is that simple. I want to place a ball in the front crease of the shoulder quartering to or behind the shoulder quartering away or dead through the shoulders on perfect broadside if I so choose and have the darn projectile come out!!

I think the ML hunter should be shootin out the lights (heart/lung) and not trying to bust through shoulders. That being said, from what I have read you should be able to obtain your goal with a combination of harder balls and heavier charges...

Am I the only one out there that really wants the bullet to come out?

Nope, and that is why I am trying to "magnumize" a b'ar load for my rifle. Don't want to lose another one...

[mark davidson]

Wyo, Well said!  The problem with dropping the powder charge radically to keep the soft ball from flattening is that you end up with a 50 yard gun with terrible trajectory beyond that. I know many would just solve that by getting closer or not shooting. OK, their choice. My choice is a quest for the best of both trajectory and reliable penetration. Therefore, I deduce from your experience that I might be on the right track by using a slightly larger and heavier ball combined with increased hardness and pushed by enough powder to provide good trajectory out to 100 or maybe 125 yards.  Sound logical?

[cb]

Then Mark what you are seeking is nothing new - it is what Purdey and others did back in the 1850's and later and called Express Rifles - most of which were built for conicals, but some were built for using RB's.......
IMO if you still prefer a Flinter I'd set up yourself up with an Express Rifle (Steve should know how) in 16 bore (.69 caliber 1/70" twist for large powder loads??) and rather than a half-stock Hawken I would suggest building it as a late period English Flint Rifle - see pictures below for examples.....the top one is .75 caliber



Flat buttplates for heavy loads, halfstocks, Nock patent breeches - IMO the ultimate in historically correct Big game rifles....

[jtwodogs]

Just and an addition here.
I used to hunt with an old man when I was a teenager.  He shot an old original rifle.  I flinter that was none too reliable.  It didn't always fire as the lock as not too good.  But he sent the barrel in to the shop and we re-cut the bore and the rifling, and it was quite accurate when it would fire.  He and I hunted together 4 times.  He killed 2 deer with it.  Both good sized mulie bucks.  It was cut to a 45 caliber with a 1-48 twist.  He used a 45-70 shell as a measure and shot G-O 3F powder.  He used WW metal for the balls and dropped them in a bucket of watter out of the mold. .440s I believe.

Now, the point of the post;

He killed two nice bucks when he was hunting with me and both buck fell within a very short distance of where then were hit.  Both had through and through wounds!   Both were hit in the lungs.

Now I have seen and even shot deer in the past with 50s 54, and 58 cal guns that didn't fall or die near as fast as old Doug's deer did when the balls didn't go through.

As I already said, Randy, Mike, Lon, Debbie and Brad all have had the same experience as I have . So have about 10-12 otehr men I have guided in the years past.
 A flattened ball that doesn't go through is not NEAR as effective as round one that does.  Also flat balls (disks) don't' always penetrate straight in the animal.  I have also seem conicals veer off radically in game.
 Getting the bullet through the INSIDE is the point.  Getting to to hit them "where they live" is what it's all about.

In my experience (which is fairly considerable), and in the opinions of men that shot many thousands of animals in the last century, hard balls are far better then more powder.

It is an interesting fact (and it is a fact, not an opinion)  that a 58 cal ball (.565') of pure lead will not penetrate as well in an elk or a deer if it's shot with 120 grains of powder as it will with 65 grains of powder.  Why?
The load with 65 gr. doesn't deform the ball on impact, and the ball goes through and goes pretty straight along it's first path.  It's not so fast that it flattens.
The one with 120 grains turns into a disk and makes a shallower wound and the wound channel is almost never straight, so sometime you hit hear and lungs, sometimes you get part of the vitals and sometims you get mostly meat and muscle, and you never know how it's going to go.
If you harden the lead you get a straighter wound, so you can know where it's going to go
Nuf said

This point was well illustrated on Myth busters were the took a collection of guns all the way up to an including a .50 bmg.
Shooting them into a pool within 3ft. of water all projectiles including the .50 cal disintegrated into shrapnel, except for if I can remember correctly and old sharps 45.70 round someone correct me if they saw this and I am wrong. Which was traveling at a comparative slow velocity to the modern rounds, the .45 is the only one that did  not get turned into "Shredded cheese". I may be off on the actual specifics of the guns, but it was obvious that the slower moving projectile penetrated a fluid medium more efficiently, then the faster ones, for whatever that is worth

[flintlockmdj]

The first thing that I would do is work up a lighter load.  No matter what kind of butplate you have 180 grains is going to tap you pretty good .

[mark davidson]

flintlockmdj, 80 grains serves many a shooter well,......just not me.  Do you hunt? Do you shoot 100 yards and beyond?  I am sure 80 grains would be usable for both applications. I simply have found that trajectory with that small of a charge is less than what I want and need for shooting game or paper at longer range out to say 125 yards. Anything that 80 grains will do, so will 140grains but the same cannot be said in reverse.

[flintlockmdj]

Its your sholder, go ahead.

[mark davidson]

This past weekend I put a new set of sights on the .62 I have and sighted it in. I used 140grains of 2F with PRB for every shot.  Honestly the recoil was mild enough. My first impression was that it was not that different from 100grains in my old .54.  I just as a newcomer to all this do not see all the "ooooohhh" and "aaaahhhh" over 140grains of powder. On up to and maybe above 200 grains is not uncommon. 80 grains in a .62 is a toy load, a plinking load and not something I would consider for confidently killing anything but paper. JMO  :-)

[Three Hawks]

This past weekend I put a new set of sights on the .62 I have and sighted it in. I used 140grains of 2F with PRB for every shot.  Honestly the recoil was mild enough. My first impression was that it was not that different from 100grains in my old .54.  I just as a newcomer to all this do not see all the "ooooohhh" and "aaaahhhh" over 140grains of powder. On up to and maybe above 200 grains is not uncommon. 80 grains in a .62 is a toy load, a plinking load and not something I would consider for confidently killing anything but paper. JMO  :-)

I'm going to stir up a mess here, but from reading this thread, you are not looking for information, you're looking for confirmation.

This is still a more or less free country, shoot the load you like.

Three Hawks

[Sir Michael]

You can talk all day about doubling and tripling the powder charge typically used and absolute need for it but when I read this post all I can say is why?

http://www.traditionalmuzzleloadingassociation.org/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=9689

Also early on you talked about getting good big exist wounds.  I must have grown up in very different hunting community because I was taught to do as little damage to the animal as possible and take it down quickly.  One shot one animal.

You kill it you pack it out.  Just because you can see it doesn't mean you have to shoot at it.

(Every ounce of meat was valuable and if you didn't kill it you didn't eat it during the winter which lasted a full 9 months or more.  Also adrenalin doesn't taste very good.)

[Loyalist Dave]

180 grains is 6.6 drams!  Now the stoutest BP load I ever saw was 4 drams in a 12 gauge.  

LD

[mark davidson]

Men, Here is the bottomline. We have a difference in opinion and that is that. There does not always have to be someone who is "right."  I know what I want and I am sure all of you do. I did begin with a desire for information. I do not need confirmation. I will do that for myself in the woods as I have already done. I first wanted to know simply how to modify the stock on a rifle. Then of course it turned to a debate about powder charge and how much is enough versus too much.  As for meat destruction.....cut the crap and tell the truth. We do not hunt for the meat alone  and I doubt if any of us hunt as our only source of meat to eat. If my projectile tears up two extra bits of shoulder meat, then so the heck what!! The ole meat destruction argument is lame and pales in importance to a quick and efficient kill with a short blood trail. As for shooting at every deer I see, I do not do that. However, I refuse to be bound to the kiddie stake distance of 50 yards or so that so many of you here seem to think is the "norm." I can shoot my longbow almost that far and have taken deer that far with bow and arrow. I have come to realize that there are two pretty distinct groups here, one with lots of real world experience killing game with heavy loads like Ron LeClair for example. The other group are paper punchers and hobbyists who cannot imagine a heavy charge or a shot the length of a football field.  I respect both groups but choose to tailor my guns and loads to the killing of game with an expected range limitation of at least 100 yards. Now if I have managed to ruffle some of your close range mouse charge feathers then I regret it. I just think some of you need to grow up and realize that you are in fact shooting real guns, real guns capable of a lot more than you are doing with them. Lastly, shoot what you want, but try not to demean me and others who choose not to follow the path of mediocrity. Just my opinion. Flame on if you like; I got thick skin and a good sense of humor! :-)

[Voyageur]

"Doc"