The King's musket makes meat

[Leatherbark]

Finally procured a Bess.  Made meat on the first outing.  My buddy and I fried the breast of this grouse up and put it in our kasha for lunch in the woods.  This King's musket throws a very good pattern of No. 6 shot at a ranged 30 yards for a cylinder bore.  80 Grains of 2f and a nitro wad along with one of those pattern blowing lubed cushion wad and 1-1/4 oz. of No. 6s aimed at a big ol shoot-n-see target I don't believe even a turkey would have survived. Peppered it real good.

Now for the ball.  Tried 80 grains of 3f this time to speed up lock time along with a .018 ticking patch lubed with TOW Mink oil wrapping a Lyman pure lead .715 ball hits center very well at 50 yards on the same shoot-n-see target offhand.  My buddy who is a Flintlock Muzzleloading marksmen (has young eyes) was really impressed with the power as we had the target stapled to an 8 inch pine tree and the balls that were hitting the edges of the tree were penetrating through and splattering wood chips all around.  They wouldn't penetrate in or near the center but they went deep.  I need to increase my range to see how far I can keep the balls in a killing zone offhand.  I would be satisfied with 75 yards for hunting with it if it will do it.  We tried several shots with a lubed wad above and below a bare .715 ball and could not see a difference in accuracy, but I'll really have to bench it to make sure. Plus I'll need to see if paper cartridges shoot as good.   All the shots we fired at 50 yards were either in the black or close to the edge.  I see why the Pedersoli gets so many good reviews for shooting. We are both impressed for sure.

Bob

[wattlebuster]

congrats to ya. The fans on the grouse are really pretty

[Mike Brooks]

As Curly Howard used to say " Look at the grouse! Look at the grouse!"......I don't have a clue why he said that but it sure was funny.

[Daryl]

Nice bird Bob.

[Hungry Horse]

 Forget the 3F, and the .715 ball, and go with about a hundred grains of 2F, and a bare .690 ball, with either a chunk of hornets nest, or a wad of tow, over the ball. If you haven’t got anything else use a thin card.

 Hungry Horse

[Robby]

Nice!!! My favorite eating wild fowl. Bob, I use pretty much the same everything but in a 16Ga. with similar results. I start to lose consistency in accuracy at about 80 yards. Good Luck!!!
Robby

[Daryl]

Well done Leatherbark- years ago, in the mid 80's- maybe early 80's, we, the black powder shooters of the Rod and Gun Club used to have a sort of contest day in March, hunting bunnies. In our case, they were snowshoe hares.  Since there was a good 6 to 8 feet of snow on the ground, we wore snowshoes - impossible to hunt without them.
On one of those 'hunts', I used Taylor's Brown Bess - a Lyman version ,75 cal.(11bore) I don't remember the particulars, but seem to recall about 3 drams of powder and requisit cushion wad, 1 1/4oz shot and overshot card.  It worked well indeed - rather, even with my flinch, I managed to bag a few bunnies.
In subsequent years, I used a rifle, same as everyone else.
Smoothbore smokelpoles shooting shot can be VERY effective.

[PPatch]

Nice bird, good looking gun. One thing I am wondering about though: I don't understand how the load used effects "lock time."

"Tried 80 grains of 3f this time to speed up lock time..."

dave

[Leatherbark]

I guess lock time was not the correct phrase.  This gun had a big touch hole from the factory. It also is very long in depth.  The 2f hangfires terrible.  The 3f was much faster.  Since then I've installed a non-removable liner to shorten that fuse length touch hole from around a1/4inch or more long to whatever the liner hole length is.  Opened up to 5/64ths.  Hope this will allow the 2f to fire quickly now.

Bob

[Mike Brooks]

Cock travel is the main issue for those locks. Takes forever for them to reach the frizzen compared to say a 5" lock.

[wmrike]

I have two Besses (Bessi?) and they really are not what I would consider a grouse gun for so many reasons.  That's really good shooting!

[Daryl]

Trap gun then? Taylor once broke 10 straight at a rendezvous with is Lyman Bess.