Lion Beck first harvest

[gumboman]

Finished a Lion Beck in October 2018 after 1 year of work. It is a 62 caliber round ball shooter. Has Rice transitional barrel with 66 twist. Current load is .610 cast round ball, 100 grains 3F Goex and heavy denham with mink oil lube. This is a very accurate load for this flintlock. Difficult to load however even with Rice's deep crown. Will probably cone later as I have done with two other rifles.

Shot this deer yesterday morning with this my favorite flintlock so far. Ignition was fast with the Chambers Johnson lock. Due to humid conditions had to change prime every hour.

Deer ran 70 yards after hit. Complete penetration. No blood trail until 20 yards from where deer expired.

First picture shows gun better. Second picture shows deer better.

[rich pierce]

Nice late season buck. Just goes to show there’s never a guarantee a deer will drop or leave a big blood trail when fatally hit regardless of caliber unless hit in the brain or spine.

[sqrldog]

Nice buck Gene. Has to be satisfying to harvest a nice buck with  a rifle of your own build. Particularly a great Beck rifle. Tim

[Robby]

Nice job Gumbo!!!!!!!
Robby

[Osprey]

Congrats, great job!

We're done for the season here, already looking forward to next fall...

[gumboman]

Thanks all. And yes Tim it is a great feeling to harvest a buck with a rifle of my own build. And it's more than just the harvest. It is a feeling that I think all who participate in this forum understand well. A feeling of using a primitive arm. The long slimness of the rifle, the beautiful curly maple wood with relief carving and the sharp flint in the jaw. I love the feel of the long gun when shouldered and the lining up of sights. The click, swoosh, boom at ignition (hopefully very close together). It is a feeling I do not get with a modern arm. It is the knowing you have done it the hard way. I can spend hours on stand hunting without seeing any game but still enjoy the time admiring, and caressing the beautiful old style weapon.

Whether its hunting, targets or collecting, we can all enjoy the charms of the beautiful, complex yet simple old flintlocks.

[Greg Pennell]

Beautiful rifle, and a nice buck!  Good job, hope you and that rifle have many more years of memories together!

Greg

[Daryl]

Nice little buck you got with that new rifle! Well done.
Instead of coning, might I suggest doing a re-crown to the one Rice machine cut. All you need is a piece of 320 grit emery or wet/dry and a cloth cleaning patch.
Run the patch down about 1", then using the end of your thumb pushing the paper or emery into the muzzle, rotate your thumb back and forth, every 5 seconds or so, rotate the barrel 180 degrees. After about 30 seconds, it will look much like this and make the ball and patch transition/forming into the bore much easier.
When finished, reach into the muzzle with needle nose pliers and pull out the patch with the 'grindings'.
Late season, fat animal and when it moves, the fat plugs the hole, for a time, usually. Especially with bears.

[David R. Pennington]

Nice healthy looking young buck. Should be good eating. Congratulations.

[gumboman]

Daryl, not sure yet if I will cone or use your crown modification. She shoots so great now I might decide to do nothing and endure the loading difficulty. Whatever I might do it will be in moderation due to a fear of affecting the fantastic accuracy I now get.

[hanshi]

Congratulations on a nice buck.  Your rifle is very nice and I like it.  You did a good job building it.  I'll second Daryl's crowning suggestion.  I crowned my rifles and not only was accuracy unaffected, but tight loads go down so easy.  Coning is not for me, but working that crown is my suggestion as well.

[wattlebuster]

Good deer. Good eats there. Beautiful rifle

[David R. Pennington]

Did the round ball exit? I have had them run like that shot through both lights. Sometimes a spell before they start bleeding. The two deer I shot this year with the .62 both only went a few steps.

[gumboman]

David, yes the round ball did exit low back of the off shoulder. I was rather high in my perch causing a low angle on exit. But no blood trail unfortunately. I have had this to happen several times with 50 caliber balls but did not expect a .610 ball to give the same affect. I was hoping for more knock down effect but to my surprise a perfectly placed ball resulted in a 70 yard death run. In this situation it was not difficult to recover the deer due to open hardwoods. But the normal situation here is thick stands of briars and second growth pine making for nearly impenetrable terrain and progress can only be made on hands an knees crawling. It is this thick briar infested, thick man eating impenetrable undergrowth that takes much of the fun out of flintlock hunting. This was my inspiration for building a large bore rifle.

But alas, the knock down power I was tring for did not materialize we keep workin

[hanshi]

My only experience with a .62 has been with a smoothbore; I got a "bang -flop".  I've had a much higher percentage of DRTs with my .45, oddly enough.  Blood trails have consistently been copious, sometimes astonishingly copious.  I believe the deers action was an anomaly.  It probably won't be repeated often.  Plenty of DRTs are in that rifles future.

[Darkhorse]

I think a slow moving round ball just pushes a lot of the internal organs aside as it ploughs through hence the light blood trails. From shooting a lot of deer and hogs with .54 prb's I think of it like this, a shot through the heart usually means a short trailing job with a fair amount of blood.
A shot through the lungs means a 100 or so yard blood trail job with slight amounts of blood.
A shot through the high shoulders that takes out the spine means deer dead right there.
I live in an area that has a lot of those skin rippin briars and thick pines so I want  mine to fall close by if possible.

[Marcruger]

Hey Gumboman,

Thank you for the photos.  Lovely rifle and congrats on the deer. 

I am sure you know, it is just never possible to predict how an animal will react to a shot.  Don't be hard on your .62.  You can sometimes shoot a buck with a .243 and have it fall right there.  Other times you hit a squirrel with a .458 and it runs off.  You just cannot predict. 

As far as hard loading, Daryl's muzzle smoothing/crowning trick does help with no detriment to accuracy.

Here is a thought.  I tight load at the range.  Yep, takes a while and some work to load.  Load your first hunting round tight.  That will be the shot where accuracy really counts.  For your pouch, take lighter patching.  That way it will load a lot easier and faster for follow up shots.  If you are in a hurry for the second shot, or a finishing shot, the loss of accuracy probably won't matter much. 

Just my 2 cents worth.  Hope it helps.  God Bless,  Marc

[kentuckyrifleman]

Gorgeous gun and nice buck. These animals can be resilient! Never shot a deer before, but I've shot a fair number of varmints with a .22 and they can do some weird things even with good hits.

[Daryl]

I am sure you know, it is just never possible to predict how an animal will react to a shot.  Don't be hard on your .62.  You can sometimes shoot a buck with a .243 and have it fall right there.  Other times you hit a squirrel with a .458 and it runs off.  You just cannot predict. 
As far as hard loading, Daryl's muzzle smoothing/crowning trick does help with no detriment to accuracy.
Here is a thought.  I tight load at the range.  Yep, takes a while and some work to load.  Load your first hunting round tight.  That will be the shot where accuracy really counts.  For your pouch, take lighter patching.  That way it will load a lot easier and faster for follow up shots.  If you are in a hurry for the second shot, or a finishing shot, the loss of accuracy probably won't matter much. 
Just my 2 cents worth.  Hope it helps.  God Bless,  Marc

Umm - Marc - maybe I'm just really lucky but I've never had a .458 nor .69 (for that matter) shot squirrel do anything but fly off the tree yes, but, run off, never.  Is this due to the FPE energy?

[gumboman]

Many good comments and worthwhile advice. Thanks to all. I have one more weekend to test the .62 again. Might get a chance to get a different result. By the way I am totally confident in the performance of the 62 for taking deer and much larger game. Having taken many deer with .50 and .54 round balls, I was expecting a little more from the big bore. But have no concerns about the effectiveness of big round balls. My plan is to do some final load development with a 120 grain 3f load as my goal.

I do carry a .600 ball in my bag for a second shot. It loads much easier.

[Daryl]

I would switch to 2F powder for those heavier loads.  About 130gr. 2F will likely match the velocity of 120gr. 3F in your gun.  As well, it will also develop much LOWER pressures. Lower pressure is easier on the ball and patch combination and will likely shoot cleaner due to that alone - that is my findings across the board in larger calibers. In the larger bores, I get better accuracy with 2f than with 3F - this has been going on since 1974.
 I suspect if I used tighter combinations, that might not hold water.