AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Black Powder Shooting => Topic started by: Justin Urbantas on July 22, 2025, 02:25:35 AM
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I usually shoot 35-55 gr out of my .45 flintlock for target shooting. What would you say would be the max load with a roundball for a heavy hunting load? This is with a 44 inch swamped Getz barrel. Cheers
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I have an original that Jim Goodoien freshed out to 45 for me that I shoot 70gr of 2f Swiss in. 32 inch heavy barrel drum and nipple
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I have an original that Jim Goodoien freshed out to 45 for me that I shoot 70gr of 2f Swiss in. 32 inch heavy barrel drum and nipple
I shoot 65 grains of 3F in my .45 (now .46, I freshed it) GRRW barrel. A lot depends on twist as far as accuracy is concerned.
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My .45 Colerain uses 75 gr 3f O.E. 80 gr. 3f burns up the patches >:( my old Montana barrel Co. 45 uses 70 gr 3f any more and your just wasting powder as the velocity doesn't up much. There is almost always a point at witch velocity increases are so minimal that adding powder is a waste of time.
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I usually shoot 35-55 gr out of my .45 flintlock for target shooting. What would you say would be the max load with a roundball for a heavy hunting load? This is with a 44 inch swamped Getz barrel. Cheers
With a slippery lube (LHV) my 42" .45 GM barrel liked 75gr. 3F GOEX and 85gr. 2F GOEX. Same velocity, same groups and point of impact.
I did not shoot it with the less slippery lubes like Mink Oil or Neetsfoot Oil so have no data for that.
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I always used 70 grains of fffg with great results in fact I don't think I even tried anything else.
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All I see is people yakin’ about .45 caliber guns, but no mention made about what twist the barrel is, seems like a giant waste of breath. I am building a gun with a .45 caliber barrel that is 1 in 66 twist and I assume I will have to jack up the powder charge to get it to shoot well. It’s one of those old Douglas barrels that was found at the local dump that was never built into a gun. A good scrubbing and it shines like a dime.
Hungry Horse
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The 2 deer I have killed with a .440 patched ball and 70 grains of 3f Goex didn't travel far after blasting the ball through the lungs out to between 50 and 60 yards. The balls were stuck against the hide on the opposite side and looked like it was hammered into a flat coin between the size of a nickel and a quarter.
Bob
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I identified my barrel as a GM barrel. Most "builders" will know this barrel has a 60" rate of twist.
I would have been just as happy, had the barrel a 48" twist and used only 65 or 70gr. 2F.
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My homemade .44 one in 45" twist, seems to shoot best with 70 to 80 grains of Go 2F.
Nearly as good for target with 40 grains and a tight linen patch lubed with deer tallow. No burn out.
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My 40" long × 13/16" straight octagon × .45 caliber × 1:48" twist Douglas GAA barrel, which I hand coned myself using the thumb method and successively finer grades of emery paper (I finished with crocus cloth); only required a 50-grain charge of fffg black powder in order to consistently shoot sub-M.O.A. 5-shot groups at 100 yards off of a bench rest.
The rifle was a Golden Age Arms Company, semi-custom, brass-mounted, Lancaster-style flintlock with an engraved daisy head patch box and a large Siler flintlock. I paid $335 for it as a 17-year-old kid in 1971.
I cast 0.445" diameter lead balls out of a 25-pound bag of 0.455" diameter lead buckshot that I had purchased from the gun shop that sold me an Italian replica of a Colt 1860 .44 caliber cap & ball revolver when I was 16.
Initially, I used old worn out blue jeans for patch material, and subsequently purchased several yards of blue jeans denim material from a local independent fabric store. The patch and ball combination was tight enough to push all of the fouling from the first shot down on top of the fresh powder charge, thus eliminating the need to wipe between shots, regardless of how many shots in a row that I desired to fire. The greatest number of consecutive shots that I ever fired was 73 on a hot, humid late August Maryland day in 1973.
I only killed one whitetail deer with it but the 132-grain lead ball with its 50-grain fffg powder charge was more than sufficient to kill that small buck at a distance of approximately 45-50 yards.
Hope this helps, Bruce.
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My 40" long × 13/16" straight octagon × .45 caliber × 1:48" twist Douglas GAA barrel, which I hand coned myself using the thumb method and successively finer grades of emery paper *(I finished with crocus cloth);* only required a 50-grain charge of fffg black powder in order to consistently shoot sub-M.O.A. 5-shot groups at 100 yards off of a bench rest.
The rifle was a Golden Age Arms Company, semi-custom, brass-mounted, Lancaster-style flintlock with an engraved daisy head patch box and a large Siler flintlock. I paid $335 for it as a 17-year-old kid in 1971.
I cast 0.445" diameter lead balls out of a 25-pound bag of 0.455" diameter lead buckshot that I had purchased from the gun shop that sold me an Italian replica of a Colt 1860 .44 caliber cap & ball revolver when I was 16.
Initially, I used old worn out blue jeans for patch material, and subsequently purchased several yards of blue jeans denim material from a local independent fabric store. The patch and ball combination was tight enough to push all of the fouling from the first shot down on top of the fresh powder charge, thus eliminating the need to wipe between shots, regardless of how many shots in a row that I desired to fire. The greatest number of consecutive shots that I ever fired was 73 on a hot, humid late August Maryland day in 1973.
I only killed one whitetail deer with it but the 132-grain lead ball with its 50-grain fffg powder charge was more than sufficient to kill that small buck at a distance of approximately 45-50 yards.
Hope this helps, Bruce.
50 grains of 3f in a 45 is all that is needed to kill any deer in North America.....The same way a 40# longbow can kill any deer in North America.....Shot placement!.....A poor shot with a .308 will render a wounded or unfound deer as quick as a poor shot from a space aged cross-bow will.
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I've been working on an accurate load for my 45 Rifle with a 30" GM barrel for awhile. I posted results on another thread.
I only went up to 60gr 3F when doing this. I then switched to 2F and found 55gr 2F gave me the best groups.
But, based upon some of the post here the next trip (whenever this heat lets up) I'll give 65gr & 70gr a try. Both 2F and 3F.
On the matter of whitetail loads I had a T\C 50 cal factory barrel that gave me shotgun patterns no matter what. I finally settled on 60gr 2F as that gave me the most consistent pattern at 50yds (IIRC). And that was 4"-5". But with 60gr and a PRB I killed a lot of whitetail's with it. The barrel got replaced with a GM drop in.....and I proceded to kill more with 100gr 2F PRB. The major difference was with the GM barrel....I could hit what I was aiming at. ;D
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I am in the 70gr of 3F crowd; I shoot a .445 ball and .015 patch out of my Bill Large barrel for deer, it is a .44 that has been shot out to be more like a .45 in the last 50 years and three owners.
In my experience and about 7 or 8 deer shot through the lungs with this rifle, I find that they always run about 50 yards before they tip over, the blood trails are followable but sparse, I always hear them crash.
This is a huge doe for this neck of the woods (south central Tn), they are usually much smaller.
(https://i.ibb.co/Z6RNbqz2/Silver-nanny.jpg) (https://ibb.co/2705pG3Z)
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Yeah the 50 yard dash and crash I found to be common as well with 70 grains of fffg under a prb punching through both lungs. One exception I remember on a mule deer doe straight on at 15 yards. The round ball fragmented on the breastbone and did extensive damage to the heart and both lungs. That one just crashed on the spot and never took a step!
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Deer story: When I hunted with my factory T\C the only load that gave me adequate groups was 60gr 2F PRB. I had a big doe come up a hill and standing straight away at about 30 yards stop. I put the bead on her chest and pulled the trigger. She took off.
Went to where she was standing and had white hair and a few drops of blood. Waited for my friends to show up....and about 15 minutes went looking.
No additional blood.....anywhere. Circled a good 200 yards from point of impact.....nothing. We surmised the RB hit the breast bone, then went straight down stripping the white chest hair. Never found it. I still don't believe the ball ever entered the chest cavity.
That was a 50 cal. Today if I take my 50 cal it's 100gr charge.
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My 40" long × 13/16" straight octagon × .45 caliber × 1:48" twist Douglas GAA barrel, which I hand coned myself using the thumb method and successively finer grades of emery paper *(I finished with crocus cloth);* only required a 50-grain charge of fffg black powder in order to consistently shoot sub-M.O.A. 5-shot groups at 100 yards off of a bench rest.
The rifle was a Golden Age Arms Company, semi-custom, brass-mounted, Lancaster-style flintlock with an engraved daisy head patch box and a large Siler flintlock. I paid $335 for it as a 17-year-old kid in 1971.
I cast 0.445" diameter lead balls out of a 25-pound bag of 0.455" diameter lead buckshot that I had purchased from the gun shop that sold me an Italian replica of a Colt 1860 .44 caliber cap & ball revolver when I was 16.
Initially, I used old worn out blue jeans for patch material, and subsequently purchased several yards of blue jeans denim material from a local independent fabric store. The patch and ball combination was tight enough to push all of the fouling from the first shot down on top of the fresh powder charge, thus eliminating the need to wipe between shots, regardless of how many shots in a row that I desired to fire. The greatest number of consecutive shots that I ever fired was 73 on a hot, humid late August Maryland day in 1973.
I only killed one whitetail deer with it but the 132-grain lead ball with its 50-grain fffg powder charge was more than sufficient to kill that small buck at a distance of approximately 45-50 yards.
Hope this helps, Bruce.
I would love to see a pic of the engraving on your patch box, if you can figure out how to load a pic.
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Deer story: When I hunted with my factory T\C the only load that gave me adequate groups was 60gr 2F PRB. I had a big doe come up a hill and standing straight away at about 30 yards stop. I put the bead on her chest and pulled the trigger. She took off.
Went to where she was standing and had white hair and a few drops of blood. Waited for my friends to show up....and about 15 minutes went looking.
No additional blood.....anywhere. Circled a good 200 yards from point of impact.....nothing. We surmised the RB hit the breast bone, then went straight down stripping the white chest hair. Never found it. I still don't believe the ball ever entered the chest cavity.
That was a 50 cal. Today if I take my 50 cal it's 100gr charge.
Unless you found the deer, you have no idea where the ball hit, or what damage it did. You can only suppose....I remember my son swearing to me that the deer he shot with his bow was double lunged from 15 yards. After a 500 yard track with minimal blood, we encountered my other son coming out of his stand spot and he asked....."which one of you shot the deer in the front leg", as it ran past his stand at 10 yards with one of my custom arrows sticking out of it. The deer was never found.
On the other side of the coin, I stalked from 100 yards to 20 yards on a buck and took what I thought was a good shot with my recurve, only to be horrified that I shot it in the front leg.....Disgusted I walked home and took a meal break and then went back to track the deer 2 hours later.....Within 20 yards of the shot there was a massive pool of blood where it entered the thickett....Inside the thickett I found the deer within another 20 yards, stone dead, and shot through both lungs and the top of the heart.
The aluminum arrow somehow bent on the exit and appeared to be sticking out of the leg. The point to these stories is that it matters little what you think you saw, as opposed to what actually happened. Shot placement.....shot placement......shot placement ....shot placement will always trump fast arrows and heavy charges.
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The best shooting .45 caliber muzzleloading rifles I’ve ever shot were both 1 in 56 twist rifling which is not an easy twist to get. One was a production gun that might have been built by Numrich arms and the other was a custom gun I sold for the family of a friend who passed away. Both of these guns shot incredibly well with charges between 60 and 70 grains of 3F and maintained very good accuracy and velocity at a little over a hundred yards. I’ve not encountered a .45 with a 1 in 48” twist that could consistantly match that. So twist does matter, along with rifling depth, and stock architecture.
Hungry Horse
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Gotta admit round balls bouncing off deer does make a great story! ::) ;D ;D
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I don’t think the RB bounced off. The hair left at point of impact was 100% white. No brown at all. (We stared at it long enough to know that).
Now, it’s quite possible the RB embedded in the deers breast bone….never making it to the vitals.
We spent a good 90+ minutes in a “fan” pattern covering the direction she ran. No additional blood.
She could have bled out internally and we just didn’t find her. Always a possibility. But we believed no vitals were penetrated.
At the range she stood I’d still take that shot again if presented. But today my loads are 100gr. Not 60gr.
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Martin S ~~ I sold that Golden Age Arms Company flintlock longrifle a long time ago and have no pictures of it other than the ones in my memories.
Hungry Horse ~~ All of my flintlock longrifles had 1:48" twist rifling in them.
*(#1)* The Douglas GAA .45 caliber, 13/16" straight octagon barrel,
*(#2)* A late 1970's, Getz, swamped octagon, .50 caliber barrel that was equipped with a factory coned muzzle,
*(#3)* An early 1980's, Getz, swamped octagon, .62 caliber barrel, also equipped with a factory coned muzzle.
I don't know if it was just providential good luck, serendipity, or what, but all three of those longrifles, each coincidentally equipped with large Siler flintlocks, and each equipped with a simple drilled touch hole; were capable of consistent, sub-M.O.A., 5-shot groups at 100 yards as long as the shooter did his part.
I've been blessed by God with lousy, multiple negative diopter eyesight ever since I was a pre-teen kid. So, when I shot each of those rifles, the 100-yard 5-shot groups usually averaged someplace between 1.5" to 1.75". But, when men with much better eyesight than I possessed shot them, the 5-shot groups usually shrank dramatically to below 1".
I had no mentors in learning to shoot that first longrifle and each subsequent longrifle. All of the information that I started out with as far as that .45 caliber GAA longrifle was concerned came out of articles published in Muzzle Blasts magazine, the Gun Digest Annual, the Dixie Gun Works catalog, or the original Lyman Black Powder Handbook. Everything else was self-taught and the result of trial and error.
As a result, I picked a 0.445" diameter × 0.005" under nominal bore diameter ball mold for that first rifle. Not knowing any better, I followed up with the same choices for both the .50 caliber and .62 caliber barrels; a 0.495" diameter ball for the .50 caliber barrel, and a 0.615" diameter ball for the. 62 caliber barrel. The final powder charges were 55 grains of fffg black powder for the .50 caliber barrel and 70 grains of fffg black powder for the .62 caliber barrel.
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This is just my theory, so do with it what you will. The only thing I have heard concerning the rate of twist and patched round ball shooting is that the patched ball can skip over the rifling. I assume, if this happens, it is because the patch and ball combo is not tight enough in the bore to firmly engage the rifling, or the velocity is so high it causes skip. My experience is that .015 cloth is common, so changing from a .440 ball to a .445 may be an idea if you haven't yet invested in a mold. A lot can be done with patch material as far as getting a rifle to shoot well. It is basically all about getting the patched ball to spin with the rifling.
Reminds me of the old machists' adage, "Speeds and feeds."
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Regarding the shot in the breast head on with .50 and 60 grains of 2F. I no longer shoot at deer head on with anything. The last one I shot head on in the breast with a Remington rifle left only white hair and a little blood in the snow. I tracked the buck for over a mile and when I found it the buck was pawing at the base of a cherry tree looking for food. I finished it off with a blast through the lungs. The necropsy showed that the original bullet went under the spine and over the heart/lungs and through a few areas of the guts and was perfectly expanded back in the buck's ham near the butt. No vitals were hit. It would have eventually died. The moral to this story is that whether it is a 50 round ball or a high-power rifle, the head on shot can be iffy.
Bob
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Bob's right nothing's more reliable than a double lung shot. I've walked up to cut the throat on neck shot mule deer bucks I knew were dead and had them get up on me. Had a spine shot antelope get up and run away when I walked up when I knew he was dead.
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Regarding the shot in the breast head on with .50 and 60 grains of 2F. I no longer shoot at deer head on with anything. The last one I shot head on in the breast with a Remington rifle left only white hair and a little blood in the snow. I tracked the buck for over a mile and when I found it the buck was pawing at the base of a cherry tree looking for food. I finished it off with a blast through the lungs. The necropsy showed that the original bullet went under the spine and over the heart/lungs and through a few areas of the guts and was perfectly expanded back in the buck's ham near the butt. No vitals were hit. It would have eventually died. The moral to this story is that whether it is a 50 round ball or a high-power rifle, the head on shot can be iffy.
Bob
I couldn't agree more.
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Last one I shot head-on was slightly quartering towards me. The 400gr. .54 bullet entered just left of center and exited out through the ham. The buck, humped up at the shot, jumped forwards onto his nose.
No meat was destroyed.
Seemed like a good shot to me.
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Finally....a day with a break from the 90+ temps and uber high humidity. A trip to the range to shoot the .45 with the 30" barrel.
I've had decent groups with 55gr 2F, so I decided to just jump to 70gr 2F and see how that went. The rifle didn't like it. 50yd groups of 6"+.
Then I went to 70gr 3F. the rifle didn't like it. Not as "bad" as the 70gr, but not within my expectations.
So, I then dropped the charge to 65gr 2F. Acceptable group.
Then a charge of 65gr 3F. Rifle groups opened up.
Seems this one likes 55gr of 2F, or 65gr of 2F. Doesn't really like any charge of 3F.
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Still using the same thin patches? M5 .45 shot 1/2" groups at 50yards with both 75gr. 3F and 85gr. 2F, using LHV lube.
.445" pure lead ball (at least 98% pure) & a 10 ounce denim patch of .021" measured wet and compressed. No wiping.
The 2F produces lower pressure than-does 3F, thus less strain on the ball and patch combination.
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Still using the same thin patches? M5 .45 shot 1/2" groups at 50yards with both 75gr. 3F and 85gr. 2F, using LHV lube.
.445" pure lead ball (at least 98% pure) & a 10 ounce denim patch of .021" measured wet and compressed. No wiping.
The 2F produces lower pressure than-does 3F, thus less strain on the ball and patch combination.
Daryl, I am still using the .440 RB's. I tell you why.....I have a physical limitation that has stolen a lot of my strength. When I was finding a load for my .54 cal I started with .530RB and then tried .535RB. I had a very difficult time trying to get the .535's to start. And i do mean difficult.
So, the .440 RB's give me "adequate" groupings for my purposes. I'm not a competitive shooter so one hole groups are not a requirement. Not to say that I don't love to shoot one hole groups, but it's just circumstances that are what they are.
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Thanks, I did not know of this limitation. Unfortunate circumstance, but - the smaller the ball, the more easy it is to load tight loads.
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Here's a few pics of my results. All at 50 yards with .440RB.
The short 30" barrel seems to like 55gr 2F and 65gr 2F. But 60gr or 70gr of either 2F or 3F were larger groupings.
(https://i.imgur.com/YkF0cmal.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/E0SUzxll.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/vPjEPtLl.jpg)