Experimentation is needed, for sure - BUT - a patched ball does not spin and is launched as a knuckle ball in baseball, just as the elaborate wadding would produce in Hungry Horse's post. Perhaps his methods need to be fully tested - however, I won't use a plastic wad - no hornet's nest - Sam needs all he can find.
Some 'facts' we know about a smoothbore ball's flight:
Any irregularity, such as a sprue, will start it spinning in the air. Thus, a ball with removed sprue should be more accuracte, being more perfectly round.
For our purposes, the higher the speed, the further it will travel before verring off due to spin. I've watched this with binoculars- quite interesting to see the exponential flight, like a trumpet's horn. The U.S. military of 1775 knew that speed was a musket's friend as to accurate flight.
At very low speed, say well under 500fps for example, the flight is also quite straight, but the incredibly high trajectory makes hitting problematic and that speed thus, is unsuitable for anything we do. The U.S. military of 1830 also knew that exceptionally slow flight also improved accuracy, but was unuitable for their purposes. The charge tested and proven to shoot with quite exceptional accuracy was a mere 30gr. That charge, while enough to easily kill a man out to 100yards with the .650" ball (411gr.), made hitting him almost an impossibility due to the trajectory.
