Gary,...Do you think that a well placed shot from a .45 cal rifle can effectively bring down an elk or a black bear? Or even an eastern bison?
The key word is what do we mean by "effectively"? A lot of deer have been poached with .22 longrifles and as Dennis said, if the dogs are holding a bear at bay up a tree, you COULD kill it with a .40 Cal percussion pistol.
A modern hunter making a humane quick kill to harvest a game animal under actual field conditions is a completely different story! Pages have been written on this and it boils down to shot placement.
I have never shot anything bigger than a whitetail but I am of the "a bigger caliber gives more room for a small error in shot placement" school of thought. I know from experience that a tiny twig can deflect a round ball or a deer can move just as you squeeze off the shot.
Gary
I am reasonably confident that deer will jump when the pan flashes on a flintlock if they are staring at you when the shot is made. I am sure it happened once and suspect another time as well. So critter movement is something to consider, things in the field may not go as they would on a rifle range. Bigger balls are always better for shooting critters (to a point). But we have to be careful to no look at this with 21st C. eyes and try to think 18th C. Unfortunately its impossible to get into people's heads at this late date.
Someone here has to know what lead sold for in 1770 or 1790. What was the average income of the time?
Boone was constantly in debt it would seem.
Did this effect the choice of a rifle?
Hancock Taylor's rifle has all the needed features, is 52 caliber, now. People today really seem to like 54-62 caliber Kentucky rifles but they are difficult to document at the time. When the writing of the time are taken into account the bore sizes shrink to around 50-52 for a maximum. There are many surviving rifles from the 1770s with bore sizes in the mid 40s.
We also have to remember that the rifles were not just used from hunting or defense. They were recreational. Rifle matches were popular everywhere until we became urbanized in the 20th C. So the rifles were shot more than people might think. The heavy barreled rifles of the 19th c. may have been used more for Beef and Turkey matches than for hunting. There are repeated references to rifle matches as recreation on the frontier and elsewhere. Would this effect caliber choice? For the ranges generally shot, 50-60 yards from a rest seems to be common (many rifle matches in the 19th c. at least used rods as a unit of measure, 10 rods would be 53 yards), a rifle between 40 and 50 would be ideal.
This was form of rifle match was common into the 20th c. in some areas and never completely died out with ML shooters.
Schuetzen shooting became a major sport from before the Civil War with large prizes (by anyone's standards sometimes in the 10s of thousands in todays dollars) for winners by the late 19th C. WW-I killed Schuetzen, a wonderful sport, it was seen as too "German". The ranges died out, the Schuetzen houses were converted or destroyed, we are lucky that we have one of the few survivors in MT still in use on a rifle range at Rocker, MT just west of Butte, set up by the "evil rich" Copper Kings.
The increased ubanization of America further killed off the recreational use of firearms. Demonizing firearms has accelerated this and has distorted many Americans ideas about firearms.
Dan
