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Go Figure

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MuskratMike:
I am preparing for a hunt in late May to Colorado to shoot giant Russian Boars (400-650 lbs.) I will be shooting my Don Bruton built .54 caliber traditional flintlock (see the August 2021 issue of Muzzleblasts Magazine for the story on this fine rifle). It has has a 44-inch Colerain barrel with a 1 in 56-inch twist with radius bottom rifling and is swamped and coned. In doing my load development for the perfect patched round ball load for my hunt with this rifle I found 1 box of Buffalo Bullet Company solid nose, hollow base bullets in .54 caliber weighing 310 grains. These haven not been made in years. Hornady makes virtually the same bullet but only in .50 caliber (go figure). I ran through all but 26 of them doing load development. I asked here on ALR if anyone had some extra I could buy in .54 caliber. Low and behold a nice guy from Utah had almost two boxes but they were just a bit longer and hollow point, hollow base in 338 grain. I bought them and found it hard to believe both of these "conical" bullets shoot as well as my tried and true patch ball load. Today I went to the range and shot groups on paper at 50 yards with all 3 ball/bullet combinations and a large 24x36-inch paper pig at 75 yards. The solid nose conical out shot both the others but by such a close margin as to be negligible. On the 75 yard "pig" target the heavier hollow point out shot each of the others. Go figure!
The "gut shot"  on the pig was a called miss. The barrel started to slip on the pad just as I let off the shot. The slightly high shot I purposefully held a little higher to see where it would strike.
so which of the 3 would you use?

smylee grouch:
So how much powder were you shooting in each of the three loads and how thick were the patches and ball size on the RB loads?

MuskratMike:
All 3 got 75 grains of Goex 3F. The round ball used a .018 ticking patch, a .530 round ball, & patch was lubed with a 50/50 mixture of T.O.T.W. monk oil & pure neatsfoot oil.

Daryl:
About slugs in RB twists.  I made a mould many years ago to cast slugs in my .69. About the lightest was 588gr. and they would actually cloverleaf
at 50yards from a rest.  The mould, being adjustable, could cast slugs up to 1,200gr. weight. This rifle has .012" deep rifling rate of 66 in. to a full turn.
The barrel is 31" including the chamber area, so about 29" of actual usable barrel length.
I only used up to 85gr. 2F GOEX with the lightest slugs, due to the increased recoil of these over the normal 482gr. ball weight.  At the time I tested these
slugs, my Rb groups were as tight or tighter than the slugs did. Even though the slug weight was only 25% higher than the RB's, the felt recoil seemed
a LOT more. Shooting these slugs actually cracked the stock through the lock bolt, & I repaired it with thin CA model airplane glue. The crack has not reappeared
& I've shot it a large number of times with up to 165gr. and a few with up to 330gr., an accidental double powder charge with 160gr. 3F all with patched round balls.
So - it seems a lot of round ball twists will actually shoot conicals with decent accuracy on paper. We found the .54 and .50ca. TC Maxiballs worked poorly on moose
as they were dreadfully unstable after impact. Perhaps this was only due to the larger size of moose, compared with deer or hogs. My use of patched round balls on
moose, has shown me the surplus nature of slugs in RB rifles. They just aren't needed & on a heavy tough animal, cannot be trusted to maintain their accuracy after
impact.  I am talking about poor straight line penetration with slugs in RB twists as the shallow 48" ROT TC's just happene0d to be.
Those Ball-etts you've pictured, might work just fine, Mike, due to their short length.

alacran:
On a hog You are better off shooting right in front and above the elbow. The only shot that looks to have hit the vitals is the high one. the heart is above the elbow, and a little forward.

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