Part professional interest (firearm instructor), part recreational (hunter), and part historical, I'm hoping I can get some firsthand observations on how these nearly pure lead marbles behave on impact. Due to CA's impending lead hunting ban and the sheer difficulty of hunting in my zone, I'm unlikely to learn in the one season I'd have available to try, even if I did have the gear.
On the negative hand, you have almost the worst possible aerodynamic shape, and the worst possible sectional density numbers.
On the positive hand, people did successfully fight wars and feed themselves with them, and even in fairly primitive smoothbore form, the arms were viewed as sufficiently superior to the improved versions of the sharp stick that they were willing to accept the technical and logistical penalties of chemistry (gunpowder), and metallurgy - both gun making and bullet casting - to possess them. No less an authority than Elmer Keith observed the roundball in the .36 Navy Colt to be a superior manstopper to the conical options that were often found in the accompanying molds.
Unfortunately, we don't have Marshall and Sanow doing studies of bank robbers being felled by round balls, nor do we have Federal, Remington, and Winchester shooting gelatin blocks with them and publishing the results. If the surgeons at Waterloo had anything to say about it, I'm not really sure where to look.
So if any of you charcoal burners have smacked rows of milk jugs or done autopsies on your deer, elk, and pig in the name of science, I'd love to hear the details of caliber, velocity, penetration (recovered or not), expansion, and damage caused.