hunting: hard cast or not?

[171raven]

I am buying a .50 cal ML (traditions hawken rifle) and will be casting my own round balls and minie balls. What I want to know is for hunting purposes should i use hard cast? (I'm new to this so plz forgive any incorect termonalogy i have used) thank you for the help

[mroliver77]

Nope, dead soft is the ticket. Amazing how hard they hit.
J

[171raven]

thank you

[nagantguy]

You have come to the right place, there is a lot of knowledge here. When I made a post similar to yours a while ago soft was the only response I got, it was the right one they shoot well and are easy to load. Welcome aboard.

[waksupi]

Soft generally, although I carry wheel weight balls for larger game than deer. More penetration.

[mooman76]

Soft will hold together better and spread more. You could get away with hard too but if you do your part but most everyone will tell you go with soft.

[fouronesix]

Generally soft. However, with a heavy charge and at fairly close range (high velocity), a dead soft roundball can pancake and suffer poor penetration if it hits heavy bone. Of course it depends on the animal. For minies and solid base conicals they are usually a little slower and should be soft for good accuracy. Dead soft minies and conicals generally penetrate extremely well- to the point that you have to be careful not to hit animals standing behind because of the good chance of pass through.

[idahoron]

I have tuned the hardness of my bullets. I take virgin lead at 5 BHN and bump it up to a high 6 or 7. On my Cabine Tree tester I target .038 for my 50 cal paper patched bullets. For my 45 I target .045 on the dial. When the paper patched 500 S&W bullet hits game it makes a lour WHOMP! The wound channel is about 1" diameter and I have never found one in an animal, even elk.
So I guess my vote is to tune your hardness to see what shoots the best in your gun. A pinch harder than pure works great. Ron

[725]

As soft as you can.

[Hanshi]

Soft lead is most always better. Howsomever, Harder lead, say WW, is excellent in small bores for small game where expansion is not preferred. For deer it's usually best to use dead soft lead in calibers up to and possibly including .50. At least I've found this to be so. In, say, .54 and up harder lead works just fine. This especially goes for .58 and up. I shoot almost nothing but harder lead in my smoothbore. A 300 plus grain WW ball hits super hard and goes through bone like nothing is there. My smoothbore shoots extremely well with these WW balls and saves my soft lead for the calibers that need it, .40, .45 and .50.

[KyBill]

I agree soft in RB or Conical if it is rammed down the Barrel ! What Bullet style are you going to be using ? I have an old .50 Maxi Hunter mold I use. looks like Thompson Maxi-Ball with a round top instead of pointed . KyBill

[KyBill]

Looks like above but single cavity

[10 ga]

I use straight COWW for my roundballs, in all caliber. I shoot my PRB very hot for hunting and it is the length of wound channel that counts, they are already .50 and .58 caliber so any "mushrooming" or flattening on impact is not necessary. For my REAL and Minnie bullets pure soft.

10 ga

[Boerrancher]

I use a 50/50 alloy of pure lead and WW simply because it is what I shoot in my modern guns. I only shoot PRB in my muzzle loaders, no minnies or maxies. I will admit that it is probably a bit soft for my .32 cal, but seems to do really well in my .50 cal and 20 gauge trade gun. I probably ought to shoot straight WW out of the 32 because a bad shot means half a squirrel, but I am too lazy to mess with my alloy since I only have one furnace to cast with.

Best wishes

Joe

[Cosmiceyes]

I use pure lead. Never had anything go wrong,and very consistent grouping. I don't have a scoped in-line.Just a old Lyman great plains 50 percussion. Can't speak on boolit shape after I hit animal as I never found a boolit to stay inside. Nice entry an exit wound.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

I am buying a .50 cal ML (traditions hawken rifle) and will be casting my own round balls and minie balls. What I want to know is for hunting purposes should i use hard cast? (I'm new to this so plz forgive any incorect termonalogy i have used) thank you for the help

There you go. It is shooter's choice. However, since you are shooting a patch gun, you may wish to load a little looser with the hard ball simply to make it easier to load with the "stick" under the barrel. Tight loading for competitive matches is a different critter, usually using a range rod.

BvT

[fouronesix]

I have my druthers on what works and doesn't work for accuracy, penetration and killing things. What seems to be missing in this thread is a definition or common frame of reference to the meaning of "hard cast" as used in the OP. In my thinking- dead soft or pure lead is something like BHN 5-6. Soft cast would fall somewhere in the BHN 8-12 range and hard cast would be harder than about BHN 16.

[jimb16]

This is an interesting discussion. I've never used anything but WW for my .50 round ball. I've also never lost a deer that I shot with the old flintlock. The farthest I've had one go is about 100 yards. My Hatfield will hold 1 inch groups off sandbags at 100 yards. In my case, I feel accurate shot placement is more important than the bullet metal, BUT I can see the advantages of faster energy transfer too.

[RPRNY]

I have my druthers on what works and doesn't work for accuracy, penetration and killing things. What seems to be missing in this thread is a definition or common frame of reference to the meaning of "hard cast" as used in the OP. In my thinking- dead soft or pure lead is something like BHN 5-6. Soft cast would fall somewhere in the BHN 8-12 range and hard cast would be harder than about BHN 16.

An excellent point. As someone noted above, the new MLs being touted as "magnum" and packed full of a great deal of Pyrodex etc, may deliver BHN 5 - 6 lead balls at terminal velocities on sub 50 yard shots that may not deliver optimal penetration. @ BHN 8-10 offers a good balance of performance offering good expansion but hard enough to avoid short distance pan-caking. IMHO, a 50 cal round ball has enough mass / density to be effective in pure lead, for a Minie ball, a little tin to add some rigidity would probably be beneficial.