Hunting with .680 round ball

[zgunbear]

Will a .680 round ball at 1250 to 1300 fps be enough for a deer or pig under 100 yards?

[jmort]

Yes, for sure

[Tom W.]

No question about it. Kinda like a small bowling ball....

[zgunbear]

I thought so but some have suggested that i work up a load to get up to 1600 fps. The higher velocity seems to be way overkill to me.

[jmort]

"The higher velocity seems to be way overkill to me."

Me too. With a softer alloy, it will make a mess and penetration may be compromised due to speed in excess of the alloy's abilities.

[MT Gianni]

It all depends on where you hit with it. Make sure of your target because if you ever recover one I will be surprised.

[tsubaki]

This was calculated with an alloy average of 450gr.


Ballistic Coefficient:
0.09146

Altitude:
0 feet


Muzzle Velocity:
1250 fps

Max Range:
200 yd


Sight Height:
1.5 in









Range (yd)
Drop (in)
Wind Drift (in)
Velocity (fps)
Energy (ft-lb)


0
-1.5
0.0
1250
1561


25
1.6
0.5
1139
1296


50
3.1
2.0
1056
1115


75
2.6
4.4
994
988


100
0.0
7.4
945
892


125
-5.0
11.2
903
815


150
-12.6
15.5
866
749


175
-23.1
20.5
832
692


200
-36.5
26.1
802
642

[rking22]

I hunt with a 12bore ML sometimes. Any deer or pig you hit with a .680RB leaving the barrel at even close to 1200fps, will have a hole (a rather large hole) thru and thru where ever you placed the ball! Note, it still has to hit correctly and my gun has no rear sight so I limit my shots to less than 40 yards. With sights just be sure you can put it where it goes, and 1600FPS is in no way indicated unless we have been invaded by elephants here in TN! By the by, I happen to be in Spring Hill too!

[Hogtamer]

Read a little civil war history.

[ammohead]

round balls have the least aerodynamic shape of all the projectiles. They seem to carry their velocity fairly well up to about 1300 fps. Faster than that and they will slow down quicker than other boolits often ending up back around 1300 fps then slower. They don't do super sonic very well. Trying to push your load up to 1600 will result in more recoil for very little increase in down range speed.

[zgunbear]

I hunt with a 12bore ML sometimes. Any deer or pig you hit with a .680RB leaving the barrel at even close to 1200fps, will have a hole (a rather large hole) thru and thru where ever you placed the ball! Note, it still has to hit correctly and my gun has no rear sight so I limit my shots to less than 40 yards. With sights just be sure you can put it where it goes, and 1600FPS is in no way indicated unless we have been invaded by elephants here in TN! By the by, I happen to be in Spring Hill too!smoo
Small world I am a range officer on Sunday afternoons at Charlie Haffner's range, used to be Owl Hollow Gun Club. Maybe we can meet and burn some powder some
time.
I am working up a smooth bore .722 double express, ie a 12 gauge double slug gun so far with limited load development it is looking good enough for deer and pigs out to 50 yards might be able to go to 100 and still get minute of vital area accuracy. See the post in cAsting for shotguns Poor mans double rifle. I will make a new thread once I get it totally wrung out.

[rking22]

Sounds interesting, mine is an Ardessa(sp) single caplock, probably dosen't weigh over 6 lbs! Don't need a lot of velocity with Big Balls, they do have a miserable BC but when used as designed they are plenty effective. Shoot I don't think my .440 PBRs were doing 1600 fps and no deer ever complained.
I used to shoot at Charlie's place a good bit in the 80s,BP and silleywet. Now I spend most of my time with TNSCTP at Maury County Gun Club or hunting/fishing. I have found that watching and helping kids learn to break skeet targets is as much fun as breaking them myself! Now if I can just get a day away from work I'll come over and visit at Owl Hollow, have friends from work that shoot there too.

[waksupi]

I guarantee with a good hit, it will knock their dicks in the dirt.

[BrentD]

It will work. May not be DRT, as that tends to be a highly variable reaction regardless of hit, but it will probably pass through. Here is a the result of a .635 round ball at about the same velocity.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/Deer/Lang%20Buck%20small.JPG

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Read a little civil war history.

Good point, and Napoleonic too, but a lot of people made it to hospital. I don't think there is a thing wrong with 1200ft./sec. and such a missile, for there isn't a lot that is very solid in a deer, but accuracy rather than trajectory or stopping power is going to be what puts a limit to your range. If the remaining velocity indicated by tsubaki's table wasn't adequate, nobody would have any business firing a pistol or a .44-40 rifle at a deer. With round ball you are likely to find accuracy quite adequate at 50 yards, but your group a lot more than doubled at 100. You would be best to get as close to the former as you can.

The big enemy of smoothbore round ball accuracy is its tendency to roll, either along one side of the barrel or commencing in flight. You can't do anything about the second of these, as long as your ball is round, all round. For the first, it can be placed in a shot cup wad which fits it closely (and will go though any choke you have, with only slight extra pressure.) It can be placed in some sort of resilient patch, and if that puts the centre of mass a bit off-center, it is less harmful to accuracy than with a rifle. Possibly the best round-ball accuracy of all, with a true cylinder or very light choke, is obtained with a ball a thousandth or two over bore diameter, used with only a hard, flat board topping the wad, or some kind of shallow cup of your own devising. You would probably get some leading, but how much bore scrubbing per deer does it take to be a liability? Or there may be something about smoothbore balls on the powder coating board.

That "poor man's double rifle" project sounds fascinating, but a possible problem is regulating the barrels to the same point of impact. I would do a lot of pattern shooting on paper and a lot of statisticking before I did anything drastic, like chopping off choked muzzles. If it shoots the shot pattern centres really closely together, it can probably be made to do the same with ball.

When double rifles are regulated, altering the velocity doesn't make that much difference to the points of impact. When you make the recoil heavier, you make the bullet leave the muzzle earlier, and vice versa. It is changes in the bullet weight that move the points of impact, and it is difficult to alter the weight of a round ball. You could sandwich some lead filings between layers of the wad - perhaps even under a thin card cup immediately under the ball, for lead filings can't make a flat on a lead ball. For it doesn't matter if some of that weight just falls to the ground at the muzzle. To lighten the ball, there is a thread on the "Casting for Shotguns" board about casting in zinc, and it does appear to work.

[44man]

I shot steel chickens off hand at 200 meters with my .54 Hawken so they can be very accurate. But a .69??? My gosh, the .54 makes a mess so do want some meat? Just need to know drop. Anything standing means you shot the tail off!

[zgunbear]

Balliatics in Sotland I did and continue to do some of what you suggest. To check if this shot gun would work before I cut the barrels I secured the barrels to a solid rest. I put the bead in the center of a bullseye target at 25 yards. Then I put a deprimed shell in each chamber. I used them as a peep site. Both peeps pointed about equal distance from the center of the target. It was choked modified and cylinder. So I shot some of my 525 lyman slugs into a target at 25 yards right barrel grouped right of center left barrel left of center. Then i cut the barrels down to 24 inches mounted sights and crowned rhe barrels. Now the 680 roundballs shot to point of aim side by side right barrel on the right side left on the left side. I am loading the balls into wads. I have some 20 gauge nitro cards on order to load into the wad under the balls. Supposedly at these velocities there should not too much meat lost from what I have read and from some black powder hunters that shoot at the range

[zgunbear]

It will work. May not be DRT, as that tends to be a highly variable reaction regardless of hit, but it will probably pass through. Here is a the result of a .635 round ball at about the same velocity.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/Deer/Lang%20Buck%20small.JPG

What type of gun is this?

[BrentD]

That is a Joseph Lang double RIFLE, percussion obviously. Made in London in approximately 1830. She was a sweetheart of a rifle. 18 bore or about .635 caliber.

[victorfox]

BrentD nice gun, nice buck!
zgunbear also dont get fooled by the paper ballistics of a round ball. They kill a lot more a lot better than the paper indicates.
i'm playing myself with some loads using huge fishing sinkers (as molds cost a lot here and not very available) using buckshot or slug data at 1200-1300. That's plenty of power in the business end. I just have to find time to put things together. Just moved home and finished to unpack stuff yesterday.

[TCLouis]

The berm here at the house is a VERY elastic clay with thoroughly wet in the winter.
One day I was hooting 338 Win Mag and 50 Cal round ball.
The crater made by the round ball made the 338 crater look puny in both depth and diameter.
As someone I know once said . . . The 50 caliber round ball kills far out of proportion to the paper ballistics.
Trajectory of your big ball and accuracy of your rifle is going to be the biggest issue methinks.

[zgunbear]

well it is going to be from a smooth bore so 100 yards is he limit 50-75 probably would be more realistic. The two "farms" I have access to are heavy forest and 50 yards is a long shot there. going to get serious tomorrow afternoon and bench it at 50 and 100 to see what I can do and what it will do.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Balliatics in Sotland I did and continue to do some of what you suggest. To check if this shot gun would work before I cut the barrels I secured the barrels to a solid rest. I put the bead in the center of a bullseye target at 25 yards. Then I put a deprimed shell in each chamber. I used them as a peep site. Both peeps pointed about equal distance from the center of the target. It was choked modified and cylinder. So I shot some of my 525 lyman slugs into a target at 25 yards right barrel grouped right of center left barrel left of center. Then i cut the barrels down to 24 inches mounted sights and crowned rhe barrels. Now the 680 roundballs shot to point of aim side by side right barrel on the right side left on the left side. I am loading the balls into wads. I have some 20 gauge nitro cards on order to load into the wad under the balls. Supposedly at these velocities there should not too much meat lost from what I have read and from some black powder hunters that shoot at the range


The usual procedure for regulating was to start with the barrels pointing slightly inwards to converge at about sixty feet. This was done by the angle of the vertical flats which were brazed or hard soldered together. I would guess that they varied this according to how powerful the gun was. After that packing pieces were soft soldered in place, and the actual points of impact in test shooting came together.

The physical angle of convergence of the bores is an imperfect guide to regulating the groups. The difference is for two reasons. The right barrel will move to the right because it is to the right of the gun's centre of mass, and of the point where it rests on the shoulder. Less widely recognized is that the barrel assembly actually bends slightly before the bullet exist the muzzle. Checking the alignment is a good start, another good way of doing it being with a pair of cartridge-shaped laser boresighters which you slip into the chambers. But it is only a start, and I would begin by shortening the barrels the bare minimum necessary to remove the chokes, and see what happens then. If by some lucky chance I had a double that was well regulated with the chokes in place, I would have the chokes reamed out without shortening.

Brent's rifle is a beautiful example which at that caliber is more likely to have been a Scottish red deer rifle than an African one. I think it looks a bit too well developed to be quite as early as the 130s, but that makes no difference to its value or desirability, if different. The lockwork is very British in style, and I am sure Lang didn't relabel imports, but although I think the trigger-guard is steel, it resembles the horn guard which was common in German and Austrian rifles. It is worth checking for a single set trigger although that was less common in the UK than on the continent. I found one, for the right barrel alone, in my Austrial Kehlner, probably unsuspected during a century or so when it was bored out to 14ga before I sleeved it to the original 13mm. I think there is something on the escutcheon plate, which might be worth researching. Mine has R with a seven-pointed coronet, which in Germanic heraldry means a baron. That isn't as grand as it sounds, for Austria-Hungary was stiff with barons, the bottom rank of the peerage and more like a capo di regime than a don.

[TCLouis]

As I remember it Charles competed in smooth bore matches and should be a great source of firsthand info on distance/accuracy under "match" conditions.

[BrentD]

Brent's rifle is a beautiful example which at that caliber is more likely to have been a Scottish red deer rifle than an African one. I think it looks a bit too well developed to be quite as early as the 130s, but that makes no difference to its value or desirability, if different. The lockwork is very British in style, and I am sure Lang didn't relabel imports, but although I think the trigger-guard is steel, it resembles the horn guard which was common in German and Austrian rifles. It is worth checking for a single set trigger although that was less common in the UK than on the continent. I found one, for the right barrel alone, in my Austrial Kehlner, probably unsuspected during a century or so when it was bored out to 14ga before I sleeved it to the original 1mm. I think there is something on the escutcheon plate, which might be worth researching. Mine has R with a seven-pointed coronet, which in Germanic heraldry means a baron. That isn't as grand as it sounds, for Austria-Hungary was stiff with barons, the bottom rank of the peerage and more like a capo di regime than a don.

BiS, I think the rifle was probably a roe deer rifle more than anything, but red deer too. It most definitely was NOT an Africa rifle. It predates the Brit in Africa era in addition to being too light.

You are right the guard is steel. No set trigger

Lang moved to London and set up shop in 1825 or 1827 as I recall. This rifle has a very low serial number and also pieced platinum plugs in the bolster, both of which suggest that early 1830s at the latest and perhaps very late 1820s. Either way, it's a fine rifle that I hunted down for 2+ years, chasing it from Oklahoma to Massachusetts, I think it was, before I cornered it in Florida and bought it, and then I owned it for another 4-6 yrs, and finally moved it along to the next guy. It's most unique feature was the condition of the bores which were immaculate. You just don't see that in old muzzleloading doubles. They are almost all badly rotted.

Brent

[Ballistics in Scotland]

You could be right about the date, as a maker like Lang is less likely to indulge in the inconsistencies of serial numbers that characterize the industry. But it would be a heavy caliber to use on roe deer, which are only the size of a greyhound and nearly always stalked in woodland. It wasn't uncommon for a rifle of .500 or so, with a heavy charge for flat trajectory, to be used on red deer. which are almost entirely confined to barren moorland.

A search trying to date my Kehlner revealed that the auction page is still alive, although they got the gauge wrong. It is by Kehlner Neveu, i.e. nephew, which suggests a younger man than the Anton Kehlner who is often described as active in the 1830s or 40s. But people could be guessing about that date.

http://www.gunauction.com/buy/3231386

[Texas by God]

Heck yeah! Enough FFG to cover the ball in a cone on a table and there's your load. I only have experience with .50 and .54 cal and the deer act like you shoved a pipe through them. Good hunting! Best, Thomas.

[Geezer in NH]

Good point, and Napoleonic too, but a lot of people made it to hospital. .

I have yet to see a couple of deer help carry a wounded deer to the vets. Out of context? ;) :kidding:

[Jlucas45]

Will a .680 round ball at 1250 to 1300 fps be enough for a deer or pig under 100 yards?

This is an old thread, but this would be interesting for you.
https://www.n4lcd.com/calc/

Taylor K.O. value for a 1200fps .680 round ball is 44 (916fps@100 yards)
Taylor K.O. value for a 2200fps 170 gr. 30-30 bullet is 10 (1390fps) @ 100 yards

[Good Cheer]

Reminds me that I've been threatening to get the M1816 a rifled barrel for .65 ball.
Got a spare rear barrel band and built a temporary rear sight on it.
Need the rifled barrel and to built the permanent sight.