Ugly Sauce
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- Joined
- Oct 26, 2020
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- 6,279
Just some fun stuff, but food for thought. I have found in the past that one can shoot some pretty undersize ball in a Muzzle loader. I had the idea earlier of trying some .530's in the Little Beast.
So, I chewed some up, and loaded them up double-ball over 100 grains of 2fg Swiss. The load was: a wax wad over the powder, a chewed .530" in a .023" patch, a wool wad, and then another .530" in a .023" patch. The bore on the Little Beast is spot on at .580", the patched ball went down nice and easy, but not fall-down-the-barrel easy. Easy to load in a fouled barrel easy.
The first shot out was a single bare-ball load, 100 grains 2fg, chewed .570", with wax wad over the powder, and wax wad over the ball to hold it in. That shot was at 50 yards, and is the hit on the cardboard to the right of the top/upper paper plate. Not "great", but not crazy bad. It was already loaded in the barrel from my last hike. That load groups okay at 25 yards, minute of grizzly face for sure, and without flyers.
I shot the first .530" chewed double-ball at 35 yards, it is on the bottom plate.
Loaded up a second load, moved the target back to 25 yards, and it is the snake-eyes on the bottom of the upper plate. I'm not sure/I wonder if either one of them was a fluke, seems like a big difference in spread with only around 15 yards or so difference in yardage. Perhaps the spread is not consistent. Luckily none went far enough right to hit the dawg. Patches from both loads looked/were normal and in good condition. All the wads pretty much went all the way to the target.
Which load would you guys shoot grizz in the face with? Single .570" ball over 100 grains of pixie dust, or two .530" balls over the same? Would the single .570" penetrate deeper? More overall damage with the two .530's? And a greater amount of lead? Recoil with a single .570" ball is not "too bad" in that light gun. The double .530" ball load on the other hand, again in a six pound gun, has a pretty ferocious kick, with a total of 440 grains of lead, compared to a .570" ball's weight of around 278 grains. (or something like that) However, recoil is not a factor, as it's only going to be shot once. Don't think Grizz will let me reload.
Okay, the dawg, Sir Charles Mackenzie-Lopez, aka "Charlie", says: "thanks for listening".
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