Hickock's revolver load

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I should think round-ball too, BUT unfortunately, they referred to conical revolver bullets as "ball" back then, as well as actual round ball. The shot was supposedly 75 yards, so not doubting that..., a stout load would launch a round ball that far, but I wonder if the ballistic coefficient of the conical might point to that having been used instead?

Reportedly Tutt was standing sideways to Hickock "dueling fashion" so the ball had to punch through Tutt's right side and go 1/2 way through his torso to hit his heart.

Beats me....

LD
 
I believe that either projectile would do the job with the conical being the the better choice. Having hit Jackrabbits at that range with both bullets I can say both will definitely work. The ball tends to blow through the animal whereas the conical doesn't. This is shooting a 45 so it's not quite the same but I wouldn't sell the .36 short. I may have to get a .36 revolver just to find out.
 
Jackrabbit1957 said:
The ball tends to blow through the animal whereas the conical doesn't.
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Could you expound on that please?

Elmer Keith’s Civil War friends both claimed the ball was much more effective on men than the conical, which they stated would just zip through a man but not take the fight out of him. When we look at the design of the conicals used they are quite pointy, and what we know of pointy bullets is that they allow the flesh to stretch creating a smaller than caliber permanent wound track. The ball being much more blunt leaves roughly a caliber sized hole in ballistics gel.

If a ball worked considerably better than a conical I’d more than lean towards a ball considering the man Wild Bill was and the things he got himself into.
 
Hey Rodwha, my experiences with shooting both round ball and a 220 grain semi wad cutter in my Ruger Old Army and a Walker show the ball going completely through the rabbit and the conical very rarely exits the animal. It depends on range of course but even fairly close the conical stays in the animal. I shoot 35 grains of Pyrodex p or lately Black MZ in the Ruger and 45 grains in the Walker. 777 gives me accuracy problems, so I don't use it much. Both bullets generally give 1 hit kills consistently, they go down hard and stay down.
 
Jackrabbit1957 said:
Hey Rodwha, my experiences with shooting both round ball and a 220 grain semi wad cutter in my Ruger Old Army and a Walker show the ball going completely through the rabbit and the conical very rarely exits the animal. It depends on range of course but even fairly close the conical stays in the animal. I shoot 35 grains of Pyrodex p or lately Black MZ in the Ruger and 45 grains in the Walker. 777 gives me accuracy problems, so I don't use it much. Both bullets generally give 1 hit kills consistently, they go down hard and stay down.
Click to expand...

Don't think a semi wad cutter is classified as a conical. Its design is to cut a circle from a paper target, rater than punching through.
I'd like to be able to load that bullet in a 45C case for the 1860 Army conversion cylinder. What the mold number if its hand cast.
 
Jackrabbit1957 said:
Hey Rodwha, my experiences with shooting both round ball and a 220 grain semi wad cutter in my Ruger Old Army and a Walker show the ball going completely through the rabbit and the conical very rarely exits the animal. It depends on range of course but even fairly close the conical stays in the animal. I shoot 35 grains of Pyrodex p or lately Black MZ in the Ruger and 45 grains in the Walker. 777 gives me accuracy problems, so I don't use it much. Both bullets generally give 1 hit kills consistently, they go down hard and stay down.
Click to expand...

I must admit that I’m doubfounded. I had always read that mass penetrates. But then I was also dumbfounded once I began looking at BP projectiles. A patched ball seemed useless for even medium game beyond maybe 50 yds with such a low sectional density and slow speed. However we see that’s not the case at all. Nor is the very low energy figures. Again I always read we needed lots of foot pounds to be effective, yet we see a mere 300-and something from a lowly ball puts deer down over and over again.

I’m still rather surprised your bullets don’t exit, especially on such little critters.
 
whughett said:
Don't think a semi wad cutter is classified as a conical. Its design is to cut a circle from a paper target, rater than punching through.
I'd like to be able to load that bullet in a 45C case for the 1860 Army conversion cylinder. What the mold number if its hand cast.
Click to expand...

I wouldn’t think so either, but I use that term when describing my wide flat nosed bullets on a traditional forum as they don’t want to discuss more modern ideas for the most part.
 
The semi wadcutters I am using are a truncated cone leading down to a step. I originally bought them for my 45 acp. The damn things won't feed through my 1911. I read about knurling bullets in the black powder essentials part of this forum by Smokin Joe. This gave me a way to make em work in the Rugers. It gave me a way to shoot up bullets that were otherwise pretty much useless to me. I too was surprised that those stay in the animal while a ball will go completely through.
 
Somebody write the curator at the Cody Museum. She should know.
 
midland man said:
lol but yep the navy colt 36 caliber won't kill hogs!
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I’m torn on this. This one instance is the one I’ve heard of where it was effective rather quickly. Many of us have read how these guns were effective with a ball against men during the Civil War, but then men also behave much differently when shot than animals. In the work done in the late 80’s early 90’s figuring up effectiveness they found a ton of records where a person just knowing they’ve been shot gave up. There was also evidence of someone who thought they were shot, but weren’t, died (iirc). Man has an emotional and psychological aspect whereas animals don’t. When people are on stuff and don’t feel it or realize it they’ve fought on despite what should have been overly lethal.

Now most times a pig will run. But sometimes they don’t, and I want something that will poke two holes and leak a lot of blood quickly. It’s why I feel, especially in this case, that large calibers are better. And I’d be hesitant to use my ROA with my 195 grn WFN bullet for that. It’s likely to work great plenty of times. Guess it depends on the situation too.
 
rodwha said:
Many of us have read how these guns were effective with a ball against men during the Civil War, but then men also behave much differently when shot than animals
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Actually, if you read The Sporting Rifle and Its Projectiles by Lt. Robert Forsyth (British Army, India), he had access to all sorts of bullets when he published his book in 1867, round ball, belted ball, Whitworth, Minie, & etc.... YET he used patched, round ball on everything from deer to bear to tiger to rhino to elephant. He expressly did not like the Minie bullet for hunting game, especially dangerous game. So apparently the round ball does do more than what mass-upon-impact (in an equation) show it to do.

LD
 
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Loyalist Dave said:
Actually, if you read The Sporting Rifle and It's Projectiles by Lt. Robert Forsyth (British Army, India), he had access to all sorts of bullets when he published his book in 1867, round ball, belted ball, Whitworth, Minie, & etc.... YET he used patched, round ball on everything from deer to bear to tiger to rhino to elephant. He expressly did not like the Minie bullet for hunting game, especially dangerous game. So apparently the round ball does do more than what mass-upon-impact (in an equation) show it to do.

LD
Click to expand...

Was part of that reason because the thin skirts required smaller charges of powder? Or that the more blunt ball still was more destructive?

I fully intend to find an accurate load in my 1:48” twist Lyman .50 cal using a patched ball. Not so much because I feel it a better projectile, but more because it is a very old fashioned one/traditional, but to see for myself just how well the poor sectional density and low energy projectile works, which would no doubt be impressive to others I may hunt with who’d no doubt also feel it quite inferior. So far it has shown much more promise with a 320 grn Lee REAL...

But for my revolvers I certainly prefer a wide nosed bullet. It has proven to create an oversized permanent wound track and should no doubt be a better performer, though I may one day try it as well. Quite frankly a .457” ball at 25 yds isn’t too dissimilar to a .490” ball at 125 yds and that one certainly worked for far too many hunters.
 
I don't believe my semi wadcutters are expanding much, they are a hard cast bullet. I would like to try a hollow point to eventually see what they do.
rodwha said:
Are they expanding in the animals?
Click to expand...
The round balls are definitely expanding.
 
Jackrabbit1957 said:
I don't believe my semi wadcutters are expanding much, they are a hard cast bullet. I would like to try a hollow point to eventually see what they do.
The round balls are definitely expanding.
Click to expand...

Now I’m really dumbfounded. I see how a ball typically penetrates all the way through game animals once it’s slow enough (around 75 yds) to not expand, but that at distances up to about 75 yds the ball has expanded and is all too often found just under the hide on the offside. With that in mind I’d figure the non expanding SWC and ball should have had reverse results.
 
Sorry bro, all I can do is tell you what I've seen with this. My shots are rarely under 50 yards so distance does play into it. The few close shots, ( 20ish yards) the wadcutter traveled full length of the rabbit and stopped just under the hide. Under the same conditions a round ball went completely through leaving a good sized exit hole. Most of the time these Jackrabbits will get up and run out to about 70 yards and sit down. On occasion you get a really dumb one that will go a short distance and sit looking at you. The first one I nailed with my Walker watched me reload all 6 chambers from around 30 feet. I kept shooting high. That one went all the way through but not surprising at that range. Was using round ball on that one.
 
Mr. Jackrabbit1957, my hat is off to you. Anyone who can hit a rabbit sized target at 75 yards is good with a hand gun. Mr Rabbit would have to sit pretty still indeed for me. I do well to keep all six shots off hand on a 12x18 target at 75 yards, from my 1851 Navy, an experiment resulting from just such a thread as this one. ;) Elmer Keith writes of hitting running coyotes at 100+ yards with his 44's and other such feats of marksmanship
 
Fellow name of Ed McGivern was said to be able to hit a man sized target at 300 yards with a .357 mag. Just takes practice, you might be surprised what you can do with a handgun.
 
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