Longest Kills with flintlock

My buck last year was a flintlock 54 with a patched round ball , 94 yards. Hit it about a half inch from the spot I picked. I would go out to maybe 120 with a 54 and PRB but not much further, wind deflection is terrible and it's falling pretty fast at that point. It is also running pretty low on energy too even though the accuracy is still really good. But, that is why I am building a 62 and a 67, with a 3 leaf sight I am thinking I can get out to 175-180 and still hit with enough energy to get a deer down pretty quickly with either.
 
Bushman1927 said:
Last year was my first season taking whitetail with a flintlock Jaegar, iron sights, and round ball (.54 cal). 1 doe down at 50 yds and 1 doe at 100 yds.

Curious to hear some of the longest shots y'all have connected on with trad flintlocks.
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Google

"Horace Kephart hawken tests"
 
I had a custom flintlock 54 built and although it was a beautiful rifle I could never shoot it well. Ended up trading the builder for a percussion 50…that thing is amazingly accurate. Never shot anything over 100 yards and that was a paper target.

IMG_0140.jpeg
 
About 120 yards on a small whitetail with a .54 cal. It was the last day and snowing so decided to still hunt. I bumped her up and she ran as far as I could see and stopped, I rested the flintlock on a stump and squeezed it off to a loud click and so I repeated it twice more with same results. She was still there looking around so I tried again and to my surprise it went off! lol
I made a pretty good shot but the round ball was too hard and acted like a FMJ. Long tracking job but I learned a lesson about who's round ball's I shouldn't hunt with.
 
birddog 68 said:
About 120 yards on a small whitetail with a .54 cal. It was the last day and snowing so decided to still hunt. I bumped her up and she ran as far as I could see and stopped, I rested the flintlock on a stump and squeezed it off to a loud click and so I repeated it twice more with same results. She was still there looking around so I tried again and to my surprise it went off! lol
I made a pretty good shot but the round ball was too hard and acted like a FMJ. Long tracking job but I learned a lesson about who's round ball's I shouldn't hunt with.
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I quit using those garbage round balls about 20 years ago. Can't remember exactly when it was they finally allowed us to use sabots here in PA. I have seen deer run for hundreds of yards with a perfect shot behind the shoulders with round balls, very little blood even in snow. Sabots were the best thing ever, killed dozens of deer with them. My furthest shot was around 120ish, bedded large doe, she never made it out of the bed when the sabot hit her.
 
Greta06 said:
I quit using those garbage round balls about 20 years ago. Can't remember exactly when it was they finally allowed us to use sabots here in PA. I have seen deer run for hundreds of yards with a perfect shot behind the shoulders with round balls, very little blood even in snow. Sabots were the best thing ever, killed dozens of deer with them. My furthest shot was around 120ish, bedded large doe, she never made it out of the bed when the sabot hit her.
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That hunt I spoke about was probably 25 years ago. I haven't hunted with it since that day, it only comes out of the safe for a yearly wipe down.
Many use the power belts but the last time I looked the .54's were nonexistent and that's fine with me because flintlock's are kind of a PIA to clean.
 
Rick, that is a super nice looking plains rifle!!

Round balls at extended range aren't going to expand/flatten because there isn't much energy left and especially so with smaller bores, blood trails are going to be thin unless you are shooting at a pretty decent down angle and get a low exit. To me extended range is where your load slows down to around 1000 fps. Depending on your load that can be 45-50 yards or closer to 100, round balls have awful BC and slow down fast. My buck last year at 94 didn't have much if any flattening of the ball that I could see in the wound channel, that ball started off at about 1500 in my hunting load drops to 1000 at about 80 and about 960 at 94 yards with a little under 500 ft/lb of energy when it gets there. A 300 fps increase at the muzzle would only net at 100 fps at 94 yards and about 90 ft/lb. A 62 at the same 1500 at the muzzle will be a hair faster at 94 yards at around 1000 fps but energy will be around 800, nearly 40% more. With patched round balls bigger is definitely better, and more so as the range extends. Shooting deer at 80+ with a 45 or 50 cal isn't much different than shooting them close with a 9mm or 40 and ball ammo, results will be similar. Cut that distance in half and the 45 or 50 will kill quite well.

I don't hunt with a round ball and a patch because there isn't anything 'better'. I hunt with a PRB because I want my primitive hunt to be a primitive hunt, for the same reason I use real black powder and a flintlock to launch my PRB.
 
HSmithTX said:
Rick, that is a super nice looking plains rifle!!

Round balls at extended range aren't going to expand/flatten because there isn't much energy left and especially so with smaller bores, blood trails are going to be thin unless you are shooting at a pretty decent down angle and get a low exit. To me extended range is where your load slows down to around 1000 fps. Depending on your load that can be 45-50 yards or closer to 100, round balls have awful BC and slow down fast. My buck last year at 94 didn't have much if any flattening of the ball that I could see in the wound channel, that ball started off at about 1500 in my hunting load drops to 1000 at about 80 and about 960 at 94 yards with a little under 500 ft/lb of energy when it gets there. A 300 fps increase at the muzzle would only net at 100 fps at 94 yards and about 90 ft/lb. A 62 at the same 1500 at the muzzle will be a hair faster at 94 yards at around 1000 fps but energy will be around 800, nearly 40% more. With patched round balls bigger is definitely better, and more so as the range extends. Shooting deer at 80+ with a 45 or 50 cal isn't much different than shooting them close with a 9mm or 40 and ball ammo, results will be similar. Cut that distance in half and the 45 or 50 will kill quite well.

I don't hunt with a round ball and a patch because there isn't anything 'better'. I hunt with a PRB because I want my primitive hunt to be a primitive hunt, for the same reason I use real black powder and a flintlock to launch my PRB.
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You are very correct in your "traditional" values, which is why I chose
The rifle I did. The way I see it is very similar to archery hunting…get them in close. Now I am only speaking for this type of weapon since I am a die hard rifle and long range enthusiast.
 
Thanks Rick, it's funny that you say that about archery because I have been telling people for a while that traditional or primitive muzzle loader hunting is very much like archery with roughly 2X the range capability. Archery hunting I would say is my passion, followed closely by primitive (flintlock, roundball, real black) muzzleloader hunting. I don't modern gun hunt a lot anymore but I do love shooting and particularly long range shooting.
 

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