Range Report: Flintlock smoothbore Dove / Crow load

[roundball]

.62cal Cushion Wad Range Report

Muzzleloader:
GM .62cal (.20ga) Flint Smoothbore drop-in barrel on a TC Hawken stock (Barrel Jug Choked "˜Improved Cylinder PLUS"™)

80grns Goex 3F
1 full Circle Fly prelubed cushion wad
90grns chilled #6s (1+1/4oz)
Circle Fly OS card

Outstanding 30" pattern at both 25 & 30 yards tested. Excellent load for crows, late season doves, long range squirrels, etc.

NOTE 1:
1/2 of a cushion wad was OK"¦patterns were usable, but slightly thinner than with a full cushion wad

NOTE 2:
Tried 90grns 2F instead of 80grns 3F, patterns were unacceptable, 3F is perfect

For those who may not be aware of it, having a Jug Choke in a barrel causes the opposite effect when using different amounts of cushion wads than what is normally experienced when adjusting wad configurations in a smoothbore.
Normally too large of a cushion wad tends to thin out a pattern...often a half wad, a smaller amount of wad, will give a tighter pattern than a full wad...but just the opposite when there's a Jug Choke involved.

[cayugad]

That is the same load I shoot out of my .62 smoothbore. It will also take grouse rather nice.

[wabi]

Ever try 2over shot wads instead of a cushion wad?
I load my smoothbore using -powder - 2 over shot wads - shot - 1 over shot wad. (I cut my wads from old shoe boxes or milk cartons)
I've experimented with a lot of wad combinations, and this method seems to work as well as any. The advantage is that I only have to carry one size wad in my pouch.

[roundball]

Right, Iunderstand the OS card thingbeing used over powder...same point I was making about using half wads, or smaller amounts of wads, etc, etc.

Thefailure in my post was that I didn'tmentionmy purpose.....it was to developloads using special prelubed cushion wads which let meshoot rounds of skeet targetsor spend an afternoon in a dove fieldwithout having to wipe between shots...I can't shoot 25-50 shots in a rowwith just a couple of OS cards over thepowder.

[wabi]

Never really checked or counted shots between swabbing the bore, but I'd guess I've shot 5 or 6 times without swabbing. By then there is some crud in the bore that needs cleaned out. Guess the lubed wads would give more shots between swabbings.

[roundball]

There's no foulingbuildup with these wads...they keep the fouling so minimal and soft, that every time you load the next wad it pushes what little fouling there is down on top of the powder where it's ejected on the next shot.

Then load again and the cycle repeats every time...there's never more than a single shot's worth of fouling in the bore at any given time...you can shoot as much as you want without wiping between shots

[slowpokebr549]

I have a CVA trapper in 12 gauge. I tried about a thousand combinations of powder,wad and shot. It is a modified choke and I thought that within about thirty yards that it would be a nice turkey and upland gun. No matter what I did though, it shot doughnut patterns, big hole in the middle. No matter what advice I read or heard I just couldnt make the damn thing pattern. I had thinned the stock down and refinished it. I put a pad on it and really had high hopes for that shotgun. Finally in desperation I tried about 80 gr. of 3f and an ox yoke pre-lubed wool wad as both an over powder and over shot wad. Viola, it patterned beautifully at thirty yards and hit hard. Just goes to show you that sometimes the simple loads are the best.

[slowpokebr549]

[slowpokebr549]

[slowpokebr549]

Thats the shotgun in question and my Jack Russel,Maxine, with her first squirrels. Doesn't she look happy.