mcawful,

LOL...RE: the force..

Yeah, I poo-poo'd roundballs when I first started shooting BP as being too small for deer and not all that accurate, I shot conicals mostly. It's funny but I've been shooting roundball out of Revolvers for many years but I never considered them in rifles-stuborn dutchman I guess. Then I got a flinter with a slow twist bbl and that sure changed my mind. You need to play around with charges,ball sizes and patch thickness, just like our modern friends try different sabots and bullets. I have a Deer Stalker bbl. that is similar to your 1:48 Trade Rifle, With 70grs of 3f BP, a .490 ball and TC prelubed patch my 50 yard 3 shotgroups(from a rest) are often a large hole. If I up the charge it starts to open up, If I go to .495 ball and thinner patch it really goes to heck as the patch shreads. I also have a 1:60/.54 Lyman GPR and it's just the opposite, the hotter I load it the better it is. Nice thing about both of them is that you can run 20 shots through them with no bore cleaning, no change in results, and much less recoil than conicals.

I presently shoot .50/.54/.58&.69 cal roundballs, just shot my first deer with the .58 this year and it went nowhere but straight down.

Edit: Do you shoot BP out of your Colt and what kind is it? Nothing better than stepping up to the line, next to the Glock/Sig/S&W guys, and cutting loose with 5 rounds of BP. Gets rid of the bugs and they generally move down some and that gets rid of the noise...Ha!!

Doug