I was shooting the smoothie and wanted to get to the 50 yard line to see how mine compared to yours Charley. At 25 it was a big nasty hole for three shots. At 35 I shot a 5 shot group and all but one of the shots were touching in a tight group. At 43 steps I was super tight as this picture shows. I was actually a little impressed with the musket at this point. At the 50 yard line I suddenly spread out to almost 5 inches. At 70 yards I could keep it on the 8X11 paper if that counts. Seems this is a short range weapon with the ball. I am going to work some more on it. I want to hunt deer with a smoothbore.
I do not load a patched ball. I loaded 80 grains of Pyrodex P and then the Nitro card, the fiber wad, the ball and the shot card. On the one flyer I had at 35 yard I decided to grease the fiber wad to see what happened. I guess I should have left well enough alone.
One thing I noted was the drop is not all that bad shooting these big 324 grain round balls. I was expecting low hits at the 43 step target, and instead was surprised when they too were right on the money...