cayugad

At 20 feet you might be able to pull it off, I don't know. If you really wonder about it, load powder, then a bore button, pour your shot down the barrel and seat another bore button on top of all that to hold it in and see if it will punch a hole through a tin can at the distance you want.

Then be ready to scrub lead out of your bore. All I know is what I read, and that is if you want to shoot lead shot, use a smoothbore. In fact, some people use the .75 caliber Brown Bess for this. Being a smoothbore and heavy, it is almost in a 12 gauge class. Although I wonder how well the shot hold together. Besides throwing large roundball down range also.

I finally went to a Winchester AA plastic wad in my smoothbore because the pattern was not dense enough out to 25 yards. Granted it was enough to take a turkey, but I wanted better. It is also my intention of loading a .58 caliber roundball into the plastic wad and then shooting that out the barrel to see what kind of accuracy I can get with it. I just have not gotten around to that.

yeoman

How about powder, then sabot, then shot, then over-wad? The sabot would provide a gas seal to increase velocity and hold at leat the sabot load of shot in a tighter pattern. Maybe even reduce leading a bit. That's what I'd try. But then, like Mikey, I'll try anything.......

cayugad

That is an interesting concept.. not that I want to try it, but an interesting concept.

yeoman

Ut oh, is it that radical Cayugad? It will be difficult to "slide in sideways with a smile on your face" when you're wearing a seatbelt. This is about as tame as anything I've some up with.

txjourneyman

Why not shoot it with a PRB? I took my first turkey that way. just don't shoot them in the breast. Wait for a broadside shot and hit him in the wing base. No meat is wasted that way and you can use your flinter. Try to lighten up your load if you have a chance to check performance.

livbucks

I have a Traditions PA pellet 50 cal flintlock. I wonder if I could get a smoothbore barrel for it? Just thinking out loud here.
I realize it will lead the barrel on a rifle now. I would be shooting very limited times this way though. I got some decisions to make. Where's my wallet?

At 20 yards I can hit the eye of a gnat with 40 grains of powder and a Buffalo Ball-et. What are the chances thatI could hit the eye of a gobbler under pressure? I know, don't say it.

cayugad

With that kind of accuracy, it should be simple enough to simply pick your place on a turkey and shoot it with that ballet.

livbucks

When I get outto 75 yards or more, things really start to fall apart, but in close, I'm good.

lemoyne

Well it depends on the caliber of the gun and the range. I have used my Hawkeb 54 cal to shoot skeet to do so with any range and with out leading the barrel you use a 28 gage power piston [make a measure that fills the power piston to just barely pelow the top I used 80gr of pistol pyrodex but you will have to pattern your gun with the size shot and loads you want to try as they will shoot different.Onlythe 54[ 28 gage] and I believe its the 79 [12 gage not sure] or if you happen to have a caliber that matched 16 gage. unless its a smooth bore you need to be able to use a shot gun plastic sleevedwad like a sabot toavoid leading. Hope this helps. Lee

eldeguello

NO! NO! "Copper BB's are copper-plated steel balls-they could RUIN your rifle barrel! Go to a gun shop and buy a bag of LEAD SHOT! I'd use #4's!

You don't say what caliber your rifle is, but if you made up some paper cups of just the diameter to slide freely down the bore, put a cap in one end, filled them with shot, then a cap on the open end, you could load the shot into the gun in these paper "cartridges", after charging the gun with powder. If you make the paper cup several sheets thick, it might help keep the whole shot charge from being spun by the rifling. If the shot charge spins, you will definitely have a "scattergun" all right! Maybe one with a circular pattern in which all the shot strikes around the edges and none in the center-but you will only know this by shooting. If your rifle is a .45, you could probably use .410-ga. plastic shot-cup wads made for loading .410 shotgun shells in it. A .54 or .58 might work with 28-ga plastic shot-cup wads.... Someone might also be making plastic shotcup wads for other ML rifle calibers too, but I don't know of any right now.

In lieu of a plastic shotcup, perhaps just a long sabot could be used as a shot cup, with a "Wonder Wad" seated on top of the sabot as an "over-shot" wad, to keep the shot inside. The thing is, you want to keep the shot from touching your bore for two reasions A: To prevent the massive leading Caygad is talking about; B: To reduce the tendency for the rifling to set the shot charge in a spinning motion, which will cause it to disperse like a lead tornado when it leaves the muzzle............. I would load at least 1/2 to 3/4 Oz. (218 to 330 grains by weight of pellets so you have some kind of a pattern out tho 20 yards or so)

(A .50 is around "37 gauge"-37 ea., 185-grain balls to the pound. A 28 gauge is a .55 caliber, or thereabouts.)