I stumbled accross a site a while back about shooting smaller calibre RBs in sabots. Can't remember where and subsequent searches bear no fruit.
Has anyone here tried anything like this? The gist of the article was about using a sabot within a sabot to get down around .30-.35 from a .50 start. This would save me having to get a squirrel gun.

Might be fun to play with. My guess is that it would not beworth the effort, but you never know. I have no idea where you would get a sabot to fit a ball that small.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a homework assignmentGearhart. Try cutting the .50 sabot down so that the petals are about 3/8" long. Thentakea strip of paper 3/8" wide and wrap it around a dowel the size of a .36ball to make a sleve/tube that fits fairly snug in the sabot.

You might have better luck withseveral thick well greased patches and a light charge. I have some balls that mic at .395. I just tried them in my .45 GM barrel with a double .020 denim patch and they look like they might fit pretty well. I also tried them in the .50 Renegade barrel with triple patches and they would fit that pretty well too - but there's a awful lot of patch material between the ball and the bore.

Man, I do not need another thing to experiment with. But I just might have to try them in the .45 the next time I take it for a spin.

Well, I've seen wads that shoot 357 bullets out of a 45 cal and you can get .350" balls.
For the 50 cal using the right sabot you can get balls in 40 cal (.395"), 44 cal (.433") and 45 cal (.451")
All the above are listed on Hornady's site.
IMO the .433" would probably work the best out of a Harvester CR sabot. But I think this is bigger than you had in mind.
I know you got Semisane thinking now.....and he's going to try something along this line. I just know it.

Find a good load and shoot them in the head, any caliber works for head shots...
I would bet a .45 ball would work in a black .451 sabot and a .50 inline...

From 1977-1990 the only muzzleloader I had was a .45 caliber flintlock...With it I killed rabbits, squirrels, deer, turkeys, groundhogs, etc...My deer load was 75grs FFF, squirrel load .40 grs and turkey, groundhog was 50grs...

I finished making a .54 in 1990 and used it for squirrels a few times, worked fine with .50gr FFF...I later rebarreled the .45 to a .40...I use 25grs FFF in it for squirrels...

I have rabbit hunted with a .50 caliber. Like already mentioned.. you shoot for the head. Unless you want to gut them at the same time, then shoot them dead center and just take the legs off them.

I believe a .440 roundball in a .50 caliber sabot will work also.

i would do a search on safety issues with round balls and sabots. i remember seeing something about round balls slipping out of the sabots. this would create a ball off the charge condition. i dont know the whole story but please look into it before trying it out.

You might try placing a thick cloth patched .36 ball inside a sabot made for a 44 caliber pistol bullet.A piece of thick denham or canvas might work.

I would think that if I sent a spinning RB out of my Omega, it would not be very accurate.I may be wrong cuz I have never done it but its worth a shot. If I can get consistancy up to 100yds, why not?

With a patch and a ball the right size with a light load they will shoot accurate.
I would not sugest the old sabots they used to make for round balls I ruined a barrel with one of them.

http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/blac...und-balls.html

I also recall reading of manufacturers discouraging saboted round balls.