Shot placement is everything. Last evening i watched a friend kill three hogs with three shots from his suppressed .22 magnum rifle.

head shots i would imagine?

One was a head shot. The other two were low just behind the front leg-heart shots.

I have been watching that show and saw the buffalo hunt. I was surprised that the buffalo dropped so quickly. You mention that people say round balls aren't good for deer, I guess it is a good thing that buffalo didn't know that.

I am planning to get my Lyman sidelock setup for round balls and hope to get a deer with it in the next couple seasons. My younger brother dropped his first deer several years ago with a borrowed sidelock using round balls. He had never even fired the gun or any other BP gun for that matter. Every time I take the sidehammer out, it is damp out and I can't get it to fire.

Well see... if that Bison would have been a deer, he would have been safe..

I can remember when I read the post of how some muzzle loading people said that a roundball was just a poor hunting load. I was shocked at such a statement. I'd hunted deer with roundball for twenty years and never thought they were anything but deadly. Of course my shots are normally close. Now granted if we were shooting 200 yards, the roundball might not be the best projectile out there. Although there are some excellent roundball shooters. But like you.. when that Bison walked a few steps and then just fell over, I was shocked. I figured they were going to have to track that herd until the wound took effect.

A couple weeks back it was warm, in the 20's but snowing like the devil. So I did something I wanted to try. I went out and shot my flintlock in the snow storm. I never had a delay, or a misfire. So damp weather does not scare me at all.

Scared me into buying an inline rifle. Every time I went out with a sidehammer gun it would be damp out. I would try to shoot the gun to empty it and it was a no go for launch. I finally missed a chance at a deer because of it and threw in the towel. I snapped 4 caps with the deer staring at me before the gun went off with a hang fire. I flinched and shot high.

A year or two later, I got the chance to go hunt with my cousin in Ohio where it is shotgun only. I didn't have a suitable slug gun and didn't need one, but I did need a good inline BP rifle. So I bought a Knight Revolution for the trip. Sure enough, it is cold, windy and snowing. But, a doe stepped out at 54 yards, wide open, broadside and I snapped the cap.

The doe jumped around, stamped her feet and tried to figure out where the noise came from. Finally she wondered off. I had missed with open sights! So I reloaded and not 5 minutes later another doe came up the same path and stood in the same tracks. No kidding, she gave me the identical shot. I leaned back against the tree, took very steady aim and snapped the cap.

This time, I nailed her with a pass through in the boiler room. She ran 50 yards and dropped.

Fast forward a couple years and I hit a young buck at 84 yards with open sights. The buck ran off, the blood trail quit after 100 yards and I lost the deer.

Fast forward 1 more year (this past year) and I now have a Nikon Omega sitting on top of the gun and I can put the shots touching at 100 yards about 1.5" high of center. I got tired of bashing my head, it hurts.

But, my younger brother dropped 2 deer in 2 years with a borrowed sidehammer so now I have to man up and do it. I had hoped to get a deer with my newly scoped rifle this past season but I never got a shot so I still have to do that too. But it wouldn't be nearly as fun if it was easy.

Not sure why I got into my history with BP, but here you go.