I'm eager to go out and actually hunt with this thing. I've hunted with muzzle loaders all of my life, and have taken a fair amount of game with them over the years. I began with a .54 caliber Thompson Center "Hawken", shooting their "maxi-ball" conical projectile, and later the Lyman "Great Plains" bullet. I never thought the round ball was entirely adequate as a hunting projectile, with its terrible sectional density and ballistic coefficient. Hell, they lose fully have their initial velocity in less than 100 yards. I always felt conical bullets, typically twice the weight of the round ball, were superior. I certainly never had any complaints on the deer and elk taken with them.
Here are the three .54 caliber projectiles I've used. Round ball at 230 grains, Maxi Ball at 430 grains, and Plains Bullet at 460 grains:
Then, over the years, I decided that using conical bullets was somehow "cheating", in that they are not really "correct" for the time period when muzzle loaders were all we had. I even "regressed" as far as going to a flint lock round ball shooter, in .50 caliber. A .50 caliber round ball only weighs 180 grains, by the way.
Well, it didn't take long to understand that these "small" round balls - .50 and .54 caliber - were pretty darn inadequate on mule deer and elk. No wonder they were so quickly abandoned when something better - conical bullets - came along. I know .50 caliber (and to a lesser extent .54 caliber) are more or less the "standards" here in the U.S. for modern muzzle loading seasons, but that is when used with projectiles other than round balls. As "round ball guns", these are considered decidedly "small bore".
The .72 caliber - 12 gauge - starts to get into the "medium bore" category when discussing round ball guns. Sir Samuel Baker, in his
The Hound and the Rifle in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) describes his 12 and 10 bore rifles as adequate for the stags roaming that island. His rifles for heavier game were typically 8 bore or even larger.
So, yeah, after trying .50 and .54 caliber round balls for a few seasons, I quickly wrote them off as ineffective and went back to the conical bullets. I'm thinking this .72 caliber is going to work a bit better...