Quote:
Originally Posted by Superman
I am confused. You are considering building another rifle? Good idea. You hardly have any rifles.
Or are you just excited about using the flinter you have? She's beautiful. Sort of like a Visla versus a pit bull. What is the caliber?
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I hardly have any
flintlock rifles. I'm aimin' to fix that... Besides, I don't have a proper squirrel rifle - a clear hole in my modest battery.
This one is a .50 caliber, shooting a patched round ball of .495" diameter and about 180 grains weight. The Hawken is a .54 caliber, shooting a patched round ball of .535" diameter and about 230 grains weight. Both will achieve about 2,000 feet per second with a full charge.
These sound "big" (as does a .32 to .36 caliber "squirrel" rifle, I'm sure) to those unfamiliar with round ball shooters. Believe me, they are not. I consider the .50 to be pretty marginal on deer, and useless on elk. The .54 is barely acceptable for use on something as big as an elk.
Oh, they absolutely did use these calibers on these animals "back in the day", but their ethics and expectations were different. Conserving powder and lead when neither were readily resupplied was very important. Losing wounded animals was just a part of the game, where today's hunting ethics rightly find that rather abhorrent. These will absolutely kill these animals, but real "hunting" becomes paramount - "get as close as you can, then get a little closer".
So, yeah... "one more" rifle never hurt anyone. Especially if it fills such an obvious "need"...
