[Jeff Higgins]

Beautiful rifle there Tabs. A little "North" of my price range, but one can dream. The .58, while a great caliber, isn't enough of a step above the .54 I have been using. I'm looking for a 20 bore minimum, and the Zephyr 12 bore looks even better. More in my range financially, too. I'll take a $1500 rifle out into our extremely wet Washington rainforests and have no qualms about parting the brush with them; I do it all the time with my C. Sharps '74 and '75.

I have always been taken by the Whitworth rifles. Alas, I missed out on the original tooling British made ones. I do understand the Pedersolis are fine rifles. I have competed for years against their products, and while ten years ago it was hard to find polite things to say about them, they are winning matches today. Mostly their new Rolling Blocks. There were a couple of guys out of Oregon that used the Whitworths in our mid and long range matches several years ago. Shooting a muzzle loader from prone in the time limits imposed by our breech loader oriented rules proved to be somewhat of an aerobic event for them, so they soon aquired their own breech loaders. Fantasically accurate rifles, though. It was just to much work to get through a match.

As far as ballistics, skipdup, on paper they are less than impressive. Especially the round ball rifles. The round ball has by far the lowest ballistic coefficeint of any projectile. A typical round ball loses two-thirds of its energy in only one hundred yards. While they are accurate beyond that, they lose so much punch so fast that they are pretty much a very short range proposition. Their mass goes up exponentially with bore size, as does the ability to consume more powder behind them. That's why you will see such seemingly large bores, like 20 (.62 caliber), 12 (.72 caliber) in use. The .50, .54, and .58 are refered to as "medium bores" or even "small bores" in some circles. A .50 round ball is generally considered barely adequate for small deer, a .54 barely adequate for elk. Initial velocities can run between 1800 and 2000 fps for a typical round ball rifle, dropping to under 1000 by 100 yards. That said, the effectiveness on game seems all out of proportion to their "paper ballistics". The pure lead ball is a rather tough, homogenous little critter that will almost never break up on impact, which is the bane of the modern high velocity jacketed bullet. Penetration is not their strong suit; they will rarely exit, and they should not be used for the shoulder shot into that heavy bone mass. Slip one into the lungs right behind the shoulder, though, and few rounds will drop game faster. So while they do not have the impressive velocities and energies of the modern magnums, they remain a very effective hunting tool. You just have to get a little closer...