So, in preparations for a squirrel hunting trek coming up in a couple weeks, I went shooting yesterday afternoon. The real need was to pattern my .62 caliber fowler (identical to the one in the header of this page, just without the sling lug). I have shot this gun probably 100-150 times, but always just shooting round ball. So I went to one of the places I can safely shoot and loaded 'er up.
I started out shooting 75-grain powder loads with an equal measure of shot. For those of you who have never shot a muzzle-loading shotgun it takes a little bit of work. My first load I poured the powder down, then put in a nitro card over the powder, followed by a cushion wad, which I had to start down the barrel about 3 inches. Then, the measure of shot and an overshot card. All this, I started to run down the barrel.
Problem. The cards and wad, combined with the powder blocking the touch hole, created a pressure chamber which made it almost impossible to get the load all the way down.
The rest of the loads, I seated the nitro card and cushion wad on the powder before pouring the shot. This worked quite a bit better.
On to the shooting. I had a piece of cardboard that I was shooting at which would allow me to check for holes or irregularities in the pattern. With the cards and wad, I consistently got patterns of about 20" at 15 yards. Really good patterns.
I also did a couple shots with flax tow for wads over the powder and over the shot. This worked as well, but was not quite as uniform of a pattern. Tried using grass as well, with similar results to the tow. It would kill a squirrel on a tree limb, but if I were shooting birds I would probably want to stick with the cards and wad.
Nest challenges? Pattern the .62 caliber flintlock pistol and start shooting trap/clays with the fowler.
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15 years ago
3 comments:
As the Urban Squirrel Assassin, I can say that I shot about 60 odd squirrels last year from my window. But that was because squirrels here are fucking loud and make noises I didn't know they could. Worse is that Tampa squirrels are really territorial. So they bark. They die! mwahaha!
Here we have ground squirrels. On base here they are horrible. Nothing but big rats, but unfortunately we can't shoot them.
Hey Petey,
Have you shot that Sigma again? I ran about 125 rounds through mine finally a couple weeks ago.
If you have the time drill some small (air) holes in the card and wad. I stack them and drill several at a time.
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