anyone hunt small game with a muzzle loading rifle?

[recurve shooter]

hi guys. i hunt squirrel and rabbit with almost every type of weapon i own, from old single shot .22 to .22 pistol to suped up 17 hmr, single barrel 16 guage, bow, ect. i love small game hunting, its just more fun for me down here than deer, as its rare to see a deer, much less get the shot. anyway, sittin by a tree the other day with my .58 cal hawken (a little to large for squirrel lol) watchin them play around i was thinkin it would be an absolute blast to try to chase the little critters with like a 40, 36, 32, or something like that rifle. anyone do it? any recomendations for a particular rifle or caliber? pics would be awsome if you have em! 

[half eye]

Recurve
      Used to do that all the time, even built a couple of nice 40's for the job. The .40  (.390 + pillow tickning) was a bit too big for squirrels so I had to "bark" them. For bunnies it was OK but I shot a smaller load of powder (a pure lead ball with a full charge would tear a bunnie up pretty good too). Ya might want to try a .32 and shoot point of aim. The ramrods on a .32 could be a problem though, as is a patch retriever, and it's pretty easy to flaten a round ball that small with the "short starter".
     Take my words with a grain of salt though...I was shooting back in the 60's and 70's using Hodgedons FFF or FFFF not the new pellets. My gun had a 40" green-river swamped barrel, curly maple stock in the tennesee mountain style, iron funtiture and a Siler lock, with single set trigger. Never did catch on to shooting left handed though so no right eye sight meant no more iron sight rifle shooting. Also dont have any digital pics from that era so dont have any pics to send to ya.
rich

[mullet]

 Chris Cade has a small caliber rifle and I hunt squirrels with my double 12 gauge.

[Grunt]

I use a .25 southern mountain Bean family style flint lock. It's the one on the top. The .25 roundball gets powered by 17 grains of 3F.

[longhunter1]

I use have two flintlock rifles i use for small game, one is a .36 cal. southern mtn.with a 42 inch barrel and the other is a .28 gauge smoothrifle, an early Virginia pattern with a 46 inch barrel.The smoothrifle I can shoot shot or round ball out of it, I also use it for deer. It takes a .535 patched round ball or .54 cal.  A smoothrifle is very versatile rifle. The .36 works good for tree varmints.
Both guns i have built years ago and i have a blast hunting with either gun.

Longhunter

[JW_Halverson]

I absolutely loooove hunting rabbits with my smokepoles.  My favorite for wild bunnies that flush at the drop of a hat is my double barrel black powder caplock 10 guage.  Yeah, I said 10 guage!  You got a problem with that?!?!?!

Mind you, I use just over half an ounce of shot and about 50 grains of powder so it shoots like a 28 guage, hehehe. 

Then there is the Wilderness Mountain Arms .36 cal flintlock.  I use as little as 25 grains of FFFg and the little bitty pea sized lead ball, but it is known to kill.  My two best ever flintlock shots were on cottontails at over 100 yds and that self-same gun.  I was bumping up to 50 grains of powder that day and hitting those two sitting fluffy-butts back to back really made my day. 

Just remember that the smaller bore rifles really foul up quickly, you will need to swap between shots or risk breaking a ramrod in the field and ending a good day badly.

Longhunter mentions his 28 ga. smoothrifle....I think he's referring to an octagon barrel in a fullstock that looks like a rifle but doesn't have rifling cut into the barrel instead of a octagon-to-round style trade musket.  Current theory is that there were plenty of "rifles" out there on the frontier that didn't have rifling in the barrels simply because it really added a lot of $$$ to the cost of a gun.  The side benefit was that you could shoot birdshot as well as big roundballs so one gun did double duty.   

[recurve shooter]

thanks for all the replies guys. that .25 looks cool! i didnt even know they made them that small. i was thinkin a .40 cuz i could use it for small game and maby deer. maby. but my state regulations say it has to be 36 or smaller for small game. i have fourty pounds of realy soft lead ingots in my closet, so whatever i get i'll cast my own rbs, which is fun. i really want one now. all i can think about honestly. any idea how much a decent production smallbore would cost me? i dont have the cash for one of the amazing custom guns yall shoot, but a production can do the job in a decent rifleman's hands, i think. 

jw, dude a hunded yards on a bunny is a heck of a shot for my .22s and even a little challenging for that .17 hmr, much less a smoke pole!!!! way to go!

[Grunt]

I absolutely loooove hunting rabbits with my smokepoles.  My favorite for wild bunnies that flush at the drop of a hat is my double barrel black powder caplock 10 guage.  Yeah, I said 10 guage!  You got a problem with that?!?!?!

Mind you, I use just over half an ounce of shot and about 50 grains of powder so it shoots like a 28 guage, hehehe. 

Then there is the Wilderness Mountain Arms .36 cal flintlock.  I use as little as 25 grains of FFFg and the little bitty pea sized lead ball, but it is known to kill.  My two best ever flintlock shots were on cottontails at over 100 yds and that self-same gun.  I was bumping up to 50 grains of powder that day and hitting those two sitting fluffy-butts back to back really made my day. 

Just remember that the smaller bore rifles really foul up quickly, you will need to swap between shots or risk breaking a ramrod in the field and ending a good day badly.

Longhunter mentions his 28 ga. smoothrifle....I think he's referring to an octagon barrel in a fullstock that looks like a rifle but doesn't have rifling cut into the barrel instead of a octagon-to-round style trade musket.  Current theory is that there were plenty of "rifles" out there on the frontier that didn't have rifling in the barrels simply because it really added a lot of $$$ to the cost of a gun.  The side benefit was that you could shoot birdshot as well as big roundballs so one gun did double duty.   

Yeh, I use a 3/16 brass ram rod with a muzzle protector sleve with the .25. I think the 25. barrel was made by H&H but they were a pain to make so they stopped producing them.

[jonathan creason]

Ya'll have really got me wanting a flintlock now.  Dang those kits are pricey, though.  It'll be a while before I've got enough cash to put down on one of them.

[recurve shooter]

jc, its bp guns are addictive!!!! over the summer i bought a 44 revolver to play with. now i have two .44 revolvers and a .58 rifle, and i went all out and bought all the good casting stuff. 

[JW_Halverson]

Addictive?  I bought my neighbor's dbl barrel 10 guage on a whim for $200 (now retails for nearly $800). Was just gonna hang it on the wall, you know?  But then I shot it.

Then there was that nice curly maple .36 flinter secondhand at a $250...Now THIS one I can hang on the wall, because it's a flintlock and they are really fussy, right?  But then I shot it.

And I shot it so good I won a .50 cal CVA caplock kit.  Now I really am gonna hang this one on the wall because it's far too large a caliber to plink with and I don't hunt deer (not yet at that time).  But then I shot it.

Then there was the .44 cal 1851 Confederate Navy revolver in the clearance bin at Cabella's.  I could a shadowbox to hang this on the wall.  But then I shot it.

Finally I ordered a set of parts from a reputable dealer, .50 caliber swamped barrel from Colerain because they have such a reputation, 100% tight curl stock, Siler flintlock, custom sights, etc.  Like heck this one was meant for the wall, this sucker's fer shootin' !!!  See?  Old dog learnt a new trick!

[Eric Krewson]

Similar journey here. I always shot TC stuff then a friend gave me his custom flintlock, Bill Large barrel, Bob Roller lock, one shot with this rifle and the TC stuff was for sale. After hunting with my friends tack driving gun for several years I decided to make one. Took a while but I finally completed my rifle.



Before I finished #1, I was buying parts for #2, a flint 12ga English fowler turkey gun and planning #3, another flint, 32 cal squirrel rifle. Pretty expensive addiction but I have to spent my social security money on something. 

[recurve shooter]

jw 

Mr. Krewson, unfortunatly i have no money  to get my hands on one of those beautiful custom rifles , but will have one eventually. i hope. i guess i'll try to trade/sell one of my .44 pistols and my .58 cabellas hawken for something half decent. amazing looking gun btw.

[Eric Krewson]

Depending on how crafty you are, you can get a pretty nice parts kit for less then a new TC or Lyman finished rifle. Where TC or Lyman kits are assembly kits, the parts kits have a bunch of inletting work to be done to get everything in the stock as well as drilling for bolts and cutting dovetails for sights and such.

I made this rifle several years ago and financed the parts by trading selfbows I made for pictures of dead presidents and swapping the pictures of dead presidents for gun parts.

Here is what I started out with, I worked off a full scale blueprint of a Beck rifle. I did sent the blank off to have it inletted for the barrel and have the ramrod hole drilled. I did what is called a scratch build instead of a parts kit with a shaped stock already inletted for the barrel and lock.



To give you an example of the work involved, it took me over 12 hours to get to here on the butt plate instillation.



To the final fit and shaping were a couple more hours.

[recurve shooter]

as much as id love to do it that way, id get mad to fast. plus im not exactly a craftsman lol.