I have been shooting muzzleloaders for a great many years, having owned many calibers and types. I now have only one and it is a 62 cal Fusil de Chase smoothbore flintlock. I have killed a number of deer with this weapon using round ball and/or buck shot. I can't count the number of squirrels that have fallen to number 4 shot out of it. Just wondering if there were anymore smoothbore muzzleloader fans on the forum.

Fowler? Did someone say folwer?

Ya buddy! I built fowlers in .50cal (not a true 32ga), 24ga (.58), 20ga (.62) and 12ga (.73). I've taken everything from tree rats to deer with a smoothie flintlock ... most times to the amazement of those using centerfire guns. They are the ultimate in versatility!

My very first shots with black powder were from a professor's replica brown bess. Really lacking in sights (basically has none) but i've been kind of hooked on big-bores and flintlocks.

Not too many of us have good smoothbore flinters but several of us have expeerimented with SXS shotguns. Liked my 10ga. (which is really closer to an 11ga.) with a patched .735" ball. Not a double rifle; you pick the one barrel that groups well, sight in for that, and load buckshot in the other bore. Not a "real rifle", when a ball is big enough to hurt when you drop it on your foot, it doesn't seem to need to be going real fast.

I do not have a smooth bore but have wanted to plunge into them but my lack of knowldge has kept me from it any good sources to learn?

Muzzleloader magazine would be a good place to start reading. I don't take it anymore but they used to have a lot of good article. I just like the fact that I can shoot round ball or bird shot depending on what I want to hunt. They don't have the range of a rifled musket but getting close is part of the fun. Plus there is nothing like the sound of click, whush, boom. I have almost succumbed to the urge to buy and inline muzzleloader but that just isn't muzzle loading to me. When you hunt with a flintlock, you are putting yourself hundreds of years in the past.

jodum, thanks for the info I do not have access to that magazine where I am right now but will work on finding it. I have developed a stong desire to stray from the modern weapon path and making this my project while i am away and when I return.

Gary

I too kept going backwards with my firearms. My wife said that if I kept it up I would end up hunting with a club and a rock which was all right because it would be a lot cheaper on her.

Now I do not think I would go that far, LOL I will look up that magazine on the internet and see if I can get it here in Kuwait somw how.

Yeah, smoothbores are a hoot and talk about personality, every smoothbore is unique. Long barrels point and handle much better than you might think, 32" barrels start to look downright stubby once you become accustomed to 42" and longer.
Generally speaking, you can expect to keep all shots on a dinner plate at fifty yards. Now some folks with some guns can keep them on a coffee cup at fifty and dinner plate at 100, at least mostly, but fifty yards is a more likely limit for most of us. So with ball a smoothbore has about half the range of a roundball rifle due to accuracy limitations.
Where the smoothbore shines is with birdshot. Anything over .50 caliber can take small game cleanly at 25 yards, maybe 30 for the bigger bores throwing an ounce and a half of shot. Add a jug choke and you can greatly increase the effective range over the cylinder bores but jug chokes don't do much for the accuracy with ball. But many of us don't care about shooting ball since we prefer rifles for that, while others are mainly concerned with ball and don't mind giving up some range with the birdshot. And of course, the straight cylinder bore, unchoked, is the traditional way, choke boring was perfected in the 1870's when breech loading was replacing muzzleloading shotguns.
In addition to the long fowlers and double shotguns there were lots of "smooth-rifles" made. They look just like a longrifle of the same time and place, rifle type architecture and sights but have smoothbores. I've been "studying up" on Bucks County rifles and of 45 photographs I've examined, 27 were described as smoothbores, only 18 were really rifles. One distinctive characteristic of smoothrifles is they never have double set triggers. Other regions have a higher percentage of rifles but over all the famous "Kentucky Rifles", quite a few were smoothrifles. For the eastern woodlands where shots were seldom over fifty yards the fine accuracy of a rifle was wasted and the versatility of a smoothbore was appreciated.
I personally have no use for buckshot. It can be deadly at close range, say 25 yards, but just a bit farther out it will wound game which won't be recovered. Even for close range buckshot requires at least a 16 gauge bore, and 12 gauge much better to throw an effective pattern with large buckshot like 00 or 000. Most of those Bucks County smoothrifles, near 90%, were between .44 and .54 caliber so I don't think they were much interested in buckshot which was commonly used in .69 to .75 caliber muskets of the time. But then the military always preferred wounding over killing, quite the opposite of the proper hunting ethic.
Still today in many regions there is no need for a rifle, from quail to turkey to moose, a smoothbore can do it all and look darn good doing it.

I recently finished building a fusil d finn. What a blast to shoot. Ibelong to a blackpowder club and it is really gaining in popularity. Enough members are shooting them that we are considering a smoothbore shoot. Just for the fun!






You have got to have a rock in the lock!!!

The fusil de chase 62 smoothbore is the only muzzle loader that I still own. It does everything I need. The ML club I used to belong to also had smoothbore matches which were a lot of fun. But shooting anything is fun.