The basics of blackpowder ballistics

I attended the Mt. McKinley Mountainmen monthly blackpowder pistol shoot earlier this week at the shooting range in Palmer. I am not a very good blackpowder pistol shooter and don’t worry about trying to beat anybody in a match. I go for the fun/practice and the camaraderie of interacting with the guys. At this particular match, I wasn’t even shooting for score.

I’ve been getting my shooting stuff more organized at home and realized I had two blackpowder pistols that I hadn’t fired in years — one, a flintlock, 44-caliber sidelock which I had never fired in 30 years of ownership.

It was time to get these two guns dirty!

The other pistol is a modern in-line percussion handgun specifically designed for hunting. The pistol is .54-caliber and can handle a maximum powder charge of 110 grains of blackpowder behind a 350 to 400-grain conical bullet — if you can hold on!

A handgun with that capability is equivalent to the largest blackpowder rifles of the buffalo hunting era of the 1870’s. Yet, blackpowder handguns are not legal to hunt big game with in Alaska.

Why is that?

First is the legitimate concern that folks unfamiliar with blackpowder handgun ballistics will use a severely underpowered handgun, like a .36-caliber cap-and-ball revolver, for moose or bears. This class of firearm isn’t even equivalent to a 38 Special revolver in power. In reality, there are only a few blackpowder handguns available which are capable of handling the types of ballistics necessary to humanely hunt big game here.

Second, I don’t think there’s been much demand to allow big game blackpowder handgun hunting. Handgun hunting with modern firearms, in general, is only practiced on a regular basis by a small number of hunters in Alaska and even fewer blackpowder shooters have expressed interest.

And, third, to my knowledge, nobody, past or present, on the Board of Game knows much about blackpowder ballistics in general. I also don’t believe there are many within Fish and Game who know much about the topic either. A combination of lack of knowledge and lack of demand have worked together to withhold this opportunity for hunters interested in this technique.

Why do I say “lack of knowledge?”

Look at the firearms requirements for hunting bison, for instance. Centerfire rifles, and this includes blackpowder cartridge firearms, have specific energy requirements which must be met to be legal, yet muzzleloaders can be used if they simply comply with the general regulations. Those regulations specify 45-caliber (minimum) projectiles from a shoulder-mounted long gun. Use of scopes is subject to the specific hunt: general season or muzzleloader only.

The rifle ballistics of a 45-caliber blackpowder roundball (weight: 128 grains) travelling, at best, about 1900 feet-per-second roughly equates to modern 22 Hornet ammunition. It makes no sense to hunt bison with a load equivalent to the weakest “varmint” centerfire cartridge commonly available, yet it is legal.

When bison hunting with a muzzleloader was originally passed, the muzzleloading big game hunting requirements were much more detailed in caliber and projectile weight specifications required to achieve necessary humane hunting ballistics.

Those requirements made sense!

Since then, the BOG has “simplified” the muzzleloading regulations because the science of blackpowder ballistics was not understood by either BOG members or Fish and Game staff advising them. While the archery requirements are still very detailed and specific, the muzzleloading requirements have been watered down — in essence, “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”

I killed my Delta bison in 2007, at a distance in excess of 250 yards, using a blackpowder cartridge rifle in a caliber specifically developed during the bison hunting era for commercial hide hunters. That rifle/cartridge combination was marginal in meeting the regulation requirements for centerfire rifles. If that same load was fired from a muzzleloader, there would be no question of its legality. The same weight bullet with the same volume of blackpowder in the same length barrel will have the same ballistics whether it’s fired in a muzzleloader or from a blackpowder cartridge rifle!

I’m pointing out the need to clean up some hunting regulations, preferably with the advice and counsel of somebody who knows something about the topic. Those “old muzzleloading regulations” I mentioned earlier were written by folks who knew whereof they spoke. The simplification of those regulations was done by folks who ignored, or didn’t understand the reality of what those requirements were intended to achieve – the humane harvest of large animals while hunting with muzzleloaders.