Pennsylvania Game News - October 2022 - 56

knowledge of wildlife management and
the devastating impact deer can have on
forest regeneration or even landscaping
on our farm. But I moved on.
From there I visited a bunch of sport
shops, hardware stores and the like. The
few choices that turned up weren't exactly
good choices for my muzzleloader.
It was then that the words of my
muzzleloading mentor, George Dech,
came ringing back like the ignition of
blackpowder. " Cast your own muzzleloading
bullets! "
WHY CAST BULLETS?
Commonly available pure lead has
a very low melting point - 621 degrees
Fahrenheit. It easily changes from a solid
to a liquid over a campfire, Coleman gas
stove, propane torch, or melting pot. It's
then short work to make bullets of any
shape with a hand-held mold.
Beyond that, there's the issue of economics.
It costs about 6 cents - less if
you get your lead for free - to cast a .50
caliber muzzleloader roundball. Making
a larger conical bullet might cost 10 cents.
Buy that same bullet as a jacketed sabot,
though, and you can figure on multiplying
the price by 20 to 30 times.
It's hard to ignore those kinds of savings.
But before you rush out to start
casting your own bullets, there are some
serious things to consider.
THE RIGHT ROUNDS
If you're going to make bullets, you
want to make the right ones. And not
every bullet is right for every muzzleloading
barrel.
It's the spinning of a bullet that gives
it stability. Bullets that spin too slowly
may tumble - think of how unpredict56
ably
knuckleballs fly toward home plate
in baseball - and that results in poor
accuracy.
Patched roundballs shoot very accurately
from guns with a rifling rate of
1:48 to 1:66, depending on their velocity.
But spin a patched roundball too fast,
like the 1:28 to 1:10 rotations found on
inline rifles, and you get a curveball effect.
That's not good for accuracy either.
Things are different when shooting
slugs, regardless of whether they're pure
lead, copper-clad jacketed bullets, plasticsaboted
pointed bullets or any other
type. Modern, elongated, pointed rounds
need more rotation to stabilize and shoot
accurately.
Now, all that said, can a bullet of any
design, shot at any rate of rifling, shoot
accurately out to the ranges at which
whitetails are usually taken, say 50 yards
or less? The answer is yes. That's because
the distance to the target is so short that
the bullet doesn't have time to destabilize.
I have shot patched roundballs in a
.54-caliber Pedersoli American Jaeger
flintlock with a rifling rate of 1:28 in
competition for years with 50-5X accuracy.
This also brought home deer, bear,
caribou and other North American game
taken at less than 100 yards.
The problem arises when shooting
beyond 100 yards. With increased flight
time, the improperly rotated bullet begins
to misbehave.
CASTING SAFELY
If you consider casting your own bullets,
you also have to think safety. Lead is
a heavy metal and no one wants to breathe
in or ingest it for obvious medical reasons.
So always cast lead in an outdoor space
that's covered to prevent moisture - rain or
snow - from finding its way to the molten
Pennsylvania Game News - October 2022

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