Daryl - super informative as always. It also seems many of the hunters who used 4 bore cartridge guns used balls as well - GP Sanderson, CEM Russel, etc. used the Kynoch load with spherical ball on top of 12 to 14 drams. If you read their books you won't hear lack of power mentioned often. I believe Sanderson also advocated the use of the spherical ball over conical and he was talking from experience and a lot of it. Not an arm chair safari guy like me...