Whilst I was reading all the old books on 12 bores and black powder guns and such, I came across the same info that you discussed above Daryl: Apparently round balls penetrate in a straight line, while conical bullets tended to deflect when they contact anything hard. James Forsyth documents this in his book with regards to hunting tigers and elephants in India.

And yes, regarding accuracy, my showing the other week was horrible. In my defense, that was the first day testing loads, and my nerves were a little bit shot at that point, after having heard from all the internet naysayers that I was going to blow up and cause the world to end. I will make sure to get more photos of accuracy from these slugs in the coming weeks. I do agree though, that right now, accuracy is okay, but certainly isn't the best. The addition of a basewad to the slug would work, but I don't know what kind of pressure change using a fiber wad in a smokeless load would do.

Next on my list is to try hardened round balls, but I am having a difficult time coming up with a .730" round ball mold.

Most importantly though, this was just an experiment to see how these things worked, and for a first-time outting, with no tweaking or amendments to the original idea, I think it was a pretty good showing. But I do agree, compared to what I've heard about round ball accuracy, these slugs have quite a ways to go.