Last Friday was a great day to go to the range. Sunny and mild. Perfect time of year in this part of Texas. My shooting buddy and I took out the Husky M17B Combo SXS in 12.7X44R and 16ga. This is a nice light and handy gun to carry. I have been wanting to try out some of the round ball loads in the 16 smooth bore. I have loaded up a couple of varieties, but only shot a couple of them. First I shot some of the recent loadings. This is a cast .610 ball. I picked .61 because it was available, and would work in all of the 16 ga choke barrels I have. (two combos and a drilling). I wanted swaged ones, but can't find them. I loaded these with a volume of 777 powder equal to 2 3/4 drams of FF black. I used plastic 16ga shells trimmed to 2 1/2 inch. The load column is powder, nitro card, 1/2 inch fiber wad, felt wad ball and then a over shot card set by a roll crimp from a 19th century roll crimping tool.
I shot alternate ball and the rifle to see if the ball would come close to the rifle. I knew the rifle shoot to a couple inches over the sights at 50 meters. Well I didn't actually acheive groups. More patterns. The ball went into about minute of Boar size groups, and mostly to the left. Well, maybe a BIG BOAR. I need to work on this a bit. Here are a few photos of the shooting day.