Guest Writer - Toby Bridges

Hunting With .58 Civil War Rifled Muskets & Carbines By: Toby Bridges

If there is one thing that the Civil War definitely WAS NOT ... it was “Civil”!

In all reality, it was the bloodiest conflict ever fought on American soil - and between Americans. Several million men from the North and South lined up on battlefields, mostly in the South, and fired great hunks of lead at one another, until one side became so decimated that the other could over run the opposing force. And while the fighting during the early 1860s saw the introduction of breech-loading military cartridge arms, the vast majority of the relatively close quarters combat was done with large-bore percussion muzzle-loaded guns.

The mainstay arm of troops on both sides was a long-barreled rifled musket. Northern infantry was most commonly armed with either the U.S. Model 1861 or Model 1863 Springfield rifledmusket. These were .58 caliber rifled long guns, with a 40” barrel. And the total production at the Springfield Armory and by several dozen private contractors was around 1.5 million. Southern troops were very often armed with Confederate copies of these guns, and with U.S. arms recovered from the battlefield. However, the primary rifle-musket of the Confederate foot soldier was the .577 caliber Enfield rifled-musket produced in England, and brought to the South by daring blockade runners. The standard Enfield Model 1853 Rifle was built with a 39” barrel. Likewise, a number of shorter variations and carbines were also used by troops on both sides.

Above - .58 Caliber U.S. Model 1863 Springfield Rifled-Musket

Above - The British .577 Caliber Model 1853 Pattern Rifled-Musket

The “standard” powder charge for either of these widely used large-bore rifle-muskets, and shorter variations, was around 60 grains of FFg black powder. Even when fired from such a lengthy bore, these light powder charges could only get the huge hollow-based Minie bullets, commonly weighing 450 to 500 grains, out of the muzzle at around 800 to 900 f.p.s. Such loads generate only around 750 to 850 foot-pounds of energy - at the muzzle. Down range at 100 yards, or about where the line of enemy soldiers would be firing back, these big soft lead hollow-based conical bullets would retain only about 500 to 600 foot-pounds of knockdown power.

The battle tactics of the time was not so much “to kill the enemy” ... but rather to wound as many as possible ... which meant other soldiers would be taken out of action to get the wounded off the battlefield. Of the 647,000 casualty deaths attributed to the four years of fighting between the North and the South, it›s very likely that close to half died from infections. So, how is it that the primary muzzle-loaded military arms of the mid 1800›s ... which were more likely to severely wound an enemy combatant than kill the soldier outright ... in any way ... be considered a modern day muzzleloader for taking big game?

The fact of the matter is, as the muzzle-loaded rifle-muskets were designed “For Military Use” ... please excuse my technical observation ... “They Sucked As Hunting Arms!”

At best, the Springfields ... the Enfields ... and just about any other large-bore muzzle-loaded arm of that era was built for one purpose and one purpose only - TO KEEP A LOT OF LEAD FLYING IN THE DIRECTION OF THE OPPOSING FORCE! The guns were not built for precise shot placement ... and neither were the big hollow-based so-called “Minie Ball” hollow-based projectiles - tens of millions of which were launched back and forth between the Blue and the Gray. These were purposely produced significantly under size ... allowing the soldier to keep ramming them down a fouled bore during the heat of battle. The thin skirt of the hollow base would expand into the rifling at the moment the light 60-or-so grain service charge of black powder ignited. It really didn’t matter if the bullet flew true or not ... because the sights on these rifled-muskets could not be adjusted for accurately placing a shot. For longer range shooting, the soldier could flip up a higher notched leaf ... but there was no windage adjustment whatsoever.

The Lyman Minié ball (575213OS, Old Style) weighs 460 grains. The bullet at left shows a pin-hole in the hollowbase because the mould and molten lead were not hot enough for perfect casting.

The bore of the .577 Enfield rifled-muskets featured rifling that spun with a 1-in-72 twist, and i’ve read where the U.S. Springfield rifled muskets featured either a 1-in-74 or 1-in-78 twist. Again ... this had nothing to do with “accuracy” ... but rather simply facilitated keeping the guns firing in the heat of battle. When shooting charges of black powder ... a slower rate of twist fouls more slowly than a faster rate of twist. Fortunately, those slow rates of rifling twist are well suited for shooting a patched round ball. (More so than ANY conical bullet.)

Above - Original Remington Model 1863 Zouave Rifled-Musket

Many Civil War arms experts often praise the .58 caliber Remington Model 1863 as being the finest of the rifled-musket designs of the early 1860›s. While it does carry the Model 1863 designation, this colorful brass mounted rifled-musket saw very little military use. In fact, just 12,501 were built between 1862 and 1865. Historians tend to agree that no “combat troops” were ever issued a socalled Remington Zouave.

In reality ... I did put my very first whitetail “on the ground” ... shooting an original Civil War .58 caliber Remington Model 1863. It was the opening morning of my second deer season ... in 1964. I was hunting in the Shawnee National Forest of Southern Illinois when a big doe and button buck ran past at about 40 yards. A quick shot with the old Stevens 12-guage double I was hunting with threw the rifled slug just behind the doe. As the button buck ran past ... I swung on it with a little more care, and when the shotgun roared the deer stumbled a bit. I saw that the slug had hit a little forward just ahead of the facing front shoulder. The deer faltered a step or two before reaching a wooded valley ... then dropped down the side of the slope and out of sight. With two new slugs in the double ... I followed in hot pursuit. A quarter mile later, I had gotten within 60 yards of the slowing deer ... and took another shot. It was a clean miss. The deer managed to keep about that same distance between us ... and several minutes later I got the chance to shoot again.

It was another clean miss. But the deer just stood there ... and my other slugs were in a coat pocket back at a bulldoze pile I had hunted from that morning. I was about to head back when someone yelled from a higher ridge and came walking down ... with a muzzleloader in hand. He handed it to me and instructed me how to hold the sights. From about 60 yards, that shot dropped my very first whitetail. I watched as he lightly wiped the bore of the front-loader and reloaded with a charge of black powder and a patchd ball. As he prepared to leave, he reached into his leather pouch and pulled out another ball and handed it to me.

“Tell your hunting buddies you got your deer with one of these,” he said with a smile. He then turned and walked back up to the top of the ridge. To this very day I wish I had asked his name. That one shot from what I now know was an original Remington Zouave is the shot which sparked my interest in muzzleloading when I was just 14-years-old.

Above - The Davide Pedersoli & Co. reproduction of the Remington Model 1863 “Zouave” Rifled-Musket

If you do have a great interest in the Civil War, and especially the guns of the Civil War, and feel that you would want to hunt with one of the rifled muskets, the modern copies of the Remington Model 1863 just could be your best choice. The reproductions of the Model 1863 (or Model 1861) Springfield rifled muskets are built with a long 40 inch barrel ... the three-band Model 1853 Enfield copies have a 39 inch barrel. Hunting with such a long barrel can become a bit cumbersome when hunting from a tree stand or enclosed blind. The Zouave copies feature a shorter 33-inch barrel. (As does the Pedersoli two-band Pattern 1858 Enfield rifle.) Personally, I dislike the non-windage adjustment rear sights on all Civil War style percussion rifled muskets - and feel that until the companies making such authentic copies offer a replacement rear sight that is adjustable for both windage and elevation ... not many serious muzzleloadng hunters will go after big game with a frontloader that prints somewhere other than where the sights are aligned!

Since I did use an original .58 caliber Remington Model 1863 to put in that finishing shot, which put my very first deer down nearly 57 years ago, I do have some love of that model rifled-musket. But, I simply cannot see open sights, especially in dark timber, well enough to hunt with them any more. So, I helped Hi-Lux Optics to design a set of mounts for putting one of their circa 1855 style Wm. Malcolm “telescopic rifle sights” on my Zouave reproduction - shown at right. It is one sharp shooting rig ... and it turns heads every where I take it.

This Zouave is offered by Traditions Performance Firearms, and is produced by Chiappa Firearms in Italy. I absolutely despise the hollow-based Civil War Minie bullet as a hunting projectile. While I will generally choose a conical bullet over a round ball for hunting big game ... when it comes to .58 caliber Civil War rifled-muskets, I will pretty much stick with a patched round ball over a Minie bullet ... since those big and heavy conical bullets were designed to be shot with relatively light (appx. 60 grains) charges of black powder. The .58 Zouave shown in the photo above shoots well with a .015” thick lubed cotton patched 278-grain .570” lead ball, powered by up to 90-grains of GOEX FFg black powder. That much powder will get that heavy sphere of lead out of the 33-inch barrel at around 1,300 f.p.s. - with right at 1,050 foot-pounds of muzzle energy.

At 50 yards, thanks to that early styled 6x scope, I find that I can usually keep hits on a target inside of 3-inches center-to-center. Unfortunately, at that distance the velocity of that big ball has dropped to just over 1,000 f.p.s., and it hits with only about 625 f.p.e. Still, that bowling ball sized lead ball will punch a big hole in a whitetail. Through all of Summer 2020, I tried my best to find one of the Lee bullet molds for the 440-grain .58 caliber REAL bullet. Due to the so-called “Covid-19 Shortages” I did finally locate one for sale on the internet ... FOR $160! Talk about price gouging. This bullet mold only retails for $29.98 ... directly from Lee Precision. However, no one seems to have any of the Lee molds in stock ... not even Lee Precision. I suspect there is something very phony about the intentional shortages of just about ALL shooting and hunting products.

My “Made in Italy” Civil War reproduction .58 Zouave is built with a slow 1-in-63 rate of rifling twist ... which means there is a very real chance that this solid-based .58 caliber Lee conical bullet design may not even shoot with accuracy out of this rifled-musket. According to the Pedersoli website, the Zouave that company offers (shown in an above photo) is built with a nearly as slow 1-in-60 rifling twist. However, that Italian gun maker does offer a reproduction of the 33-inch barreled .577 two-band Enfield with a snappier 1-in-48 twist ... which I’m sure will shoot the somewhat squat 440-grain Lee bullet. However, there’s the question whether the bullet will fit into the .577-bore of the Enfield model.

An 80-grain charge of GOEX FFg should get the 440-grain REAL Bullet out of the muzzle at around 1,100 f.p.s. While that velocity is not all that impressive ... thanks to the weight of the conical bullet muzzle energy would be right at 1,180 foot pounds. At 50 yards, velocity would be down to around 950 f.p.s., retaining just 880 or so foot-pounds of energy. At 75 yards, the big hunk of lead would be fling at around 925 f.p.s. ... and hit a whitetail with 835 foot-pounds of retained energy. While a .58 caliber hole through vital organs will do a lot of damage, if you do plan to hunt with one of the reproduction .58 caliber Civil War rifled-muskets, keep in mind that 800 footpounds of energy is considered minimum for cleanly harvesting deer sized game.

If ... Or When ... we do manage to get our hands on one of the Lee Precision bullet molds for the 440-grain .58 caliber REAL bullet, we’ll bring you an article/report on how well it shoots out of our period-correct scoped Traditions copy of the Remington Model 1863 rifled-musket. In the past, I have shot bullets of the REAL design out of several .45 and .50 caliber rifles ... and have found them to perform very well on deer, antelope and wild hogs. I had also wanted to take a bear this spring, using a REAL bullet out of a Pedersoli .54 Jaeger rifle ... but simply could not locate one of the molds anywhere - other than a couple listed on the internet by scalpers ... at three times the retail price. As for my scoped Zouave ... through the summer, I’ll just keep shooting it with a patched Hornady swaged 278-grain .570” diameter soft lead ball. The big bore rifled-musket shoots a patched ball very well with up to 100-grains of GOEX FFg black powder. At 50 yards ... the stylish .58 Civil War reproduction ... and that long sharp and clear Hi-Lux Optics copy of the model 1855 Wm. Malcolm telescopic rifle sight ... with that load ... keeps hits right at 1 1/2 inches center-to-center. And when one takes into consideration that the ball is in excess of 1/2-

inch in diameter ... that’s not too bad. At the muzzle of the 33-inch barrel, the load is good for right at 1,400 f.p.s. - and just over 1,200 foot-pounds of energy - AT THE MUZZLE! Unfortunately, that round ball load for my Zouave drops below 800 f.p.e. somewhere between 40 and 45 yards.

Originally, this TRADITIONAL MUZZLELOADER HUNTING article was to be devoted to just shooting and hunting with the .58 caliber Zouave reproductions. But as we attempted to acquire additional loading components and equipment for the article, we found ourselves unable to do so. No one seemed to have anything available or in stock ... so I just decided to lump hunting with just about any .58 caliber rifled-musket together in one article. Early on in this article I did mention that I dislike the hollow-based Minie bullets. In my opinion, they are a horrible hunting bullet ... easily distorted by the pressure created by as little as 70-grains of black powder. For most skirmish shooters ... just being able to keep hits on a man-sized silhouette at 100-yards might be “great accuracy” with a rifled-musket. Still, it’s hardly “acceptable hunting accuracy”.

Personally, I›ve found finding an accurate hunting load for one of the big-bore muzzle-loaded rifled-muskets easier done with the good ol’ patched round ball than a hollow-based conical bullet. If you do hunt with one of these older-style .58 caliber percussion ignition frontloaders, drop us an e-mail at the following address and share your load ... how it shoots ... how you’ve compensated for the windage non-adjustable rear sight ... how your rifled-musket snd load has performed on game - and we will pass it on to our readers. namlhunt@gmail.com

Scopes On Traditional Muzzleloaders

What we now call a “riflescope” was once referred to as a “telescopic rifle sight”. And whether you feel they belong on a muzzleloader or not ... there’s one truth about what most now just call a “scope”. And that is ... Rifle Optics Were Developed On Muzzleloaders!

The book shown at left was very likely one of the earliest books on shooting ... deadly accurate long range muzzle-loaded rifles ... and, yes, “telescopic rifle sights”. Author John R. Chapman actually began compiling the book in the late 1830’s ... and it was published in 1848.

Chapman was a “civil engineer” by trade, and was fascinated by the accuracy of several fairly recent (at that time anyway) American innovations - the development of the conical muzzle-loaded bullet ... and the muzzle-loaded rifles which shot them so precisely. In his book, he referred to a couple of the country’s top rifle makers - Edwin Wesson and Morgan James.

Both produced some of the most accurate longrange muzzleloading rifles of the 1840’s and 1850’s. The author of this book is also believed to have done much of the original blueprinting for the construction of some of the very first “telescopic rifle sights” ... which rifle maker Morgan James is believed to have built. Since the writing of this book began as early as 1837 or 1838, it is not only possible, but likely, that the first magnifying “riflescope” existed pre 1840.

Until the mid 1850’s, such optical sights were built to the shooter’s eyesight ... much like a pair of glasses. Consequently, the cost of such an early scope was often more than the cost of the rifle it was to be mounted on. In 1855, William Malcolm introduced the adjustable eye-piece, which allowed individual shooters to quickly and easily “focus” a scope to their eyesight. This innovation meant that the “Wm. Malcolm telescopic rifle sights” could be offered by general mercantile stores and by gunsmiths ... and made such optical rifle sights far more affordable.

In essence, long range muzzleloading was born during the 1840’s - with the perfection of both the “telescopic rifle sight” and longer (higher ballistic coefficient) conical bullets. Shooting rifles with a fast twist bore, and topped with an early scope, allowed many of the top shots to punch sub 2-inch groups at 200+ yards. With the outbreak of war between the North and the South in April 1861, many of these marksmen ... or “sharpshooters” ... became the very first true military snipers - most shooting scoped high grade muzzle-loaded target rifles ... including rifles built by Morgan James and Edwin Wesson. (It should be noted that John R. Chapman praised Wesson in his book as the most talented and skilled of all American muzzleloading rifle makers.) Back in the early 2000’s, I had the honor to work with an icon in the scope industry ... Jim Leatherwood ... to help Hi-Lux Optics to introduce an upscaled modern version of the long Wm. Malcolm «telescopic rifle sight». I now have the scopes on three of my traditional bullet shooting muzzleloaders. By the end of this month (June 2021) I turn 72 years old ... and my eyes are nothing like they were when I was in my prime. To properly place my shots ... I definitely need a scope!

My only complaint with the Hi-Lux Optics long Malcolm scope is that it is offered only in 6x. That’s great if a modern day muzzleloading shooter is looking to match the long-range accuracy achieved during the 1840s ... 1850’s ... and 1860’s - but the magnification is too great for a rifle being used to hunt deer and other big game when and where shots are likely to be inside of 100 yards. The field of view with these small 3/4” diameter long scopes is very limited, making it nearly impossible to find your intended target with a 6x magnification. For hunting, Hi-Lux Optics needs to offer this scope in 3x as well. I certainly hope someone with the company is reading this. - Toby Bridges

Editor’s Note

The preceding article was reprinted with permission from Traditional Muzzleloader Hunting the premier online source for traditional muzzleloading hunting. Please check them out at https://www.traditionalmlhunting.com/. Thanks again Toby for allowing us to feature your writing in the Skirmish Line.