For some reason one thing most posters on "musket ball" threads seem to omit is that as today shotguns were also used with solid shot, balls in the old days. Shotguns also came in sizes not used today such as 14 gauge. For those that don't know, the "gauge" size of a shotgun is the amount of lead balls that fit that bore that could be made from one pound of lead. Hence you could only make 12 lead balls from a pound of lead for a 12 gauge shotgun. 10 balls from a 10 gauge and so on. The exception is 410 gauge which is really a .41 caliber firearm. There were also a plethora of foreign smoothbore and rifled guns from countries such as Germany, France, Italy, etc. which were brought to this country by immigrants, and some of these used calibers not used in England or the U.S.. And forget those from Africa or the Orient, they used very odd calibers although these are not often found here in the U.S.. Besides all these variables, let's not exclude the many often very large caliber pistols used right up to the Civil War which also left many "musket balls" in the ground for us to find. Therefore it is not really possible to say if a found ball came from a musket or pistol in many cases, or a shotgun in some, or a foreign musket or hunting gun in others. By the way, I used to shoot an antique 14 gauge side by side percussion shotgun and .69 caliber balls fit it pretty well with a medium patch. There are probably fifty or so of these in the woods where I grew up from my target practice and deer hunting. (I never got one with my 14 gauge, I was never really very good with a shotgun with balls). If I find an old ball, I am happy with "well I found an old ball, who knows where it came from or what it was fired from" and don't bother with conjecture. Minnie balls and some conical bullets are very identifiable but the round balls are not.
i know the last one is a musket ball because of the ramrod mark on it but are the other ones musket balls or are the just buckshot or something?
