which one the trade musket or the double barrel shotgun?

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Fast reloading is not in the muzzleloading vocabulary. If you're going to hunt any small game or birds other than turkey, the double barrel is your only choice. SxS 12 ga. for me.
 
Both are kind of pricey (at least to me), but givin' my druthers I would go with having the second barrel of the 12 gauge SxS shotgun.
 
You might want to look at www.trackofthewolf. com . They have some real nice single barrel guns. The fowler can be got with a 20 or 24ga barrel, and latter on you can have rifle barrels that will fit in. Just an idea. Oh, I like both guns.
 
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I have a Jackie Brown trade gun and a couple of double guns.
All are fun but the trade gun is better balanced, lighter and just easier to shoot. A double sounds good until you have to lug it around .
Having taken squirrel, pigeon, coon, possum, turkey and deer with this gun I do not believe that a larger bore or second barrel would have been a significant advantage.

IronHand
 
When shooting a bp sxs, be sure to maintain the charge in the second barrel by tamping the over shot card back in place. The recoil of the other barrel will dislodge the shot charge.
And that faint familiar sound of shot rolling out the end of your barrel will be real. And your fall turkey that you already shot a handful of feathers out of will jump up at your feet and fly across the river and disappear. And your second barrel will have that distinct <thooom> sound of loose powder burning. And your tag will make thin broth.
 
TOW has 4 trade gun kits and 2 fowler kits. In their Tullie kits they also offer rifled barrels that will replace the smoothbore if you want. One of the OP's question was single or SxS , so I was giving another dealer that offered something a little different. I have used a SxS for years and yes, like anything else there's a couple of things to watch out for, but it's like anything muzzleloading, watch what you do. And I never found SxS MLers to be very heavy - they're lighter than MLing rifles. My 54 Hawken flint with a 32" barrel 1" across has to weigh twice what the SxS weighs. If you're shooting a 12ga use 10ga OP and OS cards. A 20ga would use 16ga OP and OS cards. Then your shot won't come loose.
 
It really depends on what you want to do. If you want the enjoyment of learning the ins and outs of a flinter, then a trade gun would be good. You can take deer, and you can learn to take turkey, but waterfowl are a no go. If you want a highly versatile, black powder gun, then the 12 gauge, caplock, SxS is the gun for you. The Pedersoli comes with Modified Choke/Cylinder Bore barrels, which gives you Turkey (left barrel). ducks (left barrel with bismuth), Deer (round ball in right barrel), and all the upland birds and the small game like rabbits and squirrels.

As for loads coming "loose" from recoil, that's not a real problem between shots, shooting one barrel followed by the other, and you can double check when you reload if you've only fired one barrel. You can also load them in such a manner that the shot column comin loose from the powder isn't a factor. A simple paper cartridge to hold the shot is one method.

LD
 
I've used about anything you can think of as wads, I keep coming back to plastic shot wads with 1 1/8 cups covered by a thick cardboard wad. Never had one loosen in the other barrel or had any problems with plastic left in the bore.
 
Loyalist Dave said:
It really depends on what you want to do. If you want the enjoyment of learning the ins and outs of a flinter, then a trade gun would be good. You can take deer, and you can learn to take turkey, but waterfowl are a no go. If you want a highly versatile, black powder gun, then the 12 gauge, caplock, SxS is the gun for you. The Pedersoli comes with Modified Choke/Cylinder Bore barrels, which gives you Turkey (left barrel). ducks (left barrel with bismuth), Deer (round ball in right barrel), and all the upland birds and the small game like rabbits and squirrels.

As for loads coming "loose" from recoil, that's not a real problem between shots, shooting one barrel followed by the other, and you can double check when you reload if you've only fired one barrel. You can also load them in such a manner that the shot column comin loose from the powder isn't a factor. A simple paper cartridge to hold the shot is one method.

LD
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well I mainly hunt squirrels and deer but I also want to try some waterfowl and take some rabbits as well! plus I already own a flintlock rifle and it's my first one I built from a kit year before last and finally took a young doe last year with it so now I love the flintlocks! but I also wasn't opposed to the sxs percussion as the extra shot did look tempting to have on the ready! but what I like was the fact of having the experience of what our ancestors experienced using the old technology they had back then to hunt with so but yeah these two guns was about maybe all I could afford to purchase and that's with using my credit card plus cash on a different card to hopefully make this dream happen!
 
Jack, use whatever type of wad you want, but I personally wouldn't use plastic wads. After all, you're shooting a BP gun so why not use fiber wads as everyone did for a 100 years ? If there's a piece of plastic you didn't see and remove and BP fowling is under it, the barrel will end up pitted and rust. The reason most guys get into shooting BP is because they like doing it the old fashion way - at least that's the reason I did and fiber wads are fun and the old time way of doing it. I watch guys with new inline rifles come out once a year at the club to sight them in for deer hunting. After 4 or 5 shots the sabot with a plastic wad won't go down the barrel because of the plastic fowling they didn't clean out between shots. I just feel plastic and BP don't mix. JMHO Paul
 
If you decide on a double, 10 gauge will give you more power load options for waterfowl, and you can load it down for small game like rabbits and squirrels and birds as well. A 10 gauge muzzleloader will give you close to modern 12 gauge performance.
 
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