Such a gun is excellent for hunting in an area where the State and County allow rifles, but the Corps of Engineers says you can only use shotguns on their land. Here's the kicker... Rifled shotguns are perfectly fine seeing as they are shotguns, but once you put rifling in a muzzleloader, it becomes a rifle so you can't use it. I had a lease with some friends where the landowner was ok with anything legal and our only restriction was that we not shoot his cows, but then decided to increase lease fees from $900 for the 3 of us to hunt, to $1800 PER hunter. And the sad thing is that he is probably getting it too. I can't afford it so will be hunting COE land, and working on getting permission to hunt a couple friends property, where I will be using rifled guns since it is legal.
The smoothrifle is also excellent at frustrating you when it decides it wants to play with your emotions, like mine does on occasion. Now I can get consistent 3-4" groups at 50-60yds. :ast time out, I decided to try 100yds, and placed the ball perfectly dead center of the 2" bullseye on the very first shot, and then failed to hit an 8x11" piece of paper with the next 7 shots. I then started clipping the outside edges at random, before it got too dark and I packed up and went home frustrated. I can hold a 2-3" group with my rifled .54 at 100 on a good day, and 4-5" at 100 on a bad day, but this smoothrifle is something else. Kept within 60yds, I have no trouble with it whatsoever, but I am still trying to figure out what I can do to extend my range and consistency with ball with it.
With shot, I mostly use #6s, because it is what I have quite a bit of due to using it in loading shells. Yes, it is lead only, no steel or anything else that will scratch my bore. I get decent patterns that I trust out to 30-35yds on rabbit/squirrel with 9/10oz shot, and then double the amount of shot when going after turkey and get a good fairly tight pattern that passes the tuna can test out to 35yds also, but seems to pretty much fall apart by the time it gets to 40-45yds.
So I for one think that this smoothrifle business can be workable, and even have some advantages over a fowler due to the increased accuracy with PRB, but in the end, you sacrifice some accuracy since you are giving up your rifle, and you sacrifice handling that you had with a fowler, in exchange for being able to use one gun to do most, but not all, of the jobs that the other two types allow you to do somewhat better. In my case, where I would use a rifle for everything if allowed, it works well. Most spots in the COE area dont allow shots over 75 yds, so I'm giving up very little over a rifle, and I've never been much of a wingshot anyway, so not much loss over a shotgun either. For an area where you need longer range, or a shooter who is a good wingshot, this probably isn't the best gun out there.
