When we were kids our first guns (after.22's) were muzzle loaders. I had a cut down .69 caliber Harper's Ferry 1842 musket that I used as a shotgun. My brother had a big honking English percussion cap double barrel shotgun that he got cheaply, billed as a "duck gun" by the seller.
We had them because they were cheap to shoot. Percussion caps were cheap, Black powder or DuPont bulk smokeless powder, toilet paper wadding, and a dipperful of mixed shot from a drum of shot a reloader gave us.
We only loaded my brother's shotgun once or twice to its purported proper load as the kick was tremendous-- as was the expense since we were putting in a lot of powder and shot. He normally used a slight;ly bigger load than I put into the musket -- more than enough for pheasant.
We once got on our hands on a shotgun gage, a little brass triangle that you put in the muzzle and read the gage and choke off of marks on the triangle. That sucker just fell right to the bottom of my brother's double barrel, so all we knew was that it was more than 10gauge.
But...we did learn follow through. You have to with a muzzle loader as there is so much delay between trigger pull and actual firing.
The Taurus .454 Casull has a ported barrel to reduce muzzle flip. Does the Ruger? Gun Week just did a feature on it recently.