You wouldn't want to use it with a bayonet. What with the holes for the side nails, tang nail, the morticing for the lock, trigger and barrel. Then adding a ruddy great hole for the loading screw, there was hardly enough wood left to hold the thing in one piece.
A specialist sniper (or snipper in period) weapon but not fit for general light infantry use and abuse I feel. Their rude and licentious successors 200 years later were still abusing their weapons. Opening bottles with SLR cocking handles and SMG magazine lips.
The later Baker rifle was an english near copy of the german jaeger rifles of Fergusons time and were a sounder light infantry choice. Almost as fast as a musket to load and fire with carbine paper cartridges and nearly as accurate as Fergusons rifle with the separately loaded patch wrapped ball.
Regarding range, it would carry a ball many hundreds of yards. However, the arching trajectory of the (in modern terms) slow and heavy ball means that accurate fire at any distance above 300 yards requires one to need to know the range very accurately. At 400 yards the holdover is on feet, at 600 yards it is in yards. Now on a marked rifle range muzzleloading rifles are used at remarkable distances but an error of 50 yards in guessing the distance to your target will send your bullet well over or under the target. Add in fear, fatigue, lack of sleep, hunger and cold plus a difference in elevation and even these praiseworthy results will go to pot. An extra issue, in anything other than a small unit action, is that the smoke from both sides will quickly obscure the target. There was a good reason to retain smoothbores for the common infantry. After the first volley the visible range is well within massed musket accuracy.
Small unit actions are all very well, and necessary, but Light Infantry at that time had to be able to stand with the normal infantry on the field of a major battle and this means a bayonet was vital. The german jaegers carried a hanger in lieu so you must have Ferguson equipped troops carrying a viable sword separately.
A fine gun, modern reproductions have shown that it functioned well and fast but I doubt it was the answer to the light infantry question and very expensive.
