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.50 cal receipe for eastern Whitetails?

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Jay Gardner

40 Cal.
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Need a good (strong) recepie for shooting eastern whitetails in Michigan and Indiana. I am shooting a .50 cal PRB (.490 ball) Hawken with plenty of barrel using FFF powder.

ThanX
 
If you're asking about how much of that 3F to use, I'd start on the bench with 60 grains and go up and down in 5 grain increments, looking for the most accurate load.
If you need to know about patching and lubes, tell us what kind of barrel: rate of twist, width of barrel, length, brand, etc.
Ain't none of us can read minds. :grin:
 
Doublegun said:
Need a good (strong) recepie for shooting eastern whitetails in Michigan and Indiana. I am shooting a .50 cal PRB (.490 ball) Hawken with plenty of barrel using FFF powder.

ThanX


I settled on the following hunting load in .50cal TC Hawkens:

90grns Goex 3F
Oxyoke prelubed wonderwad
.018" TC prelubed pillow ticking
Hornady .490
 
I use 70 gr. FFFg for a hunting load in the two .50s that I use. I haven't shot any Whitetail with them but it will drop a Mulie in it's tracks.

Some years ago I shot a large mulie doe. She was about 70 yards away and angled towards me. The ball shattered the shoulder blade broke a rib, traveled through both lungs and broke a lower rib on the opposite side. The ball/pancake lodged just under the skin. She went down immediately.

You should be able to get a clean kill with anything from 60 grains on up. Just find the load that gives you the best accuracy at the range you want to shoot at.
 
I throw about 85gr FFg in my .50 percussion and it gets pass-throughs. With 3F you outght to be able to back it down to 70 to 80 gr and have a plenty stout load. Try several in that range and go with the more accurate of the them. Other folks' loads may not be what your particular rifle wants, but are a good starting point.
 
It comes in on Saturday in Ky, I am STOKED!! I just hope I can sneak down to go!!

Good luck and take some pics if you do any good.

I shoot 80gr FFF with PRB.

wess
 
I'm usin' 75 grains of FFFg with a 490 ball and 0.018" pillow tickin'. I'm also lubin' it with Sno-Seal, which is basically beewax, softened with mineral oil. :winking:
 
I use: .490 RB
.015 patch
Moose snot lube
75grns 3fff goex
Works for me...
snake-eyes :hmm:
 
Thanks for the advice. I was thinking along the same lines - starting with 75 gr and working up. I figure I'll shoot a 3-ball group, running a wet/dry patch between shots, working my way up 5-gr. at a time. Sound like a plan?

By the way Jaqua's in Findlay, Ohio has a very nice .54 Browning Mountian Rifle for sale. I know that these are sought after - I am not interested but one of you might be.

Thanks again,

Doublegun
 
Doublegun said:
Thanks for the advice. I was thinking along the same lines - starting with 75 gr and working up. I figure I'll shoot a 3-ball group, running a wet/dry patch between shots, working my way up 5-gr. at a time. Sound like a plan?

If you have the time and enough powder, patch and ball- I'd work up a load using 5-shot groups.
You can see from target pictures of my patch lube exercise that, often, a 3-shot group would not have been nearly as informative as a 5-shot group.
[url] http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/198370/[/url]

Throw a flyer in a 5-shot group and it's obviously a flyer. Throw a flyer in a 3-shot group and it's harder to tell if it was a flyer or just part of the group.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Don't shortchange yourself so soon, Doublegun... what I mean is, as was suggested by others, start even lower than the "75 grains and working up" idea. Honestly, try 60 and then work up. If I had taken the same approach with my gun (and remember that they're all different!) and STARTED at 75, I would have taken a long time to come around to what some of my guns like best, if indeed I would have ever come around to it, which is 70 grains of FFFg. Now, in FFg, those same guns prefer right at 90 grains. So, it was hard for me to imagine going down to 70, I really thought I'd lose power and range and trajectory. I lost nothing of the sort. In fact, I am saving powder and avoiding bruises with every shot.

Give it a try before you just dismiss it out of hand. I think you'll be glad you did.
 
Now you have me thinking (I hate when that happens)... how does adding 5 gr. of powder effect velicity of a .490 ball?

Also, when testing different loads how often do you run a wet patch - every 5 shots? What is a good routine in terms of shooting, wet patch, clean?

As always, thanks.

Doublegun
 
run a spit patch up/down the bore several times after each shot. get some ballistol, try 6:1 or 7:1 mix. get a scale and weigh them balls for uniformity. within .5 grain. group balls together separate. ie, for my .54 i separate balls like this 223.3 -223.8 ....223.8-224.3 ect. it takes some time but is fun. i bought some denim fabric at a store my wife goes to. went in with a micrometer and went to work. i bought it in 1/2 yard bunches. cut strips about 15-18" long by 1 1/2" wide and soak in ballistol solution. let sit over night. roll up and put away in film canister. try different thicknesses at the range. chopper.
 
Adding five grains of powder to a charge in a 50 cal. rifle really depends on how much powder you have in the gun already, and how long the barrel is to determine how much more velocity you may get. You reach a point where the amount of velocity gained does not justify the additional powder simply because it may only be adding to recoil, and is burning outside the muzzle, or falling to the ground unburned. The RB has only so much weight, or mass, and you can't add anything to it, to delay barrel time, or increase chamber pressures. BP is a progressive burning powder, which means it continues to burn as it moves down the barrel. It doesn't detonate like smokeless powder so that the peak pressure is contained in the chamber, and cartridge casing of the gun. One of the reason you see half round, half octagon barrels is because gunmakers wanted the extra metal for the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the length of the barrel to protect the gun from rupturing if too much powder was used in the heat of battle. With today's metallurgy, there is little reason to worry about such things happening to a barrel made of modern metals, but the shape persists because of tradition and appearance. The only rubtured barrel I have seen in the last 35 years was a barrel on a commercially made rifle where the dovetail slots in the bottom of the barrel were cut too deep on a .54 cal gun, creating a thin spot in the barrel at the keyway, that gave way under pressure. I am sure there have been other barrel failures, but they are now relatively rare, and almost always have an easy-to-see explanation for why the barrel gave way.

So, we can't tell you how much more velocity a given 5 grain increment of powder will give you. If you have a particular load, there are plenty of loading manuals with velocity charts in them for 50 cal. rifles that can give you an idea of what velocity you can expect in your gun. The only way to know the exact velocity in your gun is to shoot the loads over a chronograph to get exact measurements of velocity.
 
Here's my load:
.50 GPR caplock
.490 ball
75 gr 2f Goex
blue ticking
Crisco

I took a buck last week with this load. It took out both lungs and knocked him off his feet. The ball was under the hide on the other side. 60 yards.

-SHOOEY!
 
Shooey said:
Here's my load:
.50 GPR caplock
.490 ball
75 gr 2f Goex
blue ticking
Crisco

I took a buck last week with this load. It took out both lungs and knocked him off his feet. The ball was under the hide on the other side. 60 yards.

-SHOOEY!

Grats on your harvest Shooey. :thumbsup:
 
hi all just got on today and have beem reading the posts I use 80 grains of fff3 and a 370 maix ball I shoot a GPH in 50 cal.
reason for the maxes are I hunt in clear cuts and can get shots out to 100 yards on deer and elk hunts run together here. well have fun tom
 
Yesterday a .490 PRB over 70 grains of 2f Goex went clear thru both lungs and both sides of a big Illinois whitetail at 100 yards. He took 3 steps.
 
My load was 70gr FFFg, .495RB. 80 yd shot. Hit him in the neck on the first shot, through the shoulder on the second from the same range. Both balls stayed in the deer.

8pt11-15-06_2.jpg
 

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