How to figure out what load to use?

[Armando]

I went to the local rifle range to sight in my Hawken's 50cal today.

30yds.

I used 50gr of GOEX FFg (round ball) but I was not pleased with my group. Will play around some more but my question:

For deer (whitetail) what is a good load to use to sight in for 80-100yds? 100gr is what some folks recommend.

 

[oldude]

My 50 cal. load is 85 gr. for deer, but have seen pet loads between 70 and 100 gr. just depends on what your rifle likes and what your comfortable with.

 

[Grenadier1758]

What did the shot patches look like? Were they complete with a star shaped rays of fouling radiating from the ball? Were the patches frayed to the point of being nearly pieces of lint? Were there any holes along the lands worn into the patches?

We need to know more about your rifle, your round ball size, patch material, patch thickness, patch lubricant and your rifle's manufacturer along with barrel length, rate of twist and depth of rifling.

You should find a load between 70 and 90 grains of powder that gives you superb accuracy and it will also be suitable for deer hunting.

 

[burlesontom]

Are you new to BP rifles? there is more to shooting them than just pouring powder down the barrel and inserting a patched ball. I almost gave up on BP when I first started because I couldn't hit the side of the barn from the inside.

Turns out I was blowing my patches. Once I got better patch material I started shooting good groups. I learned how to shoot muzzle loaders from a manual written by Sam Fadala. He taught me what to look for and things to check.

Now if I load more than 70grs of powder I always insert one patch in the bore first then the patched ball. That first patch acts like a firewall and keeps the powder from burning up my ball patch. When I do this my ball patches look so good after firing you could almost reuse them.

A good hunting load would start at 70 grains and go to to around a 100grs for my use. Any more than that and I doubt it would burn all of it in my barrels.

Like the poster above me stated there are several things to check and look for.

 

[tenngun]

It’s good to start at a grain per caliber, but rarely does it work. Many .36 shoot well with 25-30 grains. As above a .50often does well 70-100. Mine shoots good with 60 3f.
As above make sure you have a good patch and ball combo. Then start with 50 grains and shoot five shot runs. Increase to 55 and so on. Find your smallest groups.
As you do more of it you can play the same way with different ball/ patch combos. Say a .490+ .18 or .15, then a .495 with a .10 or a .15, then on to a .50 if it will fit.
Then there is all the lubes, spit, lard, mink oil, bear grease, and endless combos. I can’t prove but think most guns have several best load combos.
For deeryou most powerful shot will look puny compared to any modren gun. No .50 will shoot as hard as a 30-30 at a hundred yards. Yet a through and through .50 shot from a ball in the 800-1100 FPS range turns deer French. Don’t push it beyond a hundred yards or so and you don’t have to load for bear. Think about smallest group at a hundred yards not muzzle velocity and you will get your Bambi.

 

[necchi]

If you want to do it right you "have to" do load development for "your" rifle and your loading regime.
Usually working charge loads in 5grn increments works best,, 50-55-60-65,,,
It takes some shooting to see what works best for you.
Keep in mind that you have to give each load change the same opportunity to prove itself.
What I mean is if you start at 50 with a clean rifle,, then move to 55 or 60 when the rifle is dirty from the previous shots,, well that's not a fair comparison. (get it?)
But with the 50 for a beginner you should be around 65-70grns,,
Believe me that "magnumitis" crap of a needed 100grns for BP round ball shooting rifles is hooey!!
It's not about hitting hard,, it's about accuracy and confidant placement of the accurate shot.

 

[F.G. Ford]

Hi,
Welcome to this great forum.
Please tell us more about your rifle.
How many shots has it seen?
New Lyman rifles don't settle in until after about 200 shots :shocked2:
That is expensive and time consuming. Also it deters from your confidence with the rifle.
Many, if not most barrels need a break in period. This issue often leaves the new owner not happy with his shiny new "smoke pole"
Also, don't take all suggestions as to what to do with your rifle, as gospel.
There are many wackos out there. Some will suggest something harmful to your gun, and think it is funny.
Dutch Shoultz's shooting instruction paper is invaluable to reach the most with your rifle.
Fred

 

[Dr5x]

Fox,
Not bad advice.
I would have avoided Bore Butter from its name alone..
A wise ? old smoke poler advised me to use Crisco Ciikung Goo which along with not being any help had me coming home from the country smelling like a fry cook or the survivor of a burning butcher shop.
I have never had that breaking in problem and several folk I converted to ML rifles presented them to me in brand new condition. On there other hand they were all T/C model Hawken style rifles and maybe they were delivered in a better condition.
I backed into the sport as something I could do with my son. He never had any interest but I was hooked.
I read everything from Sam Fadala to The Muzzleloading Caplock Rifle and found NOTHING to tell me how to break in a rifle or achieve any variety of accuracy.

I had a lot of free time back in them days so I spent a lot of it at a small the rifle range maling every mistake in and out of the books.
The biggest breakthrough was the realization that just because it was old time it didn't mean it was half ass. I came to realize that the old style rifles were a much more important part of people's lives and were probably quite accurate.
Witnessing a person in full Davey Crocket regalia lay shot after shot in a small group got me fired up.
When you know where each shot will land before you fire it causes the port at the range to become boring. That's when you begin coaching
Now I cannot see well enough to shoot, read or drive a car or even read the above I still get great joy from the reports of folks I have tried to help.


I stll kind of envy the newbies little celebrations as he makes the wee discoveries that lead him to the satisfaction of good shooting.

There was a bit on the MountainMen Series on the History Channel where this man named Hawk was teaching his 9 year old daughter to deer hunt with a crossbow. He explained why being accurate was good as "we don't want the deer to suffer. An accurate shot to the heart kills the deer all at once with no suffering".

One of my daughter had some property on the edge of a vast forest were much deer hunting was very popular and saw all sorts of examples where deer had died in some variety of agony from an infected wound caused by an inaccurate shot.

I hope that I an all,others teaching accuracy have done something to reduce that.

I do run on. Please excuse me.

Dutch

 

[Rifleman1776]

I went to the local rifle range to sight in my Hawken's 50cal today.

30yds.

I used 50gr of GOEX FFg (round ball) but I was not pleased with my group. Will play around some more but my question:

For deer (whitetail) what is a good load to use to sight in for 80-100yds? 100gr is what some folks recommend.

A lot of good advice posted so far. But, really, trying at only 30 yards won't tell you much. 50 to 75 yards is much better for working up a group. For whitetail deer hunting, a 100 gr. charge is more than is needed. Charges in the 60 to 80 gr. range will kill 'em just as ded out to about 100 yards.

 

[Dr5x]

The Olde Tymer's Rule of one and a half grain for each caliber which would indicate you are a bunch light for range work or 75 grains of eiter 2 or 3 FFF powder.
Another old timer's system for those without the above advanced math used above, was to place a ball in your hand and use as much powder as would cover the ball.
This seems a tad inexact method depending on the speed of the wind on ay given day.
My own experience goes with the old timer's first choice plus a bit more maybe 80 grains thereabout.

My two 45 Hawkens delighted would indicate 65 grins and fiddling about I ended up with 73 grains.

Further fiddling with the spout on my leather flask got it to where it consistently poured 73 grains of 3Æ’Æ’.

There is a right load for accuracy. The right load for a killing shot depends largely on placement.

A consistently self medicating subscriber who apparently hunted in that happy condition once reported that while squirrel hunting he came upon a deer which he and his self medication caused him to aim and shoot andd dropped the deer in its tracks using a .32 squirrel load that hit the deer an inch above a spot right between its eyes..

If you intend to hunt with your rifle I suggest that all your range work should be with the load you intend to use when in the field..

One of the dumbest remark I can think of is,'I'm zeroed in at 70 yards using such and such a load but when I'm going hunting I'm going to increase my load for a sure kill>"

ORProbable miss of the kill zone

If you can make it accurate at the range you really want to keep it accurate when tying to nail the might buck.


The usual suggestion I see is to begin at 50 grains and gradually work your way up. This will work. but before you do that try the one and a half grain per caliber. You'll probably end up there anyhow.

All this, of course assumes your patch thickness is near correct and you are not using too slick a lube..
.

It's all so complicated at first, but work out your variables and it's simple as anything else you do.

Dutch

 

[arcticap]

If you want to do it right you "have to" do load development for "your" rifle and your loading regime.
Usually working charge loads in 5grn increments works best,, 50-55-60-65,,,
It takes some shooting to see what works best for you.
Keep in mind that you have to give each load change the same opportunity to prove itself.
What I mean is if you start at 50 with a clean rifle,, then move to 55 or 60 when the rifle is dirty from the previous shots,, well that's not a fair comparison. (get it?)
But with the 50 for a beginner you should be around 65-70grns,,
Believe me that "magnumitis" crap of a needed 100grns for BP round ball shooting rifles is hooey!!
It's not about hitting hard,, it's about accuracy and confidant placement of the accurate shot.

I like what is written above here^^^^^^

I like to tell people that they're not shooting groups, they're shooting deer....
...AND that what concerns me the most is the 1st shot out of a cold, clean barrel.

If a person sights in their 1st shot with a zero that will reliably hit an inch or two high at 50 yards, then after that they can investigate
how their trajectory works out at different distances, in order to become familiar with the point of impact of their gun & load.

Some front sights are simply not conducive to shooting tight groups, especially at longer distances, because the sight is too large or coarse of a bead sight.

If a gun can keep the 1st shot from a clean barrel on a paper plate at most all of the anticipated hunting distances, then the size of the groups
can be thrown out the window once he's satisfied with the power and reliabilty of his load.
It's also better to use a little too much powder than not enough.
Some deer are larger than others and there should be enough power & velocity to make up for any shooter error or movement by a deer in an
actual hunting situation.
I think that he should be loading at least 80 grains of powder if he wants to kill deer out to 100 yards, perhaps even more if the accuracy is adequate.
Who wants to lose a deer due to a shot being deflected by a twig or heaven forbid...a deer bone?

 

[Zonie]

Speaking of finding a accurate powder load and then jacking it up to make a better "kill", I agree. It should not be done.

Doing that often ruins the good accuracy of the lighter powder load.

When shooting patched roundballs, the big gain in muzzle velocity often becomes a not so big of a gain downrange. That's because the faster the ball is at the muzzle, the faster it looses its velocity as it flys downrange.

Look at the graphs below.
They are showing a .50 caliber roundball with different powder loads measured against the velocity of the ball at various distances downrange.

The dots on the left side show the muzzle velocity.

Each dot to the right represents 20 yards of distance so from the left we have the velocity at 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 yards.

The 5th dot from the left shows the velocity at 80 yards.

Notice that the velocity at the muzzle increased from slightly over 1400 fps to over 1900 fps for a 500+ fps difference when going from a 50 grain powder load to 100 grains.

Now notice that when the powder load was changed from 50 grains to 100 grains, the velocity gain at 80 yards is only about 150 fps.

IMO, that small 150 fps gain is not worth doing if the accuracy of the larger powder load is worse than the lighter powder load.

 

[arcticap]

IMHO 50 grains is not a 100 yard hunting load for a .50 PRB no matter how accurate the rifle will shoot it.

Not unless someone wants to try for a head shot. LOL!

It should be about reasonable hunting accuracy, not target accuracy.
It's almost like comparing apples & oranges, unless the deer in the OP's part of North Carolina are really small.
Nonetheless the OP's question still involves deer hunting.
Extra powder could provide a margin of 15 or 20 extra yards of flatter shooting distance. People also don't always estimate distances accurately in the field.
What's wrong with desiring a flatter shooting load as long as deer kill zone accuracy can be maintained without needing to use Kentucky windage?

Whatever happened to the notion that many guns have 2 sweet spots, a target shooting sweet spot and a hunting load sweet spot?
Has that been forgotten about...?

 

[Griz44Mag]

Whatever happened to the notion that many guns have 2 sweet spots, a target shooting sweet spot and a hunting load sweet spot?
Has that been forgotten about...?

I don't think the gun knows what it is being pointed at...??
I practice and hunt with the same load. I am never confused what to load, or where to aim. Every range session, I shoot at 50-75-100 distances with the same load. I zero at 75, all shots shorter and longer than 75 still hit the boiler box. That makes things really simple. I tag each rifle with the load data where it shoots the best.

 

[Sparkitoff]

My .50's collectively like 80 grains FFFg for best accuracy and plenty powerful for deer hunting out to 100 yards.

 

[Zonie]

I agree.

The only reason I used the 50 grain load was to demonstrate how much the big gain in velocity at the muzzle is lost by the time the ball reaches 80 yards.

More along the line of a hunting load, using the 80 grain and 100 grain powder loads shows the ball velocity at 80 yards only gains about 60 fps by using the larger load.

I have seen muzzleloaders which can shoot very small groups with a 80 grain powder load shoot poorly with a 100 grain powder load.

Before just bumping up a powder load, the best idea is to go to the range and try it out.

Who knows? It might be just as accurate or it might even be more accurate.
One never knows without testing it.

 

[burlesontom]

I read everything from Sam Fadala to The Muzzleloading Caplock Rifle and found NOTHING to tell me how to break in a rifle or achieve any variety of accuracy.

I had never even heard of "breaking in a barrel" before I started reading ML forums. I have never broke a barrel in. They all seemed to shoot fine once you had a decent load and didn't blow the patch.

I have only killed two animals with BP rifles. A whitetail Buck with a Traditions Springfield Hawken shooting 75grs of 3F and patched ball and a cow Elk with a 54 caliber Cabelas Hawken loaded with a Lee Improved Minnie and 95grs of 2F. Both loads were more than powerful enough for the game I hunted. I think that Elk load would have shot through two Elk if they had of been side by side.

I didn't find the bullet that killed the Elk. But I did get the .490 ball out of the deer. I shot through the brisket and the ball tore up the heart and right lung and slid down the hide to the rump. I didn't find it until I was skinning the deer. I still have that flattened out ball too.

 

[tenngun]

I think I first read about it in San Falada or George Norton’s book, back in the 70s. It was said best groups would happen at about the 100th shot. The patch ”˜lapped’ the barrel in to its best fit. Then at about 1000 shots the patch lapped it out. I’ve not seena diffence my self, but I load from a horn to a measure, that may be a little overly one shot under full the next, I shoot the ball that looks smooth out of the mold with out ever miching them or weighing them. Just a v notch rear sight and blade front, so... I don’t get the best my guns can do. Yet them deer ”˜spout black blood’ and die pretty quick.

 

[M. De Land]

It's pretty simple really, just get a good muzzle loading book like from Lyman and start testing their suggest accuracy loads taking note of ball size and patch thickness.
Then just experiment about five grain of powder either side of the recommendations and you will usually find a good load quickly.
Next, if not satisfied experiment with powder granulation,patch lube, ball size and patch thickness until you get what you want.
Usually percussion caps make little difference although the weakest brisance(flash) are the most accurate.

 

[nkbj]

When developing a round ball hunting load...
1. Decide upon the power level and what accuracy at the distance you want to have.
2. Try 2F, 3F, lubes, cloths, paper over powder, hard card, lubed wad, corn meal, loose fit, tight fit, biting your lip, your best Jack Elam stare, what ever works.

When you're jacking up the power and trying to get accuracy to boot it isn't finding what your piece prefers. It's making it sit up and bark when you tell it to.