hunting loads

[woodguy]

I'm not a hardcore traditionalist. I hunt with a muzzleloader because up here it's way more pleasant in muzzleloading season in Oct than centerfire season in Nov, there are way fewer hunters out and anyway I do about 1/2 my hunting in an area where centerfires are not allowed. I use a traditional caplock [TC Renegade] because I just can't consider the modern inlines as real firearms They don't fit the values I have for a well made gun. I mean if you have to have a plastic stock you could at least eliminate the casting seam and apply the tradtional standards for wood to metal fit to your wood to plastic fit.
I use conical bullets because they're accurate and effective in my gun. The downside is I don't get a through and through shot. The bullet always stops just below the skin on the farside of my deer. Given I grew up with the easy tracking provided by hunting in snow in centerfire season up here I'd apreciate having an exit wound to provide a better blood trail through the bush in Oct.
I've considered going to the sabot bullets in hopes the extra velocity of the lighter bullets would would give me an exit wound. Since most of my shots are at short range MOA accuracy isn't an issue so I'm not too worried about the effect of barrel twist. I am wondering how much I can step up my powder charge with the lighter bullets. Can I get enough velocity to get proper expansion from those jacketed bullets.
I asked a bunch of buckskinners at a local gunshow about this and the reactions ranged from total blanks to wanting to tar and feather me for heresy. Hope I can find either the info or where to look for it here.
Thanks
Jamie

 

[jtmattison]

Welcome to the forum!

Before we can help we need to know what you are currently shooting...Caliber, powder charge, and bullet.

Sabots aren't the answer to your problem.

Let us know what you're shooting and we'll offer suggestions.

HD

 

[paulvallandigham]

WADR, I believe you are "solving" your problem the wrong way.

Have you not fired plain old, pure lead, Round Balls?? A Renegade, in .54 caliber is shooting a 230 grain Round ball, which is more than half an OUNCE in weight! Any load from 70-90 grains of Black Powder( FFg or FFFg) will put a ball through a deer, on a broadside shot, out to 120 yds. And, the ball will expand at any velocity, giving you a much large primary wound channel.

Short of hunting Wild Boar, and Bear, I can't think of any grass muncher that would require you to use a conical bullet, much less those darn Sabots. Sabots were made for the In-L*&%es- a gun that is NOT discussed on this forum. It requires shallow rifling, with a fast ROT.(Rate of Twist rifling). Your Renegade, if its a .54, probably has either a 1:48, or 1:66" ROT. It is intended to be shot using RB, not conicals.

Now, a Lyman Great Plains Hunter has a 1:32 ROT, with shallow rifling, and IS designed to shoot conicals. The Lyman Great Plains Rifle, however, has the slower Rate of twist( 1:66") deep rifling grooves, and is designed to shoot RB.

You don't tell us what powder charge you are using, or even what powder you are using. If you read through the Percussion Topic, and the Muzzleloading Hunting topic, you will find plenty of recommendations for loads for your Renegade.

I suggest that you also do your own comparative Penetration testing with whatever projectile you choose to use. Years, ago, when my .50 caliber rifle was new, I did a series of tests using 1 inch Pine boards, spaced 1 inch apart. Now, anyone familiar with lumber knows that those 1 inch boards are actually cut to 3/4-7/8" depending on who is doing the cutting. But, they are NOT true 1 inch thick boards. To compare my new MLer with known deer cartridges, I fired test bullets in to my " box", using my .30-06, and some hi-speed .22 Stingers. Then I fired the same RB using a light target load, and then a heavy "Hunting load". I also fired a .45-70 round, and then a .50-130-550 Sharps round into the box, to see what real penetration was.

Results:Both .50 caliber loads went through 6 boards and hit the 7th. This was shooting at 20 feet. The Extra velocity from the heavier powder charge gave me no more penetration.

To my surprise, the .22 RF Stingers went through 3 boards. The .30-06 180 grain Jacketed round nose soft point went through 8 boards. The 405 grain .45-70 jacketed soft point went through 11 boards- the last 3 sideways- and cracked the 12th board. The .50-140-550 grain bullet a cast lead round nose, went through all 12 boards- the last 4 sideways, and into a railroad tie behind the box about 1 1/2".

My first deer was killed at between 35 and 40 yards, with a shot behind her right leg, that broke a rib going in, went through the lower lobes of both lungs, and some of the major arteries coming out of the hear, breaking another rib going out. The first rib had a nice, 1/2 in hole through it. The second rib had a hole larger than 5/8"- probably .65 caliber, or larger. She stumbled down the side of the ravine I was on, making it to the bottom before she made a U-turn and piled up dead.

I am an excellent tracker, and could have easily tracked her in the leaf debris in the ravine that she kicked up, but in this case, there was also blood spurting out on bushes, and the forest clutter on both sides of her as she was moving. A 4 year old could have tracked her.

She kept breaking her right wrist, leaving a drag mark of about 8 inches long, which was caused by that elbow hitting the broken end of that rib on the right side. I had never seen the tracks of an animal with this particular injury, so that kept my personal attention.

I am sure that few other hunters would bother to notice, much less be interested in knowing why she was " Flinching" as she went down the steep side of the ravine. I make these correlations so that on future tracks, when I see this kind of movement in tracks, I have some idea how badly, and where the deer is injured.

Accurate placement of a lead Round Ball is going to kill more deer, quickly, than shooting some conical at lots of speed. With the .54, 80 grains of FFFg powder will give you a trajectory, gun zeroed at 110 yards, that is about 3.5" high or low from your point of aim all the way out to 125 yards. With open sights, that is about as far as you should ever be needing to take a shot at a deer. Both RBs and conicals can kill a deer( or a human) at many times those ranges, so always be sure of your background. But, with the Ballistics coefficient of all round balls, they are peculiarly suited to ML hunting conditions, and most shooter's ability to hit anything using open sights on their rifles. If you put a scope sight on a MLer, not because failing eyesight makes a scope sight the only way you can continue to enjoy the sport, but because you want to make it " easier", you may as well just shoot a modern rifle. The whole point of hunting with any MLer is to impose limitations on yourself, so that any game you bag is a trophy to be remembered. :thumbsup:

 

[renovato]

As a long time conical hunter, I'll share something I learned. I used to worry about having enough blood trail to track too. I used to think that tracking an animal was just part of hunting with a muzzleloader. Until I started using round balls. I have not had to track another animal since. They have always dropped within a couple dozen yards of being hit. I've heard a lot of hunters say that they never had to track an animal until they switched to conicals or sabots. Needless to say I'm an ex-conical user now! I don't know why the round ball works so much better for me, but it does. It proves that the paper numbers don't tell the whole story.

 

[hanshi]

I concur with you both. In the 1981 issue of the Gun Digest, there was an article by Robert K. Sherwood entitled "The cylindrical Bullet Kills Better". In this article Mr. Sherwood totally trashes the whole concept of prb (patched round ball) and sings high praises to conicals. He "claims" great experience with muzzleloaders and accuses prb of all but bouncing off deer. Where his logic comes from is beyond me. Mr. Sherwood's article still makes me see red even after all these years.

I've killed deer with .45, .50 and .54 prb and most of the shots resulted in complete penetration. Of those that did not, some went the length of the animal and couldn't be found or were found flattened out like a silver dollar just under the skin on the off side. Though I've never heard others speak of this, my shots on deer (almost) invariably exhibited an awesome entrance wound and smaller exit wound. Concerning the few exceptions, they were profound. I remember one taken with a .50 prb at about 30 yards. The entry wound was impressive but the exit wound looked as if a rat had been at work. This next is somewhat gruesome but I'll mention it to illustrate a point. A large amount of tissue was blown out the far side and landed in a nearby pine sapling. Since I stay on stand for a while after my first shot I began to notice what I took to be a Cardinal in a tree where the deer was shot. It seemed curious that a bird would stay for so long in one spot without moving. When I went to retrieve the deer, I was stunned to see a large amount of internal tissue glopped over a tree branch. The deer was just inside the brush line having made, maybe, 3 or 4 jumps before going down. So much for conical vs prb. In my 45+ years of muzzleloading I've yet to fire a conical at any animal.

 

[Rancocas]

The one and only conical that I've ever used in a muzzleloader was in the replica 1861 Springfield .58 that I borrowed in the mid-1980's for my very first time muzzleloader hunt. If you can call it a conical - I used a traditional 515 grain Minie bullet. That minie ball went through and through. I shot a small buck broadside through the lungs with it from about 40 yards, but the deer ran about 50 yards before it dropped.
Since then I've only used roundballs. My last deer I hit broadside, a little high, from about 60 yards. The .50 ball broke a rib going in, passed through the top of both lungs, and broke another rib going out. That buck ran about 40 yards before dropping.
My deer/wild boar/blackbear hunting load is a patched .490 rd. ball over 70grs. of 3F real blackpowder. I restrict myself to shots of no more than 75 yds.
With that same load, the last pig I shot was a 250 pound sow. I hit her broadside behind the shoulder, breaking a rib on the entry wound. The ball stopped against the hide on the far side. It was about a 50 yd. shot. She ran off into a thicket. I gave her a half hour to stiffen up and die, then I carefully went in after her. I found her dead just 25 feet inside the thicket. She had turned around to face me, but she died before I came for her.

 

[tg]

"I use conical bullets because they're accurate and effective in my gun"

Evidently they are not,or we wouldn't be here now, all I can say is get in with both feet and work up a load for PRB you will have a good deer gun out to the limits of open iron sights.

 

[musketman]

The downside is I don't get a through and through shot. The bullet always stops just below the skin on the farside of my deer.

Forgive me for being so blunt, but when you put a half inch diameter hole through the body of a deer, whether or not the bullet exits or not is a moot point, the deer is still going to go down.

The key to dropping a deer is shot placement, not brute power, a well places shot with a lesser projectile will drop a deer in it's tracks.

You say you don't want like inlines, but then you want to use inline inspired sabots and jacketed bullets. There are many pure lead bullets that will work wonderfully out of your Renagade, I know, I shot a .54 T/C Renagade for years.

Alas, the final decision is yours, but don't sell the other projectiles short before trying them, you may be surprised.

 

[Finnwolf]

Woody, I feel for ya man, ya came looking for answers but ya stumbled into the PC police department. :surrender:

You're trying to dupicate centerfire performance with a muzzleloader - but they aren't comparable.
1st step is you need to stop expecting deer to fall where they stand - that rarely happens even when you hit them right. A muzzleloader does not kill the way your '06 does. That was a tough hurdle for me too. In 15 years of CF hunting, I chose my shots carefully and never had to fire twice. Never had to learn the fine art of tracking. To this day, it is hard for me to think about an animal suffering (like the bone scraping story above) without feeling anxious about it. Makes me even more selective with the shots I take. :shake:
ML hunting is different - you need to expect to track deer after the shot and be good at it. Yes, the animal is going to suffer a little bit more but nothing like what mother nature does. Watch video of a pack of coyotes or wolves taking a deer down or look at photos of starved deer and you'll change your mind a bit. :barf:

You've got two ways to go here - either buy some roundballs and a good book on tracking or get yourself a new 1 in 28" twist barrel if you're gonna shoot conicals. You're shooting a ML for a reason - my advice is to learn some woodsmanship skills and get into prb's -- a .54 ball is plenty for deer. Besides, it's cheaper than a new barrel and have you priced those fancy conicals lately? Over a buck a shot! Won't be practicing much at those prices! :youcrazy:

 

[hanshi]

there is no better deer killer than the prb. It can be equaled (sometimes) but probably not surpassed. Over many decades of deer hunting I've taken deer with more centerfire calibers than I can easily list. Let's just say everything from the .22 Hornet to the .338 Win. Mag. & the .243 to the .45/70 and that's just for starters. I've never had a deer hit with a prb run so far before it dropped that I couldn't have hit it with a stone throw. In the thick stuff where you have to step on them before you see them, I've followed blood trails that averaged no more than 15 - 20 yards or there about. About one out of three fall in their footie prints, about the same ratio as with centerfires. Often I watch them leap away and fall within eyesight.

I see no need for you to go to sabots. If your rifling twist is too fast you may be stuck with lead conicals. Otherwise I'd suggest prb for its ability to penetrate, expand and drop deer fast. If you hit them well they (may) run off a bit. Don't necessarily expect them to fall where hit. In the woods you can usually hear them "crash" just as they get out of sight. At least that has been my experience. Try them and see if you like them.

 

[longcruise]

I use conical bullets because they're accurate and effective in my gun. The downside is I don't get a through and through shot. The bullet always stops just below the skin on the farside of my deer.

A lot depends on what conical you are using. If it's one of the popular hollow point designs, then it may be expanding too much. A good design is a round nosed flat point. IOW, the bullet has a pretty wide and flat meplat. Somewhere in the .40 range in a .50 cal gun. The Lyman Great Plains mold throws out a well designed hunting bullet. With a bullet like that, you want to prevent expansion if pass through is desired. One way to do it is to cast your own bullets with the front .25 inch or so cast from wheel weight and the balance from pure lead. Put the bullets in the oven at about 400 deg for an hour or so and then dump them into cold water. Now you will have a hard non expanding flat point that will create a good wound channel and has a much higher probablity of exiting the animal.

I'm a prb hunter and will join the others in reassuring you that the prb will do the job too.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Welcome Jamie,

As Finnwolf mentioned, you're in the wrong spot if you want tips on conicals or sabots. This is a purpose-run traditional muzzleloading forum. Many folks hereabouts use and can help you with either but this isn't the best place for imparting such help.

But you're welcome and encouraged to pull up a log and join us for ongoing m/l discussions. I've used a T/C Renegade in .54 for years with 90gr FFg and a 0.530 patched round ball and never had a ball fail to blow out the opposite side of a whitetail. With my .50 (a T/C New Englander which I carry during regular deer season) I have had one ball I recovered after traveling from a buck's chest on a frontal to being lodged in the skin on the backside of his thigh. Ball penetrated 32" and the deer dropped without taking a step. Distance about 14 yards when I was sitting on a stump at deer-level. That's the only round ball I've found in a deer.

I've only ever shot two deer with a rifle (a 7.62 x 54R with 180 gr SP) just to say I'd done it. My county is slug shotgun or m/l - no centerfire rifles allowed. One was at 10 yards heart shot and the other at 15 yards broadside taking both lungs and clipping the aorta. BOTH ran further than any of the deer I have taken with patched round balls - about 75 yards. The Russian hunting ammo I was using did not seem to expand much on deer sized game. In the brushy woods I hunt most of my shots are taken under 40 yards and most deer don't travel more than 50 yards thereafter. Of the last three deer I've taken, ranges from 15 to 35 yards, with a .50 using a prb two collapsed when hit and the last one hopped twice and went down in about five yards. All were complete pass-throughs in broadside or quartering frontal shots; my feet on the ground either standing or seated. I'd call that perfect performance.

 

[texcl]

I have shot a good amount of deer and it is rare to make one drop in it's tracks, even with good shot placement. I don't see much of a difference between modern and the round ball when a deer is shot through the boiler, if I were you I would give the r/b a shot you will probably never go back if for price if nothing else.

 

[Kentuckywindage]

i to am interested in knowing what conical you are currently shooting in the renegade. I owned a .50cal renegade and it shot the lights out with a certain conical, but its not a traditional conical.

 

[Dphar]

I'm not a hardcore traditionalist. I hunt with a muzzleloader because up here it's way more pleasant in muzzleloading season in Oct than centerfire season in Nov, there are way fewer hunters out and anyway I do about 1/2 my hunting in an area where centerfires are not allowed. I use a traditional caplock [TC Renegade] because I just can't consider the modern inlines as real firearms They don't fit the values I have for a well made gun. I mean if you have to have a plastic stock you could at least eliminate the casting seam and apply the tradtional standards for wood to metal fit to your wood to plastic fit.
I use conical bullets because they're accurate and effective in my gun. The downside is I don't get a through and through shot. The bullet always stops just below the skin on the farside of my deer. Given I grew up with the easy tracking provided by hunting in snow in centerfire season up here I'd apreciate having an exit wound to provide a better blood trail through the bush in Oct.
I've considered going to the sabot bullets in hopes the extra velocity of the lighter bullets would would give me an exit wound. Since most of my shots are at short range MOA accuracy isn't an issue so I'm not too worried about the effect of barrel twist. I am wondering how much I can step up my powder charge with the lighter bullets. Can I get enough velocity to get proper expansion from those jacketed bullets.
I asked a bunch of buckskinners at a local gunshow about this and the reactions ranged from total blanks to wanting to tar and feather me for heresy. Hope I can find either the info or where to look for it here.
Thanks
Jamie

I have only seen 3 round balls stay in deer on broadside shots. 1 of these was from a 54 pistol and it broke the upper leg bone, took out the heart and lodged under the hide. The 50 caliber from a 6" pistol (800+- fps MV) actually might have made it through if a true broadside shot but it was angled and passed though the heavy shoulder muscles and lodged at the offside hide at the diaphragm. The other was a broadside shot with a 45 rifle and 45 grains of FFG and it made it to the far side hide and was a one shot kill, taking out the heart.

The round ball actually penetrates very well and seldom sheds a lot of weight unless range is close and the velocity very high. I have gotten 30" or more from .530-.570 and .662 RBs from the occasional frontal shot.

This is the heart and lungs of a Mule Deer doe shot at about 40 yards with a .662 ball and 140 grains of FFg. Note the hole at the top of the heart. Ball entered just to one side of the windpipe with the deer facing me. Deer took this hit and still ran just over 50 yards. Massive blood trail though.

An exit wound does help in trailing and will IMO cause faster collapse but it depends a lot on the deer. Lung shot deer often produce a fine spray of droplets as they run.
Some simply won't fall down.
Bullets and sabots etc etc probably are not going to increase killing power on deer. I have shot deer with a wide range of bullets/calibers/velocities and find they all work about the same so far as "knock down" though my 16 bore (.662 ball) flintlock rifle does produce more obvious results than most.
Unless the spine or brain is shocked or struck the deer will likely stay on its feet. Though a friend killed a doe last year at 120 yards with a 45 RB and she went down at the shot. Ball broke a rib coming and going and he thinks it shocked the spine.
A 50 cal RB is near ideal for shooting deer. Light recoil and it does a nice job. Depending on the range powder charges from 60 to 90 grains are perfectly adequate. The larger charge of powder will have little effect on killing power it simply flattens the trajectory or gets the rifle into is "sweet spot" for accuracy.
Round balls and *expanding pistol bullets* will seldom if ever shoot through a deer from end to end. If shot from the rear neither will do much the the chest cavity unless then ball is hardened.
I would also point out that 240 gr HP and soft point 44 caliber bullets often penetrate *very poorly on game* and many if not most handgun hunters who shoot game larger than deer and even many deer hunters use hard cast blunt bullets such as the old Keith SWC. Some use heavier jacketed bullets 300 gr or so. But even these will often fail to penetrate better than a hard cast 250 gr and recoil is pretty nasty.
So using these as a projectile may or may not give you the results you want especially if driven too fast. Shooting large animals like Moose or bear with a 44 mag 240 gr jacketed bullet is a recipe for disaster. I would rather use a 54 RB.

Basically if you are getting unsatisfactory results with the 50 RB in deer shooting then you are probably expecting too much. Very, very few animals fall to the shot no matter what they are hit with, except as noted above. There are exceptions but they are very destructive and cause a lot of lost meat.

Learn your rifle, practice, place your shot this is the key to any hunting rifle. Take all the "knocked them off their feet" tales with a grain of salt, someone that claims this happens all the time is a liar or is shooting them high enough to shock the spine or uses a 25-06 with 87 gr bullets (for example) or has little experience. I suspect that less than 5% of the animals I have shot or seen shot have dropped to the shot. No matter the rifle used.
Some have run long distances after being shot in the lungs. 100-200 yards. A white tail can make 200 yards in just a few seconds. I shot a doe at about 30 yards with a 54, ball passed though the shoulders just behind and below the joint of the shoulder side to side missing all bone. She turned and bounded away as if unhurt and piled up after 10 "bounds" but made almost 200 yards across a hayfield. I was surprised she could take that heavy a hit and then run off. Had a lung shot mule deer run over 100 after a perfect lung shot with a 44-90 Sharps that was a real powerhouse shooting a 400 gr near pure lead blunt bullet and 92 gr of FFG.

If the deer is keyed up or frightened they are much harder to stop.
I think it was William Drummond Stewart who stated that it was easier to knock down an elk with with his 20 bore Manton than a Mule Deer.

Bullets have their own set of "disadvantages" higher pressure and/or longer duration of pressure, some like to slide away from the powder and form bore obstructions.
Don't be too quick to dismiss the PRB. It was not considered deficient until the current crop of conicals/cylidricals came on the market. Then it had to be deficient or there was no reason for shooters to buy the "new and improved" bullet. As a result a lot of complete BS was written to sell bullets and advertising for magazines.
Basically its the old "don't believe everything you read".

Dan

 

[paulvallandigham]

Amen to that, Dan. :hatsoff:

 

[wahunterinrok]

Just to throw something out there as we sit around the fire, anyone use PRB on elk? I am due to get back from the sandbox soon, and should be able to hit up CO's ML elk season, and would love to use my 50 cal Hawken with a PRB on em, and just wanted to know what peoples experience was.

 

[paulvallandigham]

You will have to check current Colorado Hunting Regulations, of course, but I don't believe that a .50 cal. RB meets the minimum requirements under those regulations for hunting Elk. The minimum would be a .54 caliber RB.

Of Course regulations differ from state to state. We have posts here from members who have killed Elk with a .50 cal. RB, but I believe they all report shooting the Elk at ranges UNDER 100 yds. Even then, they often have to track the Elk further than they would have liked.

If you can get the ball into the Heart-lung area, you are going to make meat. However, Elk have heavy leg bones, and heavy vertebrae, and a 185 grain RB is not going to have much OOMPH left once it has to penetrate either. You have to pick your shots carefully.

The .54 Caliber ball, coming in at 230-235 grains( more than 1/2 ounce) is a much better projectile for a RB load on ELK. Often, the ball is NOT recovered on a Broadside Shot. Of course, a .58, .62, or .66 caliber RB will do fine on Elk, but they all deliver more recoil, stock design, and gun weight being equal.

If you are stuck with only a .50 caliber MLer, you might consider improving impact energy by using the LEE R.E.A.L bullet or the Ballette from Buffalo Bullets. Both are Short length Conicals designed to be shot from slow twist barrels, but give more weight. The bullets are cast from pure lead, rather than an alloy, so they also expand well like a lead RB does. Any idea what the ROT is for your .50 cal?

 

[PreglerD]

Well said! I agree totally. One point from my expirience. If a deer dies in his tracks or will run after being hit belongs for sure to the place where it was hit, but also what the deer has in mind in the moment of the impact. Deers who have no stress standing there and eating are dieing in their tracks in most cases. Others, who are on the move or recognized already something, shortly said who have stress are running after being hit. Sometmes as long as there is air in their loungs or blood in their body.

Regards

Kirrmeister

 

[R.M.]

In Colorado, deer and antelope, min. .40 cal. For elk and moose, .50 cal min. per 2008 regs.