T/C Maxi Balls and Elk

[Rich Wormington]

=I am getting a TC Renegade with a Green Mountain 50 caliber fast twist barrel for an elk hunt this fall. I have a maxi ball 50 caliber mold. I believe it will cast about a 370 grain bullet but I haven't weighed any yet. My question is what lead hardness should I use for elk. Pure lead or lead with a little tin, such as 20-1 or 30-1 ? For a harder bullet for more penetration on elk.

 

[leadhoarder]

I have no experience but I would wager that pure lead would still penetrate well past the boiler room on an elk. Adding a little tin will probably not hurt but I would not think it necessary.

 

[64Springer]

Clip-on wheel weights and 3% tin for mold fill-out/bullet definition.

Will give you good penetration. Make a bullet that will pass through both sides of the animal. Soft lead will go splat and, in my opinion, peter out before it goes through the other side of the hide. An elk ain't no whitetail.

Ignore the clip-on wheel weight fears that are sure to follow.


PS: How fast a twist? 1:30ish? A somewhat harder bullet will help bite into a faster twist. Instead of soft lead pushing past the rifling. The 2% antimony in clip-on wheel weights will be of benefit here. BHN 10/11.

 

[Bushfire]

I use pure lead (99.98%) in my round balls on red stags and have no issues. Pure lead will be fine I'd say.

 

[SDSmlf]

=I am getting a TC Renegade with a Green Mountain 50 caliber fast twist barrel for an elk hunt this fall. I have a maxi ball 50 caliber mold. I believe it will cast about a 370 grain bullet but I haven't weighed any yet. My question is what lead hardness should I use for elk. Pure lead or lead with a little tin, such as 20-1 or 30-1 ? For a harder bullet for more penetration on elk.

You might want to go up to 40:1 for sharp edges and corners on your bullet (should put you in the 8 BHN range), but lack of penetration was never an issue with Maxi Balls in my experience. I was actually disappointed with Maxi Balls for hunting when I used them, as they tended to pencil through animals if they didn’t hit bone. Some testing seemed to indicate the upper band was being pushed into the top groove on the bullet, almost creating a spire point bullet. The Maxi Hunter seemed to have resolved the problem, particularly for deer size game, at least in testing I was involved in.

If you are set on using Maxi Balls, they will work, too many dead critters to argue the point. I just believe there are better options available for Elk.

 

[Beaverman2]

Clip-on wheel weights and 3% tin for mold fill-out/bullet definition.

Will give you good penetration. Make a bullet that will pass through both sides of the animal. Soft lead will go splat and, in my opinion, peter out before it goes through the other side of the hide. An elk ain't no whitetail.

Ignore the clip-on wheel weight fears that are sure to follow.


PS: How fast a twist? 1:30ish? A somewhat harder bullet will help bite into a faster twist. Instead of soft lead pushing past the rifling. The 2% antimony in clip-on wheel weights will be of benefit here. BHN 10/11.

Have you ever shot an Elk with pure lead? I have downed 3 bulls in the past all with 54 cal pure lead balls, you don't need pass through, well placed into the heart does the trick, 2 of the 3 pancaked where they stood, the other was a neck shot that snapped the spine, needed to finish at close range

 

[64Springer]

Nope!

But I've killed dozens and dozens of whitetails.

I like pass through. Both sides. Allows for a much better blood trail.

If I were to hunt elk, I'd want a harder bullet. Made from clip-on wheel weights and tin.

Especially with a fast twist barrel.

 

[R Ellis]

Pure lead only for maxi's It is possible that hard cast will be difficult to load and if so may not be as accurate as pure lead. I have tried this before and the hard lead sometimes is a little oversize and hard to load

 

[64Springer]

11BHN is nowhere near Hard Cast.

11BHN will load just fine.

Hard Cast is in the 20 BHN range.

 

[SDSmlf]

11BHN is nowhere near Hard Cast.

11BHN will load just fine.

Hard Cast is in the 20 BHN range.

Tried some lead I have in the 11-12BHN range in TC 54 caliber Maxi Ball and Maxi Hunter molds. Resulting bullets would load with some effort in a clean bore. Subsequent shots required a complete cleaning or a mallet and a steel range rod to load. Similar if not more difficulty with Lyman #2 and Hardball (15/16BHN). The 20BHN lead was for center fire rifle stuff when exceeding 2000FPS loads. Personally have had the most success with muzzleloading conicals with 40:1 (BHN 8), with loading fun factor starting to go away with 30:1 (BHN 9) or 20:1 (BHN 10) alloys.

@Rich Wormington, suggest you obtain or brew up some different alloys and pick the one that your particular gun likes the best, with ease of loading and accuracy being the most important criteria in my opinion. Doesn’t really matter what the rest of us think.

 

[deerstalkert]

i have only ever used pure lead and have never recovered a ball or conical. but then i am a poor shot so i get close enough to see the corn flakes in their teeth.
a couple % tin to help filling out won't hurt a bit.
as with all game, Placement, placement, placement. of all the four legged critters i have killed Elk take the most persuasion. sometimes they will take a lot to convince them they are dead. An Elk that isn't convinced it's dead can cover two counties of the nastiest ground around pretty fast.
deer can be tenacious too but not as bad, and they can't move like an Elk. Moose tip over like they were lightening struck
i strive to place my shots just above the heart. destroy the plumbing and the oil pressure goes to zero mighty quick.
lead at 11bhn isn't dead soft but it has one foot in the grave. with a smooth bore it loads slightly harder then the dead stuff.
just my two Peso's

 

[ETipp]

=I am getting a TC Renegade with a Green Mountain 50 caliber fast twist barrel for an elk hunt this fall. I have a maxi ball 50 caliber mold. I believe it will cast about a 370 grain bullet but I haven't weighed any yet. My question is what lead hardness should I use for elk. Pure lead or lead with a little tin, such as 20-1 or 30-1 ? For a harder bullet for more penetration on elk.

You will have no issue with penetration with a Maxi Ball on Elk regardless.

In terms of a 370 grain, .50 caliber Maxi Ball, the accuracy is, or should be, very good out to at least 100 to 125 yards.

In terms of sealing the bore with the band as the Maxi Ball is loaded, a little softer lead will help.

One way that a person can find out, or use as a guide, is to purchase one box Maxi Balls and compare those to whatever lead you may want to try. You could also melt down a couple of the purchased Maxi Balls and remold them with your mold just to ascertain everything is acceptable to you and your particular ML.

The last Maxi Balls I molded was made from melted down Hornady GPB as a test. Those are made from some pretty soft lead. In my particular ML, they loaded easy and were accurate. Being solid lead with no hollow cavities, I wouldn't hesitate to use them on elk.

I have killed quite a few deer and one elk with hand casted .50 caliber Maxi Balls that were made from much harder lead than I like. They penetrate very well and were fairly accurate. However, they will be melted back down into ingots for fishing sinkers. I'll be using softer lead in the future.

 

[flconch53]

This is not directed at the OP but just for General Information. The standard barrel on a renegade is made to shoot TC maxi balls so there is no need to buy a special barrel unless the one with the gun is defective.

 

[longcruise]

=I am getting a TC Renegade with a Green Mountain 50 caliber fast twist barrel for an elk hunt this fall. I have a maxi ball 50 caliber mold. I believe it will cast about a 370 grain bullet but I haven't weighed any yet. My question is what lead hardness should I use for elk. Pure lead or lead with a little tin, such as 20-1 or 30-1 ? For a harder bullet for more penetration on elk.

A bit of tin won't hurt but I'd stay at 30:1 or less. You can cast clean well filled out maxi balls by running your lead a little on the hot side. The casting goes a little slower but not that much.

There's a couple downsides to going much harder and with all due respect to @64Springer I'll disagree with him on that. Wheel weights for example not only cast harder than lead, but also larger coming out of the same mold. So now there are two factors making loading more difficult; hardness and size. You can use a sizer and take them down but that will also size the front driving band which is designed to be a bit larger to keep the bullet centered in the bore as it's loaded. If it goes down catywampus it will exit the Muzzle even more catywampus. Bullets that wobble lose accuracy.

Next, there's the way BP and pure lead work together. While BP may not produce as high a pressure as modern powders it does have a very sudden and more immediate pressure spike. That causes the pure lead bullet to immediately bump up into the bore and seal the gasses behind it. Harder stuff like wheel weights won't bump up fast enough if at all and there will be some blow by.

The WW works great in cartridge guns because rather than using pressure to bump the bullet, the bullet is larger than the depth of the grooves to start with.

The other thing is, wheel weights will lie to you. They will be a lesser hardness right out of the mold but they will become harder over a few weeks. So a bullet that behaved just fine the day after casting is going to have different attributes a couple weeks later. Maybe when you are loading it for the hunt!

But I'd say don't take my word for it. Experiment for yourself. You can see by the differing opinions right here on this topic that it bears inquisition.

 

[Whiteoak15]

I shoot pure lead .54 cal Maxi-Hunters and I doubt that there is an ungulate in north america that can stop one! Set up as many gallon milk jugs of water in a line as you think will catch one and have at it with your hunting load. They WILL expand but they DO NOT want to stop!

 

[SPQR70AD]

Have you ever shot an Elk with pure lead? I have downed 3 bulls in the past all with 54 cal pure lead balls, you don't need pass through, well placed into the heart does the trick, 2 of the 3 pancaked where they stood, the other was a neck shot that snapped the spine, needed to finish at close range

I never shot an elk but I did stay in a motel 6 one night

 

[azmntman]

have never lost one with PRB

 

[SDSmlf]

have never lost one with PRB

How is that helpful to the OP who is getting a fast twist GM 50 caliber barrel? Plus some states, Colorado for example, have a 54 caliber minimum for hunting elk with a roundball.

I am getting a TC Renegade with a Green Mountain 50 caliber fast twist barrel for an elk hunt this fall.

 

[Old Oak]

Having used both soft and hard maxi-hunters on elk, I prefer the soft. going into the engine room, it will destroy mightily from frontal or side, seem to be a tad more reliable and accurate. JMHO.

 

[azmntman]

MY FREAKING MISTAKE! I was thinking 54. I plead guilty now suspend the dam_ sentence.