Loading procedure: First, make sure your barrel and chamber are cleared of oils and lube. I Use a cleaning patch soaked in alcohol to dissolve the stuff, and then run a dry patch or two down to make sure I have it all out and the barrel dry. Listen to your vent hole or nipple for the sound of " hissing " air being foreced out them. That is the good sound you want to hear. It means your flashchannel or vent is clear.
Now, pour your powder from its can, or your horn, or flask, into a SEAPRATE powder measure. I use a brass, adjustable measure with funnel attached to aid in getting all the powder in the barrel. ALWAYS cap or close the entrance to your powder source before pouring powder down the barrel, as a matter of HABIT.
Pour the powder down. In a flintlock, tip the barrel to one side so that the powder slides down the side of the barrel, and does not compact. In a percussion gun, hold the barrel upright, and pour the powder so it drops all the way to the bottom without touching the sides of the barrel if possible. Some shooters have copper tubes that go down their barrels from the funnel so that the powder drops and is placed in the back of the barrel precisely each time. Again, these are percussion shooters.
Now, if you are using pre-cut patchs, and expect to fire the gun within a minute or less, use spit. ITS FREE! I use spit on the firing line at my club all the time. However, saliva can foul your powder or some of it, and make that ball hit out of the group.
So, If you are going to be shooting some minutes, or even hours after loading the gun, use pre-lubed patches, or patching. I pre-lube the day before at miminum, so that the lube will migrate throughout the patch material. Center the pre-cut patch over the muzzle, then place a ball in the center of the patch and drive them down the barrel slowly. If you are using patching strips, then push the ball and patch into the muzzle and cut off the patch with your patch knife. Then use the ramrod to slowly run the ball down the barrel.
In a flintlock, mark you ramrod so that you load the ball to the mark. The mark is pre-set so that the PRB is just touching the powder.
In a percussion gun, you can mark the ramrod, too, but this time, you want to compress the powder. If you have dropped the powder into the barrel as I have described, it will be compressed from the drop, and there will be very little more you can compress it by putting weight on the ramrod. With enough pressure, you can distort the ball, however, so take it easy. Be consistent, but understand that you can be consistent and still distort the shape of the ball, and get bad groups. Take it easy on the pressure you put on that ramrod.
Remove the ramrod, and place it back in the stock of the gun.
NOw, pointing the gun down range, and only when you are ready to fire on a range( always obey range rules for your safety and the safety of others), prime or cap the gun. In the field, when you can legally shoot, you can prime or cap the gun. In most states, a muzzle loader is not considered " loaded " unless it is primed or capped. You can load the barrel at home, drive to your hunting spot, wait for daylight, and then prime the gun. If you don't fire, you can dump the prime, or remove the cap, and the gun is considered unloaded for transportation. The same applies at the end of the day, when hunting hours close.
Loading after you shoot involves real concern for the presense of both burning embers in the barrel, and crud in the barrel( fouling ). After exhausting myself trying to find a lube or procedure that would allow me to skip cleaning after each shot, AND still get my shots to shoot to the same point of Impact ( POI ), I gave up. I now just clean between shot, with the exception of a needed follow up shot on deer, or other game. I know where by second shot is going to go differently from the POI of my first shot out of a clean barrel.
After I fire, I run a slightly dampened patch with spit down the barrel to loosen the fouling from the grooves in the barrel, and to put out the glowing embers that remain. You can see the smoke come out of your vent, or nipple doing this. Again, that smoke, or air tells you the flashchannel or vent is clear. I then dry the spit and take out more of the crud from the breechplug using a dry cleaning patch. On humid days, I run the spit patch down twice, once on each side, and then I run the clean dry patch down twice, using both sides. I get more crud out, and dry the barrel better that way. And, on pulling the cleaning patch and jag out the barrel, I can FEEL that the barrel is clean.
I then repeat, beginning with pouring powder out of my powder horn into my separate measure, etc.
I decided a long time ago that I was into shooting BP because of the fine accuracy obtainable with these guns, and was not interested in speed shooting with them. If I want to shoot lots of rounds fast, I take a semi-auto .22 or other gun to the range and bang away. With my MLs, I want to take my time, calm down, forget all the problems at work and home, and have a relaxing day shooting as accurately as I am able to Shoot. I always meet new shooters-- and we see them pop up here all the time--- who want to know how to cut corners and shoot faster. They want " speed loaders " for their guns, and have never given a thought to taking lessons on rifle shooting so that they can actually hit something small with their guns.
Their idea of accurate shooting is "minute of deer." These are the same guys I saw hunting deer with their bird guns - shotguns with no rear sight- and they never tried to sight the gun in for shotgun slugs, either ! In fact, they didn't even know that different brands of slugs shot to different points of Impact, and just bought the cheapest slugs that K-mart was selling that fall. If they shot a deer, they often had to shoot it 5 or more times to kill the animal, and the hits would be all over the carcass.
I see that still with some ML shooters. When you talk to them, you find out quickly they are more interested in shooting fast, than in shooting accurately, and they have lots of stories about emptying their guns at a deer, thinking they hit it, but it " got away ". They also don't know how to track, and make no attempt to find that wounded animal, either. Some of the deer are brought in to the check stations by nearby hunters, who put the wounded deer down when it stumbles past them. Mostly, the coyotes and feral dogs live well when these guys are in the woods.
So, decide why you are shooting Black Powder, and then choose the loading procedure that will serve that interest the best. You can buy speed loaders, and you can cut safety corners to " Load Fast ". YOu can use those pellet powders, and plastic sabots and pistol bullets in those unmentionable guns. But, that is not what traditional Muzzleloading is all about.
Be safe, and shoot accurately.
