All week long, I hadn’t seen or heard a single bull elk. To say that I was frustrated would be putting it lightly, especially since I knew the area was teaming with elk. The previous fall, I had taken a great older 6x5 on this same mountain ridge in eastern Utah’s Wasatch Range on my third day of hunting. And that bull had been the 27th “shooter” bull I had seen.
Early the next morning, I pulled out of that camp and headed for another, with a nice 6x6 rack and nearly 400 pounds of boned out meat in the back of my pickup. My next hunt, for pronghorn, started the following morning, 300 miles away in north-central Wyoming. And for that hunt, I would be using the same rifle and load.
That season took place 10 years ago, and during a fast-paced eight weeks of hunting, I went on the same number of muzzleloader hunts. I was field testing one of only two .50 caliber Knight DISC Rifle prototypes for the company, and often with just a day or two between hunts, I did not want be bothered with re-sighting in with a different load, or to familiarize myself with the trajectory of a different load for the game or terrain being hunted. Well before the season got under way, I had decided that I would shoot the same load for everything—for 120-pound pronghorns, for 200-pound whitetails, and for 800-plus pounds of bull elk.
And when I headed for my Utah elk hunt in early October, I did so feeling confident that I would be hunting with a very effective load for elk out to about 150 yards. I knew the same rifle and load would also be just as effective on the biggest whitetail buck at around 200 yards, and smaller pronghorn all the way out to ranges of 225 yards. Prior to my first hunt with the DISC Rifle prototype, I had put hundreds of rounds through the rifle, shooting at various distances to know where the load impacted at all ranges from 50 to 250 yards. And of the seven different big game animals shot at that Fall, all went down to single shots.Cecil Epp, the founder and owner of Precision Rifle Custom Muzzleloader Bullets, of Anola, Manitoba, publishes right on the packaging for his bullets that company’s recommended minimum energy levels for taking various big game. For pronghorn, deer, caribou and black bear, they recommend a minimum of 800 fpe. For larger game, like elk, big bears and Shiras moose, Precision Rifle recommends a load that delivers the bullet with at least 1,200 fpe. And for really large moose, their recommendation is a load that can hit the target with a minimum of 1,500 fpe. Now, these energy levels are “at the target distance,” not at the muzzle.
Today’s more advanced primer ignition in-line rifles, hot new black powder substitutes and vastly improved saboted bullet designs make it easier than ever to put together a “one rifle…one load” combination for hunting all North American big game. And when the shooter makes the effort to refine his or her load and loading techniques, many of the rifles and loads will rival the performance of some centerfire rifles out to 200 yards!Today’s best selling bore size is still the .50 caliber. The reason why is simple, there is such a tremendous variety of loading components for the half-inch bore. And this is especially true with the selection of saboted bullets the hunter can choose from, ranging from lightweights of around 175 grains to medium weight bullets of 240 to 250 grains to heavyweights of around 300 grains—plus there are a few really heavyweights that top 350 grains. So, what’s best for the “one load for everything” approach to muzzleloader hunting?
One of my favorite “do everything” muzzleloader hunting bullets has to be the 300-grain .451-inch diameter Precision Rifle “Dead Center.” This particular bullet has been a stellar performer out of two of my favorite .50 caliber in-line rifles—the Thomson/Center Arms stainless steel laminated thumbhole-stocked Omega and the Knight DISC Extreme. Both rifles shoot this bullet with equal accuracy when loaded with a 110-grain volume-measured charge of FFFg Triple Seven behind the 300-grain polymer-tipped spire-point bullet. Groups measuring 1˚ inches across at a hundred yards are common with either rifle.
‘Working Bores’
The Omega sports a 28-inch barrel and when the bore is measured from the front of the breech plug to the muzzle, you’ll find that the rifle has a true 26∫-inch “working bore.” And this rifle gets the aforementioned load out of the muzzle at 1,920 fps with 2,450 fpe. Now, the Knight DISC Extreme is sold with a 26-inch barrel, and when the bore is measured from the face of the breech plug to the muzzle, this rifle has a true 25˚-inch “working bore.” The same load leaves the muzzle at 1,895 fps with 2,385 fpe. The 25 fps difference in velocity is a moot point.Precision Rifle’s saboted 300-grain .451-inch “Dead Center” has a ballistic coefficient of around .336. And thanks to the streamlined frontal shape of this spire-pointed muzzleloading bullet, the projectile maintains velocity much better downrange than a blunt-nosed hollow-point design of the same weight. The 300-grain Dead Center that leaves the muzzle of the Knight DISC Extreme barrel at 1,895 fps is still speeding along at around 1,490 fps at 200 yards, and will hit its target with just about 1,475 foot-pounds of retained energy. That’s right, this load is good for MORE retained energy at 200 yards than the load I used 10 years ago had at just 100 yards!
Likewise, a high ballistic coefficient bullet that retains velocity better at extended ranges will also exhibit far less bullet drop. In order to compare the trajectory of the 300-grain Dead Center load for my Knight DISC Extreme, I’ve done quite a bit of shooting with the powder charge behind a saboted 300-grain .452-inch Hornady XTP. At the muzzle, 110grains of FFFg Triple Seven pushes the hollow-point out of the barrel at basically the same velocity as the 300-grain Dead Center. However, the XTP hollow-point bullet has a BC of just .181, and by the time the load gets to 200 yards, velocity has dropped to about 1,150 fps, or about 300 fps slower than the same load with the 300-grain Precision Rifle bullet.
Sighted “dead on” at 100 yards, the load built with the XTP hollow-point bullet drops right at 17 inches at 200 yards. However, the same load built with the higher BC 300-grain Dead Center drops just 9 inches from 100 to 200 yards. Shooting the 300-grain Dead Center, my Knight DISC Extreme is sighted 3 inches high at 100 yards, and prints just about “dead on” at around 140 yards. At 160 yards, the spire-point bullet hits nearly an inch low. Out to that range, I simply hold dead center of the chest cavity and the rifle will put the 300-grain bullet squarely through the vitals. At 175 yards, I hold several inches higher, and at 200 yards the crosshairs are placed about 4 inches below the top of the back.
So sighted, the Knight DISC Extreme or any other advanced primer ignition .50 caliber in-line rifle loaded with a modern spire-pointed saboted bullet of 300-grains and a hefty charge of Triple Seven or Pyrodex is more than adequate for most North American big game at ranges to 200 yards. Fortunately, there is now a growing selection of high ballistic coefficient bullets that enhance the big game taking performance of today’s modern in-line muzzle-loaders. Barnes Bullets now offers a new poly-tipped spire-point version of the all-copper Expander MZ line, known as the “Spit-Fire TMZ.” And for the .50 caliber bore, they offer two weights—250 and 290 grains. The lighter bullet is an ideal whitetail and other deer-sized game bullet; however, the heavier 290-grain bullet can be loaded to take anything and everything that walks this continent.
Recently, I did quite a bit of testing with this bullet out of a variety of in-line .50 caliber rifles from Knight, White Rifle and Thompson/Center. And with powder charges of up to 120-grains of FFFg Triple Seven, all of the rifles tended to shoot very acceptable hunting accuracy, making them all darn effective “do it all” big game hunting combinations.
The bore of the White “.50 caliber” Thunder Bolt is several thousandths larger than the bore of most other half-inch bore in-line muzzleloaders. The usually tight-fitting Barnes bullet and sabot could be ramrodded down the bore with ease. While the sabot still gripped the rifling well enough to keep the sabot/bullet in place over the powder charge, the looser than normal fit did affect accuracy just a little. That is, until I began loading with one of the Muzzleload Magnum Products sub-bases between the powder charge and sabot. Then the rifle would repeatedly print the 290-grain Barnes TMZ all copper and polymer spire-point bullet inside of 1˚ inches at 100 yards.
At the muzzle of the White 24-inch barrel, the hot 120-grain charge of FFFg Triple Seven launches the lengthy all-copper boattail bullet at 2,030 fps, with a whopping 2,600 fpe! The Barnes Bullets website (www.barnesbullets.com) lists a .241 BC for the all-copper 290-grain “Spit-Fire TMZ” bullet. And at the muzzle velocity of this load, the spire-point will maintain a velocity of just over 1,400 fps out at 200 yards, where it will hit the target with nearly 1,300 fpe. This rifle…powder charge…and bullet combination is well suited for hunting everything from varmints to grizzly bears.
At one time, matching a given saboted bullet weight to the game being hunted made a lot of sense. It allowed the muzzleloading hunter to find the combination that was best suited for the size of the animal…the terrain hunted…and the maximum effective range of the rifle and powder charge. But, that was back when all we had to load into a sabot were blunt-nosed hollow-point projectiles. Those days are now likely behind us. Modern high ballistic coefficient saboted bullets, like the Precision Rifle “Dead Center” and Barnes “Spit-Fire TMZ,” plus others like the Hornady SST, the Parker “Ballistic Extreme” and the new Harvester Muzzleloading “Scorpion PT Gold,” are quickly changing the performance potential of the modern in-line muzzleloading rifle.
More and more, hunters are now discovering the advantages of working up an optimum load with a spire-pointed bullet of 275 to 300 grains and using “one rifle…one load…for everything” all the way out to 200 yards. And thanks to the vastly improved aerodynamics of these bullets, today’s loads are shooting flatter than anything loaded and shot just 10 years ago.
Toby Bridges is the author of 9 books on muzzleloading and the host of the popular High Performance Muzzleloading website at: www.hpmuzzleloading.com.