TOPIC:

Good luck to all you folks that hunt with muzzleloaders,,, it's your time to shine.

Well, we are down to the finish line this weekend, good luck if your getting out. I saw around 20 does last night just can't shoot them at 300 yards with my old Encore.
Maybe we can reposition tonight and make it happen.

I'm thinking of heading down for 1 more crack at em before the end. Good luck on your quest. 

Well it's a wrap for 2021. Hope you did get a chance to get out WildKat.
What a great season it has been. We saw deer every trip out. Some days it was really just fun to be out and enjoying the fall hunt. We had a pair of eagles that helped themselves on the gut piles left for them. Coyotes were way down this season another plus. And, the turkeys came back the last couple of days of the smoke pole season. Where they went for so long I have no idea.

My son and I finished last night with a pair of does we took to finish the season, and I am going to can some this year. That will be my first attempt at canning deer meat. Finale tally 5 does and 2 bucks, one of our hunters passed on taking his buck but he did have many chances.

Great job. I had some others issues come up & didn't make it for the final weekend. But it was a good season for me. Just the 1 buck & 1 doe. But the freezer is full & I'm ready to start fishing. I drove by the perch spots on the east side yesterday. There were lots of boats out & shore fisherman. Results seemed mixed but I'm thinking the boat guys did better just because they can move around & find the fish easier than shore guys can. But all in all it's been a good year in the outdoors. I hope next year is at least as good with all of us enjoying the things we love to do. 

Good luck to all.

To add to Ed’s topic I have a little tip to offer for next muzzleloader season. The cost of packaged muzzleloader ammo is getting really expensive. A few seasons ago I quit buying those and started buying the bullets and sabots in bulk packs. Hornady and T/C make great components for muzzleloaders. The 2 petal sabot, the T/C Superglide, is an excellent inexpensive sabot. Easy to load and does a great job of bullet support and accuracy enhancement. Hornady has 2 excellent bullet choices for a 50 cal rifle. They offer a ftx 250gr bullet in a box of fifty for about 38 bucks. This one is what you get in a lot of the ammo packs that sell for about 20 bucks for 15 of them.
I use a different Hornady bullet, a 225 grainer, for my 2 rifles. These are very economical to use. A box of 100 is about $35. They shoot great with 100 and 150 gr powder charges. Very accurate and very damaging upon impact. Another plus is they offer a flatter trajectory and less felt recoil over the 250. The sabots come in 50 packs for around $9. Much cheaper to use. 

Load Data « Blackhorn 209 blackhorn209.com › load-data  This would be a good time to discuss what Don has already started. What do you use in your Muzzle loader. 
What powder, what load and why?
I switched about 5 years ago and went with Blackhorn powder. It does not degrade over time like others do. I have not been happy with triple 7 or pyrodex powders. They just didn't seem to keep their juice so to say. I'm still on my original bottle and it still is like new, still very fresh. 
The disadvantage to using Blackhorn is you need to shoot a very hot primer like the CCI primers. The light primers like we use with triple 7 will not work well.
So for our hunting we are shooting 110 grains with a 300 grain Hornady hollow point in 45cal. I have shot almost everything that is out there except the bullets you have shown Don. Are those the flex tip's? I have shot the SST's and like the groups on paper, just didn't care for the bullet blowing up on contact.
We like the 45cal hollow point bullet as it mushrooms down to the base. The long shoulder on the 300 grain bullet works well in my very old encore. Sure is cool hearing the wallop of the hollow point on a long shot.

The 2 rifles I have are an original MK85 with the Lothar/Walther barrel made in 1986. Back then short barrels were in vogue and I chose one with a 22” barrel. The longest one you could get was only 24”. It was a #11 cap type rifle. Several years ago I converted it to shoot 209 primers with a plastic jacket on them. The short barrel only allows 100 gr of powder to be used efficiently. I do use triple 7 pellets in both my rifles. I seem to get good accuracy with them and both my rifles need a dirty barrel for consistency. 
My other rifle is a T/C Pro Hunter Encore with a 26” barrel. It loves 3 50gr pellets of triple 7 and one of the 225gr ftx bullets. Yes the 2 bullet types I was speaking of have the plastic tips on the ogive. They do open quickly upon impact as the tip initiates expansion. The 225 gr bullet is a “hybrid “ rifle/pistol bullet. The jacket is thinner than the 250gr bullet. The 250 is a rifle type bullet that is tougher than the 225. That being said I have never had a deer ask me for another one after being be clobbered by one of the 225’s. I tried triple 7 primers with poor results as I got inconsistent ignition. My best accuracy was using Winchester 209 and Federal match 209 primers. 
I hope I answered your questions. Not tried blackhorn powder but I tried pyrodex and some of the stuff Jim Shocky used to push. Expensive and hard to find I found. Worked good but not any better than triple 7.

BTW, I still consider the early MK 85’s to be the finest muzzleloader ever built. They have an adjustable box trigger from Timmney, the German made barrel, laminated wood stocks, excellent open sights from Williams, drilled and tapped for optics and the best safeties on a muzzleloader. The stocks had a short pull length so you could shoot them with a coat on. They came out with a questionable ramrod but a TC aluminum one fixed that issue. 
You can often see them for sale on the cheap. See one, buy it if it’s in good condition. I have 2 buddies that got theirs for $125. I paid near $550 for mine new in ‘86. Sickens me to say  I had first option on those rifles and I passed. Would have made great hand me down rifles for my boys. The 209 conversion costs about 40-50 bucks.

Those old first round in line muzzle loaders were better then some of the new ones that are out there today.

When I made the change over to the new powder and CCI primers, I tried the hot CCI primers with the triple seven that I still had. Found out quickly that that set up is not doable. The CCI primers are so hot that they burned right thru the center of the triple seven load. I also found that I could not load the gun with a second shot.  I had triple seven that was partially welded to the barrel. Had to use a heavy copper brush to get the mess out of the barrel.
The Black horn is not a powder like the pryodex and triple seven. Black Horn is more of what I would call small rods. Those small  rods when loaded leaves some air space in the load. It doesn't pack tight like triple seven. So if you try to use a standard primer the Black horn will not ignite properly. You will get a hang fire. This is why when using the Black Horn you must use the Hot CCI primers. I bought a case of primers a few years back and glad I did as I can not find them for sale right now. 
So I guess I am stuck with the conversion I have made. I find the black Horn to be very accurate. We have used a conograph and found that their chart is close to what we were seeing.