ORIGINAL: younggun243
A friend of mine has one of these, and I was wondering, are these any good over black powder? His is a Savage. I personaly was thinking of getting a black powder muzzleloader, but what are the cons of a smokeless powder muzzleloader?
In the meantime if someone asks me what kind of muzzleloader I would like to get I'll tell them, "T/C Encore .50 cal. Black Powder".
I have a Knight Disc and a TC Omega. I have ordered a Savage 10ML SS, and the reason I ordered it was
1) NY and VA now both allow Smokeless Powerer MLers (VA just did this year, NY didn't care since there were shotgun and ML only)
2) Smokeless powder gives you and extra 75-100 yards effective range (most people do not know this as the big difference)
3) I intend/hope to go over completely from CF to MLers for all hunting at some point in the future. I would use the Smokeless ML in CF season.
I took the scope off my Disc, so that is now my short range ML. I have a 3x9 Elite 3200 Bushnell on my Omega, so that is my 100-150 yard gun. The smokeless is my 200 to 250 yard gun, with either Knight Red Hots (bought them) or TC ShockWaves (have them also). I have not selected powder yet, but have bought scales and everything I need.
Part of this for >>me<< is just to gain understanding of hand loading and ballistics and bullet performance more than it is to shoot smokeless. The real reasons to go smokeless are
1) no cleaning after firing
2) extra range
3) a bit cheaper on powder per shot since smokeless uses about 1/2 of the powder to get equivalent energy (43.5g smokeless for example).
I don't recommend this to everyone as the only ML to buy, but just my way to get a bit of diversity into my hunting/shooting and learn some new things.
Chap Gleason Va