RE: Loose vs pellets
If all you are going to do is shoot your rifle a couple times on the range, and then go hunting with it a few days, pellets might be a good alternative. They are more expensive then loose, but the powder charges come in 30 & 50 grains, so you can make some very good volume combinations. Also some rifles really shoot pellet loads excellent. Not that they will not shoot loose, but the design of some breech plugs do seemto lean towards pellets. In fact whenI was talking to a technician at Thompson Center about loads for the Black Diamond XR, he mentioned a couple times, "couple pellets and a shockwave."
Loose powder will save you money without question. If you shoot a lot, this would be the only way I would consider shooting.. unless you like spending lots of money. Also with loose you can custom measure your loads for the rifle. It is more fun to tinker with. And it can produce some extreme accuracy with rifles. The big reason though would be money. If the pellets and loose measured out to the same number of shots per dollar, I would shoot a lot of pellets.
Both are going to work just fine in most rifles with a 209 ignition system. If your rifle is not 209 ignition, then do not use pellets. Granted sometimes they will work fine and other times they will not work at all.