ORIGINAL: brad_vanderband1
to start i am fairly new with muzzleloaders and am just beginning to understand and love the sport. so yesterday i was at the range with my first experience shooting loose powder. I am shooting a T/C Omega z5 with 250 grain shockwaves and 90 grains of 777 ffg. am shooting clover leafs at 100yds all day. am holding dead on at 100. then back of to 200 and they are about 14 inches low. i know that alot of people talk about shooting at 200 so do you just hold that high over or what. i even tried shooting with 120 grains of powder and it didnt make a difference.
IF your bullet strikesonly -14" @ 200 yards when zeroed dead-on at 100, that's good!. Bullets appear to dropmuch faster
after the bullet drops below the line of sight, which in this case occurs at100 yards. You could zero your rifle to be, say, 3" high at 100 yards. Itwould then strike 6" higher at 200 than it did zeroed dead on at 100. So it would now strike- 8" at 200.
If you decide to do something like this,make sure you shoot it at 60 and 150 yards, as well as 100 and 200, just to insure that at its' absolute maximum height above your line of sight, the bullet is not so high up that it would pass OVER a targetat an intermediate range!
If you left it as it is now, you could pretty much be assured of a vital hit on a deer at ranges between125 and 200 yards by holding just below the line of a deer's backbone (on a broadside shot). The bullet would drop below your point of aim, but would still hit within the vital zone of a deer that had a chest 18" deep. Between the muzzle and 125 yards, you could aim dead on. For smaller animals, (those with chests less than 18" deep)you'd have to reduce the range at which you'd be willing to take the longshots.