I recently got into the world of Muzzle Loaders, and really enjoy it. I shoot a.50 Traditions Thunderbolt inline, that my GF bought for my birthday. I have been shooting the Hornandy Great Plains bullets in 385gr. These shoot well out to 100 yds, but drop like a rock after that. I use 90gr of pyrodex RS. I tried using the Hornady 250gr SST-ML sabots and I can barely get them down the barrel. I have to actually tap them down with a small hammer to get them to seat. After I noticed how hard they were to load, I did not fire the rifle, but instead pulled out the breach plug and unloaded them from the breach.I cleaned the barrel very well, then applied some bore butter. Tried to load these again, and same thing happend. Do they always load this hard, or am I doing something wrong. And do you think its safe to fire these after I get them down the barrel?