A couple of months ago I began to get an itch for a custom made flint longrifle - something in the Southern Mountain Rifle style.
That dang itch has been getting pretty bad so I've started (trying) to save my pennies. It's pretty slow going because I've had no choice but to make a few "unavoidable" purchases (like the .58 barrel and tang peep sight for the Renegade).
Having reached the conclusion that I'm going to have to sell a few of my current toys to speed things along, I began considering which ones I shoot the least. A couple of modern revolvers won't cause much pain, but muzzleloaders are hard to say good bye to.
I haven't shot the .50 New Englander in over a year. When I bought it a dozen or so years ago it carried a red dot sight, which I soon found was not very useful for my purpose. Three years ago I mounted a 2X pistol scope in a forward mounted "scout" position. That worked like a charm. Its only drawback is that you have to wipe off the rear lens after every couple of shots when shooting on the range in humid conditions - like almost always in my neck of the woods.
Here's the gun.
I never could get this one to shoot patched balls well, and never tried maxiballs. It shot Lee REALs "OK", but not great. My hunting load with it was 75 grains of GOEX FFg under the (now discontinued) 410 grain Lyman Great Plains conical, which it shot well. It was good for three or four-inch 100 yard groups with that load, and I killed a quite a few deer with it over the years - mostly at around 50 to 70 yards.
Anyway, I decided to have a farewell shoot with the lady Saturday morning before I put her up for sale. Having no GP bullets on hand, I figured I would see what a sabot load would do. I've never tried them in it before, figuring the 1:48 twist wouldn't do the job very well.
Boy, was I surprised.
I loaded up some 250 grain XTPs in Harvester sabots over 80 grains of T7 and got this.
Then I loaded some 300 grain XTPs and got this.
I should have tried sabot loads in this sucker years ago. Breaking up is hard to do and it's going to be awfully hard to say good bye.