hunters_life

I finished building the old man's smokeless muzzleloader a few weeks ago and have had the joy of shooting it with 300 grain Nosler Ballistic tips full sized with the rifling. It is without a doubt the most accurate and powerful muzzleloader I have had the privilege of shooting. A couple of the guys told me I should try some saboted bullets and that I would get even better speeds with less pressure. The only problem with that is I can only use .44 caliber and up in bullet size around here for deer. With this being a .45 barrel that puts saboted bullets out of the picture for Illinois but not the other states I hunt deer in such as Kentucky and Tennessee. I really like how those 215 grain bullets look and they have a fairly high ballistic coefficient for a muzzleloading hunting bullet. The questions I have for the people here is, one, anyone try this particular bullet out for accuracy and terminal performance and, two, with this being a smokeless muzzleloader capable of much higher speeds and pressures as well as a 1:20 twist rate, which sabot would you recommend? If my math is right, and I am not that fantastic at math but these calculations aren't too headache inducing, I think I can get this bullet just over 2700 feet per second but with a 1:20 twist that is going to be putting some serious stress on a sabot. I am not as familiar with sabots as the old man was so consider me a rookie in this.