drh1175

What is your preference? Pellets or loose and why? How hard is it to deal with loose in the field. I am new to Muzzleloading and am trying to decide which way to go with my powder selection. I have a T/c Omega

Roskoe

Pellets are pretty convenient and have improved ignition consistency for charges above 120 grains -at least with the Pyrodex pellets. They are quite a bit more expensive, though,and don't offer the "fine tuning" option that loose powder provides. As far as loading in hunting situations, the loose powder loads great if you pre-measure it in a speedloader or other small container.

lemoyne

I have been muzzle loading since 1960 and I have come to the conclusion that if you want the best accuracy you feed the gun what it likes and keep an open mind. Lee

cayugad

If all a person was going to do is shoot a few shots each year to make sure the rifle was on and then hunt with the rifle, I would not see a problem with them using pellets. If a person on the other hand wants to go to the range and shoot a great deal, then pellets can get to expensive and loose powder is a better option.

I have never bought pellets although shota few loads from others and they worked fine. I just never could see the need for buying them when loose is so much cheaper.

Pauly

I only have a few season's under my belt and use loose T7 and have been happy with the results at the range. I use some speed loaders and keep and extra load with me while hunting, pop the cap, pour your loose in and load another sabot/bullet combo of your liking. Seems easy enough to me. I imagine you would have to keep your pellets in a small container to prevent breakage, but that's a guess.

I've never tried the pellets yet, and with two boys and the wife who occasionally shoot with me, loose is more economical overall.

Good luck.

RedAllison

Pauly you will geta more consistent and cleaner burn with granular over pellets (assuming you are talking about a quality rifle to begin with that has a properly designed ignition system like those from Knight, Savage, T/C etc...). Obviously being able to fine tune the load for a particular rifle is a plus as well. Lastyear I went too a Savage smokeless, hadI not I was about to go with an Omega and my first "test load" would've been 150grns of T7 under 250SSTs and go from there (downward obviously).

Good luck,
RA

LIAF

I started off with pellets as I found out it was the easy way to go if you are a neophyte to ML.I tried T7 pellets with sabots and they were difficult to load in my gun. I switched to pyro. pellets with powerbelts and found them to be allright. After doing a lot of reading on this forum I decidednext spring I would get some loose APP or pinnacle in fffg along with some .429 hornady bullets with greenMMP sabots. I hope I can find a suitable combination that will allow me to shoot to 150 yards.

bigbuck15

when your talking about pellets and powder..does it both use the same grain scale or is one more powerful then the other?

LIAF

This is what I found out from reading various poststhat 2pellets of pyrodex (100 grains) is equal to about 85-90 grains of loose pyrodex powder in ffg. If you want to use loose fffgthen you can go to about 75-80 grains for the equivalent amount.Is this the correct way to look at it for the people who have a lot more experience than me?

Tahquamenon

Pellets are really more "Marketing Fluff" than actually anything spectacular.

Loose powder is where it's at with a 5-grain measure for:
[ul][*]Best, consistant accuracy.[*]Widest projectile & load development variability[*]Lowest cost. (up to 35% less).[*]Lowest cost to find a decent shooting load. You can dial powder charges to match a projectile versus matching projectiles that print with a given pellet charge.[/ul]
For the occassional shooter that only hunt's with the one load, and shoots a few times a year, then pellets are fine I suppose.

If you enjoy shooting ML's and working up various loads foryour rifle(s), then loose powder is the ticket.

Tahquamenon