Bought a can of Jim Shockey Gold, and was really enthusiastic about it's performance. Then I went back to the range today and got poor results.
I shot 3 rounds in my T/C NewEnglander when I first tried it and had a very good group @ 50 yards with Lee REAL 320 gr bullets. Today I shot 3 times and had about a 4" group. I noticed very light recoil on one shot and the other two felt normal.
In reading posts on the thread which powder?
http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=2231903
I read a post by lemoyne saying in part Today was 95° and very humid, and the powder was erratic!
Looks like I'm back to BP for the sidelock & perhaps I'll pick up some T-7 for the inline.

I have decided that real BP is superior to any and all substitute powders, except for the requirement to wipelot more often in order to load the next round........

Interesting results so far... keep them coming. Maybe I will learn whether or not I want to even try the powder.

wabi

Just as a thought, if you can find some T7-3f, try that in your percussion sidehammer is it a percussion? If it is a Flinterall bets are off. I use to shoot 2f but up here in the winter when it gets really cold I could not get the 2f to go off all the time it requires so much heat to start. But with the 3f the granuales are so small you can tap it out under the nipple really easy and it really works for me. I am using Dynamint Noble 1075+ caps also.

or

As Shockey does on TV when he is hunting up north in cold weather he wraps one of little packaged hand warmer over the barrel near the breeck to keep the powder warm.

I run a little test becuse I was told that the JSG would change POI when left in high humidity, this guy said a matter of hours, so I left it loaded for four days. I loaded 3 JSG Sticks in my Omega with a Nosler 300 grain PP... this load was producing around 2 1/2" groups at 100 yards. Not great, but plenty accurate enough. After the four days I went to the range and shot... missed the bull by about two inches. What ever I would have shot at would be dead!

This was the 100 yard group...

Here is the 100 yard shot after being loaded for four days... I took the gun outside for a couple of hours each day and then bought it back in the AC,,, seems like the temps. were in the high 80's...

wabi and flint head, do you recall how high the humidity was on those days?

The humidity in SC is always high... if you leave any brand of powder in your muzzleloader an extended peroid of time it will through the shot off. I talking months here,,, I left a 100 grain 3f 777 load in my Omega a good part of deer season and then went on a hog hunt in late March... when I fired that shot at the hunting lodge it shot 8 inches high,,, the next fresh load shot where I shighted it in at, about an 1 1/2 high. The only complaint anyone could have with JSG is that it may be a few feet slower than 777, but a heck of alot cleaner!

flint head, thanks for the reply, I am just going back toML huntingafter 3 decades of bow hunting (back injury put an end to that, getting old s##ks).I was going tobuy a can of JSG this week, but read this thread and got nervous. Humidityhas not been an issue in the part of New Mexico I live in for almost15 years due toa long draught, but this year our monsoons are back big time. The humidity has been up as high as 80% on some mornings and it looks like it will be an early winter, which means snow in the mountains during the ML hunts. I know about the humidity in SC, I was stationed in Charleston for 2 years and lived inAlabama from the ages of 8 to 17. Thanks again for the reply, I'm sure glad I found this forum! You guys are great, the posts I have read herearereallyhelping me get back on track with ML's again.