ORIGINAL: Semisane

Hey wabi, are those cast bullets pure lead or an alloy? Roundnose or flatpoint?

ORIGINAL: sabotloader

Jimimac

I have not shot that exact one, but i do shoot the .458 Nosler for elk hunitng and I have shoot Hornady 300 grain and 350 grain .458 a bunch in that sabot. They all shot very well.

One of the keys will be can you get that combination down your barrel? Another thing a lot of people are doing is using the Harvester 'crush rib' with the .458 so that they can get them down. I think it started over on the Savage board and they have had really good success with them.

For the Nosler's I am shooting 110 grains of T7-2f, touched of with either a Renington 209-4 primer or a 25 ACP depending on which gun i am shooting.

I did have shot a couple of elk with this load, this year I shot a cow @ 176 yards - pass through... It was excellent.

ORIGINAL: Jimimac

Thanks... I've heard good things about the Gold Dots and that is one of the handgun bullets I'll be trying also since they are constucted in such a fashion and are not very expensive. I guess I was gravitating towards a 45-70 rifle bullet like the Speer I listed above since that bullet should have been designed to expand reliably without fragmentation at velocities generated by modern muzzleloaders.

I'm not locked in on any load at this point to be honest. I like to fiddle around a good bit since shooting the muzzleloader is fun, so for now I'm kind of looking for lower cost alternatives thatwill also work well as a hunting bullet.

In the not so cheap bullet category, my old Knight disk rifle likes the Precision Rifle 275 grain, 44 cal bullet loaded over 120 grains of Pyrodex. I picked up a new Omega last week and that same bullet loaded over 100 grains of Pyrodex gave me a 1" group the first time I tried it at 100 yards. I just picked 100 grains out of the air, loaded the bullets and had at it. I was pleasantly surprised, so I'm anxious to shoot this Omega more and see what it can do with different bullet and powder combinations, since my initial results were so favorable.

Thanks again for your input.

ORIGINAL: hossdaniels

Doesn't it make more sense to use a bullet designed to handle rifle velocities, atleast when shooting a rifle? Most of the handgun bullets we use were designed to open up at around 1000fps, most Ml'ers are alot closer to 2000 fps. IMO you have to match the bullets for the speed your going to push them. You can throw a 450g hunk of lead and keep the velocity low enough, it works great. However you cant take a bullet made for handguns and try to make it fly flat and fast, its gonna BLOW! The bonded SW is the only one marketed to MLers that will hold up to anything over 100g powder. Everyone tried the powerbelts around here a few years back, what a mess that was. The sst's have given similar results in 200 and 250 grain. You can go fast with a bullet that can handle it, but be careful not to push a pistol bullet that fast or SPLAT! The big hole will on the entrance instead of the exit( if you are lucky enough to get one). I am one of the people that like a big exit and a bigger blood trail, light fast pistol bullets have cost alot of people deer around here. They probably died, but couldn't be found. Just choose your bullets carefully for terminal performance, not just accuracy. Sorry for the rant, I get carried away sometimes.

I really don't think a Nosler Partition handgun bullet is going to come apart at muzzleloader speeds, due to how it's built.