I think this depends on your rifle. Of course the loose powder will allow you to fine tune your load, but it could shoot pellets great. I have an omega that is turning out to be a tack driver with 2 777 pellets. I posted pics about a month ago. Ill see if I can find them.

As stated ealier using powder allows the shooter to dial into the sweet spot where you may not get there with pellets under any combination of gr. Dependshow far you want to take this. You may pickup another .25-.50 inch accuracy over 100 yards. Thats a mile for a competitive shooter butmay seem little to a deer hunter.The cross debate is why wouldn't you want the max accuracy from your gun in a situation where you may experience an adrenalin dump. (aka: buck fever) Ibelieve most competitive shooters are using powders.

Take a box of pellets and weigh each one and you will find alot of weight/dimensional inconsistancy. Any openspaces you have in your charge by using pellets can cause an inconsistent burn. Using powder fills up all these spaces creatinga consistent burn.

Pellets are much more expensive andany convenience they market is just not worth the trade off in accuracy.Using a speed loader with powder is as fast as pellets in a follow up shot scenario.

Just weigned 50, 50 grain equivalent Pyrodex pellets, the SD was .67 grain. That is not enough to make any difference. As for the diameter, IMO it makes so little difference as to be insignificant.

Thanx rozman! Point could'nt have been made better! the adrenalin dump he talks about hear in simpler termsis: Lets look at a police officer who graduated through marksmen training andwho needed to pass with (1.5 MOA at 25yrds) with his standard issuerevolver andgraduated at that minimun (1.5 MOA).Then lets take a look at another graduated that finishes at lets say (.5 MOA) shooting sub .5 groups at 25yrd? wow!pretty Impressive right? (I think i'd want this guy as my partner)."At a voilent crime seen theofficer who graduated with a (1.5 MOA). When inthe "adrenalin dump"he lose on avg. of 20% of his accuracy and may have cost him or someone else's life.The hunter who loses the same on avg. of 20% in accuracy in front of that nice buck shooting (1.5 to 2.5 MOA at a 100yrds)"and this is what im seeing here with Pellets"
Chances are with his grouping in front of this buck at 100rds has opened into maybe 5.5 to 6.5 or worse and could have potentionaly wounded or even missed completely.Like rozman said "why would'nt you want the max accuracy out of your muzzle loader in any situation".

I shoot a Triumph and recently had problemsshooting tight groups when using 100 grains of 777 with a 250-grain Shockwave so I switched up from pellets to BH209 powder. This stuff is awesome. The sabot seated in the exact same spot everytime I loaded the gun, even after shooting it 10 times in a row without swabbing the barrel., where as the 100 grain pellets I used to use would not allow me to get a consistant seating of the saboton top of the powder.I was shooting 1/2 inch groups at 100 yards consistantly.I will never go back to using pellets from this point forward. BH209 is awesome and I highly recommend it.

I prefer loose powder. I have shot pellets in all my rifles and loose powder has always been more accurate. IMO it is all due to pressure. Pressure is basically a function of two components. Volume, and mass of powder. IMO the problem with the pellets is that the volume is inconsistent when you use pellets. I believe the pellets loose their consistency when they burn for a few reasons. I believe the pellets partially smash when loaded, so load volume, and burn rate are affected by the inconsistency of the pellets.

IMO the only reason pellets were created was to make it easier for ML shooters. And the powder companies can charge more for less. Tom.

The best muzzleloader hunter that i know uses pellets. Every yearKarl gets his caribou, his trophy bull elk, trophy mule deer,an antelope, his white tail deer and oodles of hogs with his .50 Knight and pellets: Karl is a retiredArmy colonel and all he does is hunt. The guy processeshis own meat and has his own cooler, walk in freezer and butcher shop.

Karlcomes to the range a couple of times a year and checks the zero of his rifle at 100 yards. Have shot withhim on the range a few times andthe man has never fired a group that was less than 1.75 inches at 100 yards.Have also hunted with Karl several times:He is a superb hunter who isimmune to buck fever and he never loses an animal.