HuntingNet.com Forums - The .410/210 Grain Gold Dot Experiment

Well, I shot the .410 210 grain Gold Dots in Harvester50/40 crush rib sabots Saturday. Loaded them in the Mustang .50 and
shot them from the benchat 50 yards. The chronograph was 15ft. from the muzzle. The Mustang has a 3x9 Leupold scope.

The bullets loaded pretty well in the sabots, but I couldn't get thebase of the bullet all of the way to the bottom of
the sabot cavity when I loaded them at the muzzle. They would stop about 1/16" from fully seating. They were tight pushing
down the bore, but not unreasonable. When they hit the powder charge I leaned pretty hard on theram rod. Whether
that fully seated the bullet in the sabot I do not know.

Here's the first target with 90 grains T7 FFFG. I dislike three-shot groups but didn't have enough bullets on hand to shoot five
at every target.

Hey Cayugad,I don't want to here that Blackhorn would have eliminated that flyer. :D It may be
true, but I don't want to hear it. :D:D Velocity was about what I expected.

Here's the second target with 100 grains of powder.

Another flyer. DANG! And a 110 fps jump in velocity.

Here's the 110 grain target.

What's with the one-out-of-three flyer??? About a 70 fps jump in velocity.

The 120 grain target - really erratic velocity readings. It shows in the group too.

The 130 grain target next- keeping up the flyer tradition. Now we're breaking 2,000 fps with a
50 fps jump in velocity.

Just for the heck of it, I shot another 130 grain group, but this time I swabbed the barrel with
a lightly oiled patch after I loaded the bullet. That technique gives me the best groups with
300 grain Gold Dots. It didn't seem to do anything for this load in either accuracy or velocity.

Then, just for grins, I shot a group with 150 grains of GOEX FFFg. The group size matched the best
(90 grains) T7 group, and the velocity was about what I got with 100 grains of T7. Here's the target.

One final round before I broke out the flintlock for some plinking. I shot my standard hunting load
for the Mustang - 105 grains T7 under a 300 grain Gold Dot. Decent group, but I usually get a
little better at only 50 yards. This looks more like one of my better 100 yards targets with that load.

So there's the report for those of you who were interested in this bullet. I think it's worth a try. Your
gun may do better than the Mustang, which is no target rifle. I haven't checked any ballistic charts, but
that 2000+ fps load should be pretty good at 200 yards.

OK Cayugad, I guess you can comment on Blackhorn now.:D