Beautiful day for shooting today - 75 degrees with a light breeze and high puffy clouds. Sincethe Mustang wasout of commission with a broken firing pin, I decided to try a few new bullets in the TC Omega X7.

The only bullets I've shot out of it before were Gold Dots and XTPs. So I dug into the canvas tool bag I carry bullets in and came up with a box of Hornady 300 grain SSTs, some soft lead340 grain flat nose bullets cast fromLee's .457diameter/340 grainmold and resized to .451, and some unsizedsoft lead 420 grain flat nose bulletscast bullets cast from Lee .457 diameter/405 grain mold. (Although this mold is supposed to be 405 grains, the bullets come out around 420 grains when using pure soft lead.)

This would be the first shooting with the Simmons 4X ProDiamond scope on the X7.

I sighted in the scope at 15 yards with some of the 340 grain Lees in Harvester 50/45 Long Black sabots then set up a target at 50 yards to shoot the 300 grain SSTs. I usedthesabots supplied with the bullets and 90 grains T7 FFG. Here's the result.



Not too bad a start for the SSTs. They show potential. I chose 90 grains of powder because I figured that would be about the lightest load suitable for the bullet.
I have a half dozen boxes of these that I bought real cheap a year or so ago and never fooled with. I guess I'll have to put shooting them with different loads and sabots on my "to do" list.

Now, let's try some real cheap shooting - home cast lead bullets. I stuck some of the 340 grain Lees that were sized to .451 in some Harvester long black sabots and loaded them over 80 grains of T7.
Here's what I got.




I was pretty pleased with thisgroup. It's actually apleasant shooting load, even in the light littleX7. I wish I had set up the chronograph for this shoot to see whatkind of velocity this load was getting. I suspect itwould be a good 150 yard deer load if accuracy holds up that far. Another item for future shoots - shoot this bulletat 100 yards,try Pyrodex and GOEX, and try 70, 80 and 90 grains.

OK, on to more cheap shooting. I put the .457 420 grain cast Lees in MMP orange sabots and stoked them with 70 grains of powder. I figured this would be pretty close to the old classic 45-70 load.
Here's the target.



Looking pretty good. That fifth shot that's out of the group could have been my fault, but I don't think is was. The sight picture, hold, and trigger pull felt right - or at least not bad enough to put the shot and inch and a half out of group.Maybe it was a poorly cast bullet. Maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe one of the muzzleloading gods tinkled on it just to keep me humble. Anyway, I would not hesitate to use this load for hunting if accuracy holds up at longer ranges.

It looks like I'll be doing some inexpensive cast bullet shooting this year. I'm happy `bout that. Can't wait to try them with GOEX - even cheaper.

Oh, one more thing. I wiped the bore with both sides of one alcohol patch between all shots.

WOW!! those Shockwaves really did a nice job. It looks like you have a couple of great loads worked up there.

Had to throw in the 75 degreesgood shooting.

Mine shoots the 300gr SW's great with 120gr, starting to kick really good though.

Hey Cayugad, that SST/Shockwave group is 1 & 5/8". I would be real happy with that at 100 yards, but I really expected a little better at only 50 yards.

The 340 grain Lee group is only 1/8" larger than the SW group and, if you throw out that flyer, the 420 grain Lee group is the same size as the SW group. There's a lot of potential there with all three bullets - plenty of room for experimenting with different loads. If I can get either of those Lee bullets to group into two-inches at 100 yards I very well may settle on that for my hunting load.