eldeguello

RE PowerBelts - Who says the performance isn' t there? These bullets kill well, if you are using a heavy enough powder charge, and a heavy enough bullet. In .50, I use the 295-grain for deer, and heavier ones for elk and bear (345 or 400 grain).

If they shoot accurately, use them!! These bullets have not changed!! " Only the name has been changed" !!

vERN

I' ve used the Lyman plains 385 in my TC renegade and had good results on deer - where it counts. Have also used TC Maxi' s. The only thing I will say about the Lyman bullets in MY Renegade is that they are very hard to load. It appears that each band is a little bigger and in MY rifle you almost need a hammer to get them in! I haven' t tried them in my CVA Hunterbolt, but plan to do so as I' m seriously thinking of dumping the 295 lead HP bowerbelts I used last year. Yeah, the deer only went about 40 yards, but first blood was where it dropped. I may give them a 2nd chance, but don' t want to lose a well-hit deer because of poor bullet performance. My son lost a deer with 245 Gr. PB and switched to Maxi' s.

kevin1

What' s wrong with using a patched round ball in .54 cal ? A conical in the same cal would also work very well , and deliver better downrange energy . That was state of the art after the 1700s , and legal in Colorado today . Mountain men came up with the .54 ball for larger game like elk and bear when the .50 didn' t have quite enough punch to suit their needs , and they first came out in flintys . All mls were sidelocks then , and those guys usually got their target , they had to or starve . Necessity may be the mother of invention , but hunger will spark ingenuity like no other force ! Modern bullets are great , but we sometimes forget that they aren' t the cure for all ills , and certainly no substitute for something that always worked well . Go back to the basics and you' ll find that the " old boys" were probably smarter than we are . It' s usually when I try to " overthink" something that I get into trouble .