Shot the Optima again today...
 

I finished up fine tuning the load for my buddy this afternoon...It's a CVA Optima he bought from WalMart, thumbhole camo stock and stainless barrel...He also brought me a Nikon ProStaff scope...I mounted the scope and took it out last Monday...I wasn't totally happy with the group from last week and the first group confirmed it today...Here is my first group at 100 yards...The load is a 300gr Hornady .430 XTP in a Harvester plain green sabot on top of 85grs of FFF Goex black powder...




So I dropped down to 80grs FFF Goex...That's more like it...He likes his guns pretty much dead on at 100 so I'm going to leave it there...

And that's all you'll ever need... nice shooting!

wow it's deadly great shooting

Ain't nothing wrong with that first group either.

Nice shooting.

Looks like he's set. The .430 300g XTP has always been the most accurate XTP for me.

under 1" ?? not a knight??!! under $300?!!!! Oh my!

That's a fantastic group from both you and the rifle.

1/2 in group, tough to beat that. She"s dialed my friend!

Yep and dropped down to 80 grains for that nice group so it shouldn't blow up.

Wow, it's unreal to me that a 5gr difference made such a huge impact in the group size.

Nice shooting.

Yep, CVA's are for the people that know, you don't need 150gr. of BP or spend $800 to kill any North American animal. Must be the highly intelligent people that figured that out, man did i get screwed!!

Funny thing is, my Knight likes 80grs as well...

nice shooting!

My little LK rifles are all 80-85 grain rifles for the most part. Even one of my stainless steel GMB rifles likes 85-90 grains. And that is all they need for most hunting of what I would do.

Wouldn't it be better to have more power and to sacrifice a little accuracy, and then adjust the scope to the POI of the hunting load?
Hunting loads are usually always less accurate than target loads, but increased power is usually more desirable for hunting. The hotter loads offer flatter shooting & increased penetration on large game which is somewhat of a different priority than shooting for groups.

Otherwise I'm impressed by the accuracy obtained.

I'll give up 100 fps for better accuracy any day, or even 200 fps if the difference is pronounced.

When most shoot less than 100 yds. in a real hunting situation, i agree. there will not be enough of a difference to be concerned with and the dead deer wont care how fast the bullet was travelling...

my target loads are my hunting loads

Back in the 80s when I built my .54 caliber flintlock my first hunting load was 120gr FF Goex...I used this a few years and then went down to 100grs FF Goex...The past 10 years or so I've used 80grs FFF Goex...They all killed deer...

My Knight prefers (until last night) 80grs FFF Goex...With 250 Shockwaves and 300gr Hornady .430 XTPs I've killed about 15 deer with 80grs of FFF Goex...

Out to 150 yards there won't be enough difference in velocity to make much difference in trajectory...

Remember the 45/70??? That used a .458 caliber bullet that weighed 405grs...Big, slow and killed the heck out of plenty of buffalo...

I guess if I was a fellow that wanted to shoot muzzleloaders out to 200 plus yards, I'd worry more about velocity...But frankly, I'm not, I know where to set up on our farms to kill deer within 100 yards...

Heck, if I wanted to kill them further with a muzzleloader, I'd drive up to Greensboro and have one of the Bells make me a smokeless gun or pick up a used Savage...