Jug at 322 yard
 

The bullet took so long to reach the jug that i had looked away from the scope saw the jug, figured i missed, saw the jug jump, and heard the bullet hit. Calculation say it was about 2/3 second time of flight. The cds dial was turned all the way around, which one can see in the photo. The bullet was in a short Harvester sabot, pushed by 120g BH209, and ignited by W209 primer. One can see the damage to the jug was quite minimal compared to what happens at 45 feet or even 200 yard.

deleted : no longer want to be on the forum

That's impressive did you happen to find the bullet great shooting

Dang Ron, I'm impressed. Dead center hit too!

Nice work sir.
I've got to start practicing out to 300. I don't think I have anywhere around here that I could hunt that far, but it just sounds like fun. I think I would have to re-arrange things out back to make 300 work. Maybe that will be a good summer project.

The bullet i did not find; i looked for it. Seemed it didn't go very far. Am wondering if i could find it with metal detector.

Forget to mention that the rifle was the Knight 50 caliber Extreme purchased from Chet the tag earner/deer killer. It is shooting OK now after glasbed. The shot i couldn't have made without help.

What sort of fpe do you have at that range?

How many shots did it take to hit that jug? I wonder what the ballistics of that bullet are at that distance.

Nice Shot Ron! I Practice at 200 a-lot so the 150yd+ shots are easy, but have never tried anything further yet........How consistantly can you hit the Jug at 300?
(BP)

Yesterday the jug fell to the first shot. That is why i knew i had help. The furthest i ever shot jugs before yesterday was 287 yard. I guess i am remiss in not keeping track of hits and misses. My guess is, i hit more than miss. It is kinda hard for me to shoot further than 200 yard, because of the terrain. I never had shot further than 200 yard, except at a deer once, until i purchased the cds dials.

Be very interesting to see how the bullet expanded at that distance from the exit it looks like it did but how much is the ?

I love the video. You can see the little smoke puff before the impact.
Awesome shooting... :)

A 496 grain conical launched at 1200 fps would take about .3 seconds longer to get there but would have about 900 fpe remaining. Holdover would be torturous. ;)

Energy is weak at that distance. Hopefully you're just hunting deer?

50" of drop. How much wind drift?

That was a really good shot. A lot of guys couldn't do that with a scoped CF rifle. Of course I am not speaking about anyone in here. I know we could all do it. But personally, as much as I admire your abilities, I prefer to get close enough to see their whiskers before I shoot. I think that is why I like the sidelocks. I limit my shots to 100 yds but try to get as close as possilbe.

The state of South Dakota requires hand guns to have a muzzle energy of 500 ftlbs to be legal. Myself, i have killed several deer years ago with a .44, and cannot recall ever having one run off. However, once i made a bad shot, but didn't know it, and approached the deer without the gun. It did run off, and i had to bull dog it, straddle it, and cut it's throat. Good thing that happened years ago, i cannot run now.

No, i am not just hunting deer; coyote, wolf, lion, and grizzly bear.

Fifty inches of drop sure was handled nicely by the cds dial, and as you can see, there was no wind drift.

Great Shot Ron, I also like the fact that you can hear the projectile hitting the jug making the first crack sound, as it does the jug in.

I to am with you Ron, at 320 yards that projectile when fired at your loading, still has the equivalent of energy at the muzzle of a 4" to 6" barreled 44 mag pistol shooting 300 grain bullets. Yes I know this is a .452 projectile not a .430. The buffalo were brought to the edge of extinction at this range and beyond with lesser loads than you are shooting.

Ken

Central NY

Some of the buffalo died a slow death. If at all. Humane shots were unheard of in those days.

Ken,

It was never mentioned before in this thread, but your link to Holo-Krome screws was used as a start to make vent liner for this rifle. The plug now in this rifle had a vent liner, but it was brazed in; when the flash hole reached 0.035" it was removed. It was tough going, but now the vent liner can readily be removed and replaced as it erodes. Our local machine shop orders them Holo-Krome for me. Holo-Krome screws made in the USA, sold by a local retailer, and drilled by an old carpenter from South Dakota are the vent liner in all my rifle.

Thank you for your help, and encouragement!!

How did your scope cap have all the info on it? Great shooting,that was impressive.

Before the dial was ordered, i filled in the blanks pictured above, with the information about the load. One other piece of information the custom shop wanted was the scope height. That was 1.4". When hunting around here, the elevation will vary from 2500' to 6500'. Temperature normally will be -10 to 80 from the end to the beginning of hunting season.

Went back to where the jug was, and looked for the bullet with a metal detector. Before the metal detector was put into service, i saw a glint in the sunshine, and it turned out to be a piece of the jacket of the bullet. Also saw a rusty old tin can. Turned on the metal detector, and searched the area beyond the jug location for about 30 minutes. Found no more bullet. Found many many small buried pieces of tin can.

Engery is one thing but volicity is another. You have to consider at what volicity is the cut off point where the bullet will not open up and perform the way it was intended too? When the bullet don't upset and open up, that can lead to a long tracking job or a lost animal. Just something to consider because if you shoot a deer with a 44, while the energy may be the same, the volicity of the bullet will be a lot higher at the distance you would shoot with a pistol and more then likely the bullet will open up. Hydrostatic shock is needed for a quick kill.

Just because you can lob a bullet that far doesn't mean you should shoot an animal with it. I'm not saying it couldn't kill an animal, but you are taking a greater risk of just wounding it with the lower volicity and energy.

That is nice shooting Ron. I hope I can bust water jugs at that distance one day with my Omega.

Thats what I'm talking about, nice shooting.

Right or wrong, it seems to me the fact i found a piece of the jacket from the bullet shows the bullet was traveling fast enough to 'open up'. Notice the photo of the jug showing how it is split on the back wall. Wasn't it the 'hydrostatic' shock that caused this split?

Ron, I saw that and agree that hydrostatic shock caused that split. Where I would be concerned with shooting a big game animal at that distance with a muzzleloader is, is it enough? I agree too that the bullet open up or you wouldn't have found a piece of jacket. The point to my earlier post is you can't go by energy alone. The bullet has to have enough penetration as well as do enough damage. I'm not knocking you or anyone else for wanting to shoot an animal at that distance. I just think there are some considerations that were not mentioned.

There is an episode of Long Range Pursuit where they shot an animal at 500 yards with a muzzleloader. I don't remember what animal. It was impressive but risky. After seeing your post with the video, you oviously can put the bullet where it needs to go. I know I couldn't do that at 320 yards with my muzzleloader.

If you fire a 300 grain bullet out of both firearms and the energy is the same at the impact then the velocity would also have to be the same.

The expansion would be nearly identical between the two bullets. Although the 44 may penetrate a little deeper due to the slightly higher sectional density but the terminal results would be pretty much the same. A dead animal.

Hard to believe it was hydrostatic shock.

A .270 loses it at 2400fps.

deleted : no longer want to be on the forum

Better performance than a lot of CF guns.

As i've said in the past. Inlines are just another form of a CF gun. Instead of loaded in a case, you load it in the barrel. Same components...same results.

Shouldn't be allowed in a true ML season.

This is where what you are saying, makes no sense.

Other than the primer being inline with the breech your percussion mler is the same. Same components as the case shells but loaded from the breech (same components) Still have rifling.

So is your actual issue with the bullet and sabot because to me the inline and the percussion mler are close enough alike, to be considered the same by me and the ATF.

CF primer. Blackhorn is smokeless powder detuned. Bullets are CF designed, or pistol CF bullets.

Colorado had a sidelock, black powder, and a PRB in mind when they opened to ML season.

They never wanted a ML to be taking 300yd shots. I'm not guessing at this. I've had long conversations with them.

You can try and justify the performance of inlines all you want, but the spirit of muzzleloader hunting has been lost.

I still have interest in traditional muzzleloaders, and BP shoots, but i've lost it for hunting.

The loads used by Ron & Chet are very capable of taking deer out to 300 yds. it's all about hitting the target and placement.i know plenty of guys that shoot center fire rifles that can't hit the broad side of a barn.for the record States determine what rifles can be used during there M/L seasons, be it inline or traditional.i am not aware of any state that prohibits anyone from using a traditional M/L rifle during there M/L seasons, as long as it meets the minimum caliber requirement designated by that particular state.

Tried that. I was working on getting close to an elk with a sidelock and PRB when some clown takes a shot from 200yds away. Of course he missed, and my elk was gone.

We all need to be on the same page, or i'm not going to be there.

If Colorado didn't buckle under to the pressure. Inlines would still be banned.

Not all inline users use BH209, Triple seven is just as powerful

Colorado may have one thing in mind but, they are not chaging the law to exclude inlines so, it doesn't matter

Not to many hunters will make these kinda shots at game and again all they have to do is change the law. they know it will cost them money so, they wont.

I don't have to justify it the feds and the state say they are the same class of weapon. good enough for me.

Again it seems you have an issue with bullet and sabot and not the MLer itself. you would have the same kind of range with an inline, if it shot a PRB.

I have an issue with inlines. I always did, and that's why i'd buy them, and then be miserable and sell them. I have to be true to myself, and i'm so damn old school it's ridiculous. Even to me.

I actually can't bring myself to use a scope on my bolt action .270. Which is silly, but i'm looking into a peep sight for it. Meanwhile i'm using the open sights it came with.

I do my best to not say anything about inlines, but in a thread like this that's talking about taking 300 yd shots at game. My keyboard starts calling to me.

I don't mean to upset anybody, but i'm just a cranky old man with strong opinions. My bad.

that's 300 yards on a non-moving, orange target without the stress of actually hunting (unless you haven't reached your jug bag limit yet I guess...). He is no doubt a well practiced shooter with a lot of holdover (I'm guessing in four foot range) taken into account... an inline is far from a CF. Even the cutting edge of front stuffers, smokeless guys shooting .40 and .45 bullets sabotless are far from CF shooting. Even the best .50loads are around the hot .45-70 level (300gr@2500fps). The .40 and .45 guys get into standard 30-06 range in weight and speed (200gr@2800fps), but do it with short, fat, low bc bullets by rifle standards and cant do a whole lot better...

Define muzzle loader.

Sounds like you have a personal thing against in lines. I suggest that you don't use them. If you want to use a side lock percussion cap ML then by all means do so but those are modern when compared to flint locks.

And then you hve the fact that in line muzzle loading rifles are every bit as traditional as side lock percussion rifles. In lines were first patented in 1808. Your argument and bias holds no water what so ever. Basicaly Muzzle loading has come full circle. So quit whining about what other people use and go enjoy hunting and shooting.

The Dreyse needle gun of 1848.

I understand but I am sure there are as many jackwads eith a PRB that would do the same thing. Idiots are not usually defined by their weapon.

You know unless they brought a knife to a gun fight

I'm well aware of the first no so inlines that are called inline today. Hardly the same gun.

The fact remains that Colorado banned inlines one year, so i'm not the only one who feels this way.

As for the 300yd shots. Ron isn't the only one who's tried them. Most CF guys won't take the shots. Even with only a 6" drop.

I'm going hunting for a few hours. Later.