HuntingNet.com Forums - New to Muzzleloading...need your advice

First of all, you' ve got yourself a great gun. You won' t be disappointed with the T/C Omega. $329 isn' t a bad price at all, either.

I believe T/C ML' s come with a pretty good booklet that explains the basic steps of loading and shooting a ML, and if you have any other questions there is plenty of info here, and it might benefit you to seek out one-on-one help from an experienced shooter. If you have a decent public range nearby that' d be a great place to look, since it' s right at the time that the ML hunters are practicing for the season.

As far as powder selection, I prefer granulated powder over pellets. Pellets are a little handier wince there is no measuring to do, but they do have a few drawbacks. First, loose powder is a lot less expensive than pellets. Around here I can get a lb. of Pyrodex Select for about $16, and shooting 100gr loads I get about 70 shots per pound. 100 pellets cost $26 and only yield 50 shots. Second, loose powder allows me to work up the optimum load with little effort. With pellets, you are limited to 50gr increments unless you want to also buy 30gr pellets and mix and match the two sizes to get the load you want. With loos powder you also don' t have to worry about making sure the black end of the pellet in down when loading, you just pour the measured charge into the bore followed by the bullet.

As to the type of powder, I keep coming back to Triple 7 2F. Pyrodex is good stuff, but I like the fact that with T7 I can get the same velocities with less powder, meaning less recoil and less cost. T7 is also a breeze to clean up. The smaller T7 granuals are also smaller and flow better from my powder flask than Pyrodex.

As far as bullets go, there are a great number to choose from, and it' s really a matter of experimentation to find the type of bullet your gun likes the best. Hornady .45cal 240 thru 300 grain XTP Mag sabots are fairly cheap, easy to find, and are usually very accurate from most rifles. They are also proven performers on deer sized game. My next choice would be Precision Rifle QT sabots, in either .40cal or .45cal. In .40 cal I' d go with the 235gr version and in .45cal I' d go with a 300 grain bullet. The are polymer tipped pure lead spitzer boattails and are ballistically very good performers, about as good as one can get for a ML. They are also very accurate, and I can personally vouch for their ability to blender a deer' s innards.

With any muzzleloader, cleaning is VERY, VERY, and I' ll say it again, VERY IMPORTANT. Black powder and ALL substitutes are corrosive to varying degrees, and if any residue is allowed to remain the barrel for more than a day or so the bore will begin to quickly rust. Don' t fall for the hype with all the various black powder bore solvents. IMO, they are all a waste of money. For cleaning at the range between shots I use plain old spit. Yep, that' s right, spit on a patch and run it down the bore, followed by a dry patch. And for a more through cleaning at the end of the day, the best solvent in the world for ML' s is plain old dish soap and very hot water. Use a wet brush to break up the bulk of the crud, and then use a bore mop to swab out the rest of it. Rinse and dry the bore with dry patches, then run a patch damp with a good synthetic preservative (my preferred product is Breakfree CLP) down the bore to prevent normal rust from forming. Clean and wipe down the rest of the gun and coat all metal surfaces with a LIGHT coat of CLP or similar and that' s it. Make absolutely sure that you generously coat the threads of the breechplug with a good anti-seize grease before reassembly. I' ve found recently that T/C' s " Gorilla Grease" seems to work about the best, especially if you decide to shoot T7. T7 is known for causeing breechplugs to seize up.

As far as the distance you can shoot, it depends on the ballistics of the bullet and load you choose, and on how confident you are with your marksmanship using open sights. Most muzzleloader bullets loose most of their oomph and are dropping like a rock at 200 yards. I think that 200 yards, with the right load, is pretty much the maximum effective range for muzzleloader projectiles on anything alive. Some might argue this point, but I thing that we all owe it to the deer to make sure that both the bullet and the shooter can get the job done as quickly and cleanly as possible. So the answer to your question in my mind is that you can take any shot inside 200 yards that you feel absolutely confident that you can make a good hit. The best way to find out your personal max range is to go to the range and shoot the gun. The range at which you can keep 100% of your shots inside an 8" circle, from field shooting positions, is your max range on game.

Good luck and enjoy your new gun. ML' s are a blast (sorry, bad pun! :D[>:])

Mike