Eleven States Still Discriminate Against The Muzzleloading Hunter

Following is an e-mail that went out yesterday (12-28-11) to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Attached to that e-mail was a letter to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, filing a discrimination complaint against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, for the manner in which that state wildlife agency forces the aged hunter with weakened eyesight, and those hunters with a natural sight impairment, to jump through hoops in order to "qualify" to use a riflescope during the muzzleloader season. Eleven states still enforce such discriminating regulations.

The battle to win fair and equal muzzleloader hunting opportunities for ALL muzzleloading hunters is far from being over.

The letter to Secretary Salazar can be read at the link in the following e-mail message.

Toby Bridges
NORTH AMERICAN
MUZZLELOADER HUNTING




December 28, 2011

Dear Idaho Department of Fish and Game;

It's time to get this ball rolling along again. Muzzleloader hunting has stalled some over the past couple of years, and that's partially due to backward muzzleloader hunting regulations, such as those enforced by IDFG, that tend to hold back interest.

The attached letter to Secretary Ken Salazar addresses one of the biggest problems plaguing the muzzleloader seasons.

Your agency is one of 11 state wildlife agencies that continue to discriminate against muzzleloader hunters who cannot see open sights well enough to use them. Since 2006, the DOI/USFWS forced IDFG and ten other state wildlife agencies to make special provisions for those hunters with aged or impaired sight to undergo medical examination, complete an application, sent with a letter from the physician/optometrist, and apply for a permit exemption from the restriction that prohibits muzzleloading hunters from using a riflescope.

The Department of the Interior's anti-discrimination policy specifically says that the agency cannot provide funding or financial assistance to any organization or agency which requires ANY U.S. CITIZEN to "qualify in a different manner" in order to participate in any opportunity.

The requirement you now have in place for those with older or impaired sight most definitely discriminates against these hunters. IDFG is in violation of that policy...and so is the DOI/USFWS when it continues to provide federal tax dollars to IDFG.

More on this issue published at: http://www.namlhunt.com/mllegislation2.html


Toby Bridges
NORTH AMERICAN
MUZZLELOADER HUNTING

www.namlhunt.com

Nikon Omega BDC Muzzleloader Scope vs. Hi-Lux Optics TB-ML Scope

Both Scopes Do What they Are Supposed To Do - But Which One Does It Best?

By Toby Bridges

Recently, a good friend who happens to be the vice president with one of the major hunting product distributing companies contacted me to see if I would work up an optimum load for his .50 modern in-line ignition rifle...and get it sighted for an upcoming western mule deer hunt. He knew that I would have the patience to allow the rifle to truly cool fully between loads and shots, and that I would experiment with different loading components to find the absolute best combo for the rifle.

What he sent me was a .50 caliber Traditions VORTEK model, topped with one of the 3-9x40mm Nikon BDC (Bullet Drop Conpensating) multi-reticle Omega muzzleloader scopes. The rifle was identical (an almost exact duplicate) to a VORTEK rifle I often use as a test rifle. The only real difference in these two rigs was that mine is topped with one of the Hi-Lux Optics 3-9x40mm TB-ML multi-reticle muzzleloader scopes - which I developed for that company.

Now, you may be saying to yourself that I'm probably a bit too biased to conduct a comparison test between these two competing models. And you just could be right. However, it was an experience I had with one of the Omega muzzleloader scopes back in 2005 which made me convince my good friends at Hi-Lux Optics to allow me to develop the muzzleloader scope they now offer. And my reason for doing so...I was not impressed with the circular long range reticles of the Nikon scope. I found it difficult to get a precise hold on targets at 200...225...250 yards. So, I went with short cross-bar (short crosshair) reticles with the Hi-Lux scope.

And when my friend's rifle and scope showed up via UPS a few days after I agreed to do the load work and sighting, I found myself comparing the identical rifles...and the two multi-reticle muzzleloader hunting scopes. And the more I compared them, sighting out across a grass field next to my garage, the more I knew I would have to do some side-by-side shooting with the two rigs before sending my buddy's VORTEK back to him. (The two rifles and scopes can be seen in the top photo above.)

Working up the load for his rifle was not much of a chore. I simply started with the same load my VORTEK shoots well - 110-grains of Blackhorn 209 and the saboted Harvester Muzzleloading polymer tipped 300-grain Scorpion PT Gold spire point bullet. I did notice that when loading the Nikon scoped VORTEK, the black Crush Rib Sabot that comes standard with the the Scorpion PT Gold bullet did load a bit too easily for my taste. From experience, I know that loads of Blackhorn 209 give best ignition when the fit of the sabot and bullet are a little on the tight side, maintaining adequate compression of the powder charge. And it became evident that the combo I was loading in the rifle was too loose when 3 of the first 10 shots out of the rifle were very noticeable hangfires.

I switched to the slightly tighter fitting red Crush Rib Sabot offered by Harvester Muzzleloading...and ignition became spontaneous 100-percent of the time. That first morning, shooting with temperatures right around 50 degrees, I managed to punch several 1 1/4-inch hundred yard groups with the rifle and load.

Early the next morning, in order to shoot at the coolest time of the day, I was back out on the range at daybreak...maybe just a bit earlier. But, by the time I got my shooting gear set up on the bench and targets at 100 and 200 yards, it was light enough to shoot - and to compare how the two scopes performed at the longer range.

I shot first on a 100 yard target, to tweak the sighting of each rifle to print right at 1 1/2 inches above point of aim. Then, I jumped over to the portable target board I had set out at 200 yards. And for shooting at that range I had stapled two pieces of standard typing paper onto a new 2x3 foot rectangle of cardboard, and in the center of each piece of paper, I had stuck one of the 5 1/2-inch diameter Birchwood Casey "Shoot-N-C" self adhesive targets.

One thing I noticed immediately when sighting through the Nikon scope was that the circular 200-yard reticle of the Omega scope was more than twice the diameter of the 5 1/2-inch target at 200 yards. Instead of placing any part of the reticle on the target where you want the bullet to hit, it is a matter of trying to determine the exact center of the reticle and getting the point of aim as close to the center as possible. And that is exactly what I didn't like about the BDC reticle when I first shot with an Omega scope in 2005.

In all, I shot three targets with each rifle and scope. The best 200 yard group shot with the VORTEK topped with the Nikon Omega scope can be seen in the second photo down at the top of this report. The three shots were right at 3-inches center-to-center, and averaged almost 4 inches above the center of the target. This was the first group fired that morning. Subsequent groups were fired using a slightly larger 8-inch "Shoot-N-C" bull. Those two groups went 3 1/4-inches and 3 3/4-inches center-to-center. All shots would have taken a deer.

My best 200-yard group shot with the Hi-Lux TB-ML scoped VORTEK rifle can be seen in the third photo down. These three shots stayed inside of 2-inches. The other two groups went 2.45" and 3.1". All, however were closer to the center of the target. I do believe that a multi-reticle scope that allows the shooter to more precisely hold on the desired point of aim will do a better job of putting long range shots where you want them on that target.

I called my friend that afternoon and told him how the shooting had gone...and informed him that I would be heading out in a couple of days to do more shooting at ranges of 225 and 250 yards. He thought about it a minute, then asked if I had an extra of a TB-ML scope on hand. I offered to pull one off of a test rifle, and replace it later with one from the company.

A few days later, with a TB-ML scope on his rifle, I was able to duplicate the performance I'd shot with my VORTEK and TB-ML scope at 200 yards. Then to see how well the reticles printed the load from this rifle at 225 and 250 yards, I stapled a 9-inch paper plate onto the target board. (I had placed a 1" stick on bull in the center of the plate.) At 225, my two shots printed about 1.5-inches apart, nearly center of the plate. Two more shot at 250 yards printed 3.170-inches apart, averaging just 1.5-inches below point of aim.

As this is being written, my friend is pursuing a muzzleloader record book mule deer with his VORTEK - and TB-ML scope. If given a shot out to 250 yards, I'm confident that the rifle and scope combo, and the load, are fully capable of putting down a big buck.

The scope he's now hunting with has had more than 3,500 rounds fired under it. But, that's nothing compared to the scope that's now mounted on my Knight Rifles .50 caliber Mountaineer. It's the original prototype of the TB-ML, and has now had somewhere in the neighborhood 8,800 rounds fired under it. The morning I last shot my friend's VORTEK before shipping it back to him, to kill time during the 10 minute cool down periods between loads and shots with his rifle, I had taken the old scope and Mountaineer with me for a bit of shooting. Several of the 100-yard groups shot with the rig that day, also shooting the 300-grain Scorpion PT Gold and 110-grain charge of Blackhorn 209, stayed well inside of an inch. (That rifle and scope is shown in the bottom photo above.)

Suggested retail for the TB-ML scope, with a matte black finish is $179. Suggested retail for the Nikon Omega, with a black matte finish is $350.

For more on the TB-ML scope, and a great selection of other high quality, precise, clear, bright and tough riflescope models, go to...

www.hi-luxoptics.com

SEE SPECIAL N.A. MUZZLELOADER HUNTING PRICING ON THE TB-ML SCOPE IN THE LEFT COLUMN OF THIS SITE...

How Will Knight's New ALL-BRASS BLOODLINE Bullets Perform On Game?

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to load...shoot...and hunt with a number of novel new muzzle-loaded bullet designs or concepts. Heck, I was even the first kid on my block (maybe in my state) to shoot with modern saboted muzzleloader bullets. And, that idea surely took off. My guess is that better than 80-percent of all muzzleloading hunters today are now hunting with a bullet that's less than bore-sized - and "patched" with a plastic sabot.

Even among saboted bullets we've witnessed a variety of, well, ideas that strayed from the norm when it came to their design and/or construction. Two in particular come to mind. One was known as "The Bullet", and what made this saboted copper-jacketed lead core bullet "different" than anything else on the market was the hole that ran completely through the bullet, from the nose to the base. The thinking behind the design was to reduce drag...and to provide added aerodynamics to a lighter and faster flying bullet - by making it longer. The longest of these I had the opportunity to shoot was a .429" diameter bullet that weighed 240-grains, yet it was 1.050" in length...making it 40-percent longer than a .429" diameter Hornady XTP of the same weight.

The other bullet was known as the DEVEL bullet - a 175-grain copper-tin composite solid. And I do mean solid. I once shot a wild hog with the DEVEL bullet in Texas during a September bullet testing session, hitting the 200-pound hog in the chest as it looked at me straight on at about 100 yards. When dressing out the hog and conducting a postmortem study of the bullet path, I finally found the bullet lodged against the pelvic bone...without a scratch on it. Since the bullet was not deformed in any way...I saved it, and took it to North Carolina for the early coastal muzzleloading deer season. And I shot a doe with it at about 100 yards. The hard composite bullet zipped right through the deer, which ran about 70 yards and went down.

Both of these bullets shot with great accuracy - but lacked in game taking performance. Two does harvested with "The Bullet" went down quickly, but I found that without adequate center density, the hollow tube of a bullet tended to collapse and flatten into a pancake looking disc. On one of the deer, shot at about 35 yards, the bullet did not even make it through the internal organs to hit the opposite rib cage. Then, while the star shaped nose of the DEVEL was "supposed" to hydraulically create a shock wave, I saw little evidence of that in the game harvested with the bullet. I stopped hunting with the DEVEL after losing two bucks, both hit right behind the front shoulder with a 175-grain DEVEL, on the same day. Right here, right now, I want to make it very clear that these are the only two deer I have ever lost to saboted bullets.

Now, this is a lengthy lead in for an article on Knight Rifles' new machined all-brass BLOODLINE saboted bullets. But I felt compelled to share with you that when I now test shoot a novel new approach to a hunting projectile that's supposed to perform differently than a conventional expanding design, it's with some apprehension.

I did my first shooting with the BLOODLINE bullets late last summer and early fall. And I will say that from the very start, I have been extremely impressed with their great looks...and how well they've shot. The bullets I received included 300-grain and 275-grain .458" diameters, and a 250-grain .451" diameter bullet. These came directly from the manufacturer, before the new Knight Rifles announced putting them on the market, as the new BLOODLINE bullets, and did not come with sabots.

I paired the bullets up with the Harvester Muzzleloading black .50x.45 Crush Rib Sabot. While this sabot has actually been designed for shooting .451" bullets, the fine raised ribs on the outside of this sabot offer enough "give" to allow loading .458" diameter bullets without requiring over exertion on the ramrod when pushing the combo down the bore. Loading with my old standby charge of 110-grains of Blackhorn 209, my Knight .50 Long Range Hunter model had no problem whatsoever of keeping groups inside of 1 1/4 inches at a hundred yards with the two weights of the .458" bullets. A fairly high percentage of the groups shot actually printed inside of an inch.

When I switched to the .451" 250-grain BLOODLINE, I felt it loaded just a bit too easily with the black Crush Rib Sabot, so I switched to Harvester Muzzleloading's slightly tighter fitting red version of the same sabot. Two of the first three groups shot with that combo, shooting the same amount of Blackhorn 209, printed just under an inch.

(All three weights can be seen in Photo 1 above.)

Since the first several range sessions with the machined brass hollow-fronted BLOODLINE bullets, accuracy has never been an issue. With anywhere between 100- and 120-grains of Blackhorn 209, or FFFg Triple Seven, I've gotten the same degree of accuracy as already shared here. But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how well the two novel bullets detailed at the beginning of this article had also shot...then how miserably they had performed on deer-sized game. Dave Fricke, who played the instrumental role in developing these bullets had sent me photos showing how the concept works...and how the wound channel produced by what would become the Knight Rifles BLOODLINE bullet is far more impressive than the wound channel produced by conventional expanding bullets. Another photo he sent, showing the damage to the rib cage of a red stag, was even more impressive.

Being an all brass precision CNC machined bullet isn't the only thing that makes the BLOODLINE unique. At one time, American shooters considered the all-copper Barnes bullets pretty darn unique, and many were apprehensive. Now, there is something of a Barnes "All Copper Club". The bullets do expand nicely...and retain near 100-percent of their original weight. I've taken several elk with the 300-grain Expander MZ, and a half-dozen deer with the Spit-Fire and TMZ bullets. The performance of these has been excellent.

What makes the all-brass BLOODLINE really different is that this IS NOT an expanding bullet. Upon impact, the hollow cavity at the front literally separates into six different petals, which break away from the solid brass base section of the bullet. These sharp-edged fragments radiate out from the path of the bullet, and according to those who designed this concept, these frontal pieces are devastating to internal organs. The rear 2/3rds or so of the bullet then punches on through for an exit hole. And it was this claim that I set out to test this summer. Unfortunately, fall hunting seasons were still a couple of months off, so I had to come up with something other than actually shooting game.

Using a portable target board, I loosely attached a piece of 2'x3' cardboard to it by just stapling it a couple of times along the very top edge. Then, I set up a standard wooden sawhorse directly in front of the cardboard. I then stapled a water-filled gallon Ziploc baggie to the 2x4 cross board of the sawhorse. (Photo 2 above.) Then directly in front of the baggie, I hung a water soaked 8" wide strip of 1/8" thick wool/hair felt. Before this was soaked in a bucket of water, I used a permanent marker to make a bold black "+" aiming mark, which was centered over the area of the water-filled baggie where the water mass was the greatest. I felt this should cause the hydraulics needed to initiate the opening of the hollow-point nose...and to cause the petals to break away and radiate out much the same as when the bullet hits a deer...elk...or bear.

To determine how sharply those segments of the nose angled out, for Shot No. 1...I placed the sawhorse so the rear of the of the gallon-filled Ziploc was exactly 12-inches in front of the cardboard. And to prevent the water from the exploding bag soaking the cardboard target board, I hung a heavy duty plastic leaf/trash bag in front of the cardboard. For this test, I was loading the 275-grain .458" BLOODLINE, using a prototype of a new Crush Rib Sabot I've been testing for Harvester Muzzleloading. With 110-grains of Blackhorn 209, the bullet gets out of the 27-inch barrel of my Knight .50 Long Range Hunter test rifle at 2,014 f.p.s. (2,475 f.p.e.). Prior to starting this test, I had tweaked the sighting of the Hi-Lux Optics TB-ML scope to print "dead on" at 100 yards. And my first shot was right at the cross of the aiming mark...maybe 1/4" to the right.

At the shot, the bag literally exploded, and water flew in every direction. This bullet is right at .990" in length, and while it does have a large hollow-pointed nose, the ogive starts fairly far back. I will have to do some trajectory tests to establish a closer ballistic coefficient, but a good guess is around .225. If that's the case, then at 100 yards, the bullet hit the water filled plastic bag at around 1,680 f.p.s., with just over 1,720 f.p.e. The bursting of the bag was enough to blow the felt aiming strip more than 10 feet back in the direction of the shooting bench. When the cardboard was pulled from behind the plastic curtain...the hole near the center revealed that a very big portion of the bullet kept on flying pretty much on the path it had taken from 100 yards away. Fairly evenly radiating out from that hole were six smaller holes, where the separated brass petals passed on through to imbed into the plywood of the target board. The pattern produced by these pieces was right at 18 inches across.

(Note: One of the petals recovered from the plywood target board weighed right at 9 grains.)

With a new piece of cardboard in place...and a new water-filled Ziploc and the felt aiming strip hung from the sawhorse...this time the target board was set so the cardboard was exactly 6 inches behind the rear of the baggie. Again, the baggie exploded, and again the felt strip was thrown 10 to 12 feet toward the bench. And when the cardboard was examined...there was again that large hole pretty much in the center...with six smaller holes radiating out in an even circle. However, since the water-filled bag had been half the distance forward of the target board, the diameter of that circle was just 10 1/2 inches. (See Photo No. 3 above.)

For the third shot, the rear of the bag rested right against the plastic leaf/trash bag used to keep water from soaking the cardboard. And at the shot, the impact was even more explosive. Not only did the felt aiming strip fly forward closer to 20 feet, both the portable plywood target board and the sawhorse were blown over - with the target board flying rearward and the sawhorse flipping over forward. When I pulled the cardboard from behind the plastic protection, it was immediately evident that with the baggie directly against the cardboard, much more energy was transferred to what the baggie had been resting against. And that was evident in the damage to the surface of the cardboard. Pretty much in the center was the hole produced by the base section of the all-brass BLOODLINE bullet, and radiating out in a 4-inch diameter circle were the smaller holes produced by the brass petals. (See Photo No. 4 above.) However, the surface of the cardboard was broken...ripped...and cut from all the energy it had absorbed. It reminded me of the massive trauma and bloodshot area that commonly surrounds an impact wound.

The evidence is that the BLOODLINE bullets will perform just as claimed. I've heard from a number of Knight Rifle shooters who are looking forward to the coming seasons, to see just how well the BLOODLINES do when they hit hair...hide...muscle...bone...and vital organs. From what I've seen of the testing I've already conducted, I would definitely have no qualms about taking a shot on just about anything. My predictions are, there's going to be a great blood trail to follow if the game runs any at all...and a lot of mush will be dumped out of chest cavities this fall and winter. - Toby Bridges


www.namlhunt.com

10,000 Rounds With No Loss Of Accuracy!

Here's a look at one Knight .50 caliber "Long Range Hunter" that now has more than 10,000 rounds through it...and which is still capable of putting 50 shots through one ragged 1.5-inch center-to-center hole!


50-Consecutive-Shot-Group

New Web Address For NORTH AMERICAN MUZZLELOADER HUNTING!

Since at this time of the year, the NORTH AMERICAN MUZZLELOADER HUNTING website gets an average of 500 to 600 visitors daily, I'm sure many of you are confused over not being able to pull up the website. You can thank Homestead Technologies for that, that web hosting service has to be the absolute worst in the business.

The good news is, that we are rebuilding with another hosting service, and we think you will like the format much better, which makes it easier to access muzzleloader hunting video clips...and to link to muzzleloading product TV commericals. By the end of next month, we should have the site back to around 30 pages...and to 50 or 60 pages by the first of the year. By this time next year, NORTH AMERICAN MUZZLELOADER HUNTING will be back to an equal or greater number of pages, with lots of great load data and ballistics.

More New Material Will Be Added On A Regualr Basis Than At Any Time In The Past...So Visit Often At Our New Web Address...

www.namlhunt.com

The manner in which Homestead Technologies robbed us of more than 12,000 hours of time spent researching, testing, photographing, building website pages, promoting, and publishing on the old site over the past 7 years is not going away without being contested.

Following is an e-mail letter sent to Justin Kitch, c.e.o. of Homestead...

"Justin;

I have been a customer of Homestead for 7 years, and would be remiss if I did not share with you how disappointed I am with Homestead Technologies.

Since 2004, I have invested more than 12,000 hours researching, testing, writing and publishing on my Homestead hosted websites hundreds of article and reports. Recently (in June) I was building a new website in conjunction with one of the companies I do some product design, testing and marketing for, and received notice from Homestead that my "accounts" were going to be disabled...due to the fact that they could not bill a $19.15 charge to the credit card covering my accounts.

And that, sir, is a bullshit lie!

That card is always kept paid up, has never once been maxed out, and was being used while travelling during the very same time period that your billing department claimed the card was invalid. We've checked our card account, and there was not an attempt from Homestead to bill the card.

What gives?

Now I cannot even go onto my sites, even though the account has been paid up until late January 2012, to retrieve and save the articles and reports published there.

I have contacted one of the top attorneys in the U.S. to seek reimbursement for the time I have devoted to these websites, specifically www.hpmuzzleloading.com, at the rate of $25 per hour. If we cannot resolve this problem, that is exactly the route I will be forced to take.

Toby Bridges
OUTDOOR COMMUNICATIONS
Missoula, MT 59801"

Any of you needing to contact me in regards to muzzleloader performance, please use the following e-mail address: toby@namlhunt.com

I'm looking forward to sharing muzzleloader hunting information and load data for the next 7 years...hopefully much longer.

Toby Bridges
NORTH AMERICAN
MUZZLELOADER HUNTING

www.nanmlhunt.com

Tighten Up Sabot-Bullet Fit For Tighter Groups

Early rifle makers of the 1700s, and to some degree into the early to mid 1800s, often produced their own barrels - generally out of necessity. First, they forged a long and narrow ribbon of steel, and hammer forged that around a mandrel of sorts, keeping the metal as close to white hot as possible, literally welding the wraps with every strike of the hammer. Once the barrel blank was finished, the bore was reamed and polished, then it was ready to be rifled. Except for the hand welding of the steel, most of this arduous work was done on a wooden rifling bench. And while the riflesmith likely started out to produce a certain caliber, that was likely rarely achieved. Say the bore was to be a ".45"...and in the end was more like a ".46" or ".47" caliber. But, that was not a big deal in those days, because once the barrel was done, the maker generally made a bullet mould that would produce the proper diameter ball or bullet for that barrel.

Fortunately, with today's advanced machining and mass production capabilities, it is now far easier to produce bore sizes that are far more precise. Still, that does not mean that all bores of a given caliber share exact internal measurements. Take the popular .50 caliber sabot-shooting in-line rifle bores, some of which have been as tight at .499", and some going to as large as .504"-.505" on the other end of the spectrum. Finding the optimum sabot-bullet fit for a particular bore has proven extremely frustrating for shooters who demand tight downrange groups.

Even the barrels on rifles of the same make and model, produced on the same machinery, can typically have bores that vary .001" to .002" from barrel to barrel, or from one barrel run to the next. And this is often due to the slight wear of the boring, polishing, and groove cutting/forming tools used to produce the bore. Even this slight variation can affect not only the accuracy of the rifle, but with some of today's newer and harder to ignite powders, like Blackhorn 209, it can also affect the consistency of igntion - especially when a sabot-bullet combo is extremely loose fitting in the bore.

Earlier this year, a shooter from Vermont contacted me about using a wrap of Scotch-type tape around the .452" Hornady XTP jacketed hollow-points that he was loading and shooting with his .50 caliber rifle. He claimed that with the black .50x.45 sabot that came pre-packaged with the bullet, from Hornady, the rifle was just way too tough to load...and when he went to the easier-loading Harvester Muzzleloading black .50x.45 Crush Rib Sabot, the combination did not give enough compression of the Blackhorn 209 charges he wanted to shoot. So, he simply put a wrap of clear celephane tape around the bullet, producing a slightly tighter fit when the combo was pushed down onto the powder charge with the ramrod. The added compression produced spontaneous ignition...and better accuracy.

Personally, I wasn't too crazy about the idea of putting adhesive tape onto bullets...so I decided to do some experimenting with the non-adhesive thin white Teflon plumbing/thread tape. And I had just the rifle for the testing.

Since February 2009, I've been shooting a prototype of a rifle which the new Knight Rifles company has introduced as their bare-primer version of the DISC Extreme - the "Mountaineer". Early on, I found that this particular rifle had a bore running right at .502 from land-to-land. When I first shot in cold weather, with temps in the 20s and 30s, the 300-grain .451" diameter Scorpion PT Gold and the standard black .50x.45 Crush Rib Sabot loaded just tight enough to give the compression needed for spontaneous ignition with the hefty Blackhorn 209 charges both the rifle and I liked. However, as soon as the weather warmed to the point in late spring/early summer when the average temperature during my range sessions was getting into the 60s...I noticed that the combo was loading way too easy, and my accuracy was beginning to wane. So, I switched to the tighter fitting red .50x.45 Crush Rib Sabot, and the Mountaineer prototype soon was punching the 300-grain Scorpion PT Gold in tight sub 1-inch groups again.

So, with a fresh roll of the white Teflon tape in my shooting box, I headed for the range on an overcast afternoon (with a few light showers thrown in) with the temperature right about 70 degrees. I shot the rifle a few times with the red Crush Rib Sabot, and 2 of the 3 groups shot were inside of an inch. I gave the rifle plenty of time to cool between loading and shooting again. But when I made the switch to the looser fitting black .50x.45 sabot, I experienced two hang fires out of the first three shots. It was very evident that in the hotter weather, the .451 Scorpion PT Gold and the black Crush Rib Sabot were not all that compatible out of this particular rifle bore.

I had already determined that it took about 1 1/2 inches of the Teflon tape to encircle the 300-grain bullet once...so I pulled out and measured a strip just 1/8th inch over 3 inches in length - enough for two wraps. The idea behind using a non-adhesive type tape was to have the spin of the bullet shed the Teflon shim instantly as the bullet left the muzzle. So I laid the strip of Teflon on the knee area of my blue jeans...and rolled bullet across from right to left. The Knight/Green Mountain barrel of the Mountaineer has a "Right Hand Twist"...meaning the rifling rotates clockwise. When the bullet and sabot leave the bore and separate, the loose end of the Teflon would catch the air and be instantly peeled from the bullet...rotating at extremely high rpm's in the same clockwise spin.

Anyway, that was my theory.

And it must have been a sound theory. The first three shots were spontaneous, and printed right at 1 1/4 inches. Two more groups were right there with them. One of the showers that afternoon had come and gone, and the temperature had dropped to about 60 degrees...so I went back to shooting the bullet and black sabot WITHOUT the two wraps of Teflon. The first attempt just sort of spit the bullet out. Loading the rifle again in the same manner, WITHOUT the Teflon tape, the rifle fired okay for the second shot, but was about 4 inches higher than where the groups shot WITH the two wraps had printed. But the third shot experienced a lengthy hangfire, and didn't even print on the paper target at 100 yards.

I decided to add another wrap, tightening up the fit just a bit more...cutting a strip that was right at 4 1/2 inches in length. I put a small dot on the bullet just above where the wrap began, and when I reached the other end, found that the Teflon encircled the bullet approximately 3 1/4 times. When first experimenting with rolling the tape around these bullets, to get everything to sit nicely down into the cup of the sabot required that about 1/8-inch of the 1/2-inch wide tape extend below the base of the bullet as it is wrapped around. Then after the loose end is rubbed down, sticking to the wrap below it, the "skirt" can be folded toward the bottom-center of the bullet. This prevents the thin Teflon from riding up when the wrapped bullet is inserted into the sabot cup.

So, how did the bullet shoot with the additional wrap? Two of the three groups shot, using 110-grains of Blckhorn 209, stayed well inside of an inch...the other was right at an inch. The best group of the three measured right at .660" center-to-center.

All of this testing was done with the very light, very thin white Teflon. When a single thickness is compressed between the jaws of my calipers, the material measures just over .001". The heavier duty pink Teflon, compressed in the same manner measures just shy of .004". Next time I head to the range, one morning later this week, I'll give two wraps of the pink non-adhesive tape a try. I'll post an update.

If any of you have experienced ignition or accuracy problems due to a loose fitting sabot-bullet combination, you might want to give this a try. If you do, be sure to come back here and leave a comment on how it worked for you. - Toby Bridges, NORTH AMERICAN MUZZLELOADER HUNTING

NOTE: All NORTH AMERICAN MUZZLELOADER HUNTING primary test rifles are topped with one of the excellent 3-9x40mm multi-reticle Leatherwood/Hi-Lux Optics muzzleloader hunting scopes. If you are in the market for a new scope this season, be sure to go to the link below...and when you click on "ENTER", look for the special pricing offer near the top of the opening page.

www.hpmuzzleloading.com

North American Muzzleloader Hunting Is Now On Facebook!

Join in the discussions...and share photos of game you've taken with a muzzleloader - modern or traditional. Just click on the link below...


www.facebook.com/pages/North-American-Muzzleloader-Hunting/226469480712580


Toby Bridges
NORTH AMERICAN
MUZZLELOADER HUNTING