By Toby Bridges
It takes more than a great rifle, with a precision barrel, to knock out a 50-shot hundred yard group such as that shown above. It also takes a precision riflescope...extremely consistent ignition...a clean burning powder that can and will produce the same level of pressure with each and every charge...and a bullet that flies [precisely] to the same point of impact every time. It takes all of these things simultaneouly, each and every time the trigger is pulled, to insure this kind of repeatable performance.
Take any one thing out of this equation, and the chances of achieving this level of accuracy grows increasingly more difficult, not to mention more unlikley.
Late in the fall of 2007, when I had the enviable task of being one of the very first U.S. shooters outside of Western Powders to do some test shooting with a powder that didn't even have a real name yet, I was quickly impressed with that powder's positive traits. It shot clean...it shot fast...it allowed reloading without wiping the bore...and the fouling did not have to be cleaned from the bore with any real degree of expediency. And one of my early tests was to shoot 25 consecutive shots, without wiping the bore, onto the same target. The result was a very impressive 1 3/4-inch hundred yard group.
Before the 2007-08 hunting seasons wound down, I managed to take 7 deer with the powder and several Knight DISC Extreme rifles - from about 40 yards out to nearly 200 yards. That powder was named Blackhorn 209 in the winter of 2008.
More recently, I received a new batch of Blackhorn 209 from Western Powders' facility in Miles City, MT, and curiosity simply got the better of me. I couldn't help but wonder if the same rifle, scope and load used would duplicate the great accuracy I enjoyed when shooting that 25-shot group in early winter 2007. So, with my favorite in-line rifle in tow, a Knight .50 caliber "Long Range Hunter" version of the DISC Extreme, topped with one of the Leatherwood/Hi-Lux Optics HPML muzzleloader scopes, I headed for my range early one cool Montana summer morning (for July anyway) to find out. The only real difference was that I had just installed a new silver finish HPML scope on the rifle, and had switched to a hotter No.209 primer for ignition - the CCI 209M.
And this morning, I decided to run a 50-shot test, again loading and shooting without wiping the bore between shots. I was shooting with 110-grains of Blackhorn 209 behind the 300-grain polymer-tipped "Scorpion PT Gold" from Harvester Muzzleloading.
After a half-dozen or so shots to get the new scope zeroed 4 inches high at 100 yards, I let the rifle sit for 5 minutes to cool down - then the test began. My first shot on the target, fired at 6:00 a.m. on the nose, was pretty much center of the 3-inch bullseye. (I used a lower self-adhesive 1-inch diameter Birchwood Casey "Targ-Dot" for point of aim, putting hits into the 3" bull.) My goal was to keep all 50 shots inside of that big red bullseye.
The rifle was kept in the shade and allowed to cool 4 to 5 minutes between shots. Fortunately, the temperature was just 50-degrees when I started the test group, with about 25-percent humidity. The wind was dead calm at the start. At shot No. 25, I almost stopped my test. All of those shots were inside of 1 inch! In fact, a set of calipers showed that the group measured .983" center-to-center (as close as I could determine what was "center-to-center"). Somewhere about Shot. No. 33 or 34, an 8 to 10 m.p.h. slight crosswind had picked up, and caused two or three hits to drift just a bit to the left. I hung out several wind flags and when they were fluttering to the left, I compensated slightly with my hold and had my hits once again going through pretty much the center of the slightly enlarging hole near the center of the red bullseye.
I concluded the test right at 9:30 a.m. It had taken 3 1/2 hours to put 50 shots onto that target, and to allow the rifle to cool just a bit between shots. That's an average of 4.2 minutes between shots. And the temperature at the end of the test was 58-degrees, with 20-percent humidity. Again, from what I could determine as the centers of the two holes at the widest points of the group (hole), all 50 shots stayed inside of 1.6 inches - center-to-center.
The combination used to punch this group isn't something I threw together last week or last month. This combination of Knight Rifle design, precision rifled Green Mountain rifle barrel, Leatherwood/Hi-Lux scope, and the specific load and primer used are the result of a never ending quest to shoot and hunt with only the best. Hopefully, I'll never end that quest. For me, that's what keeps muzzleloading interesting. That's the challenge of muzzleloading for this shooter.
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If You Are Looking For This Kind Of Repeatable Performance With Your Modern In-Line Ignition Rifle - This Is The Muzzleloader Hunting Blog You Have Been Looking For - And Blackhorn 209 Is The Modern Modern Muzzleloader Propellant You Need to Be Shooting. This Blog Will Build Quickly...And Will Share What It Takes To Achieve Top Accuracy And Performance From Your Muzzleloader!
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