[southdakbearfan]

So the past couple years I have been dabbling into muzzleloading. I have a CVA buckhorn magnum I bought for a 100 bucks off a guy and this past december I hunted hard.

Deer were very skiddish in my area as they have encroached the east river season into muzzleloader. It use to be the whole month of december was muzzleloader only pretty much, now 2 weeks of it is intermingled with east river extended doe season. I put on about 50 miles walking, stalking and sitting over the month. Missed once on one that should have been a dead bang deal (jerked the trigger in my youthful excitement).

I ended up taking a nice size doe at 90 yards my last day I was going to be able to hunt for the month.

I have to say I am hooked. I practiced a lot, shot a lot of different bullet/sabot/powder combos and was confident to 100 yards.

That being said the buckhorn is a PITA to clean having to tear everything down removing the gun from the stock and then breaking down the gun. So, I put up the slight investment of a CVA Optima V2 (coming in Feb) and purchased an EABCO peeprib. My chosen bullet/sabot combo is harvester PT gold 300's and harvester sabots with a 2 pellet charge of IMR white hots. I may buy the blackhorn 209 breech plug and switch over eventually but I have 4 boxes of IMR white hots to burn up in the mean time.

Any words of wisdom for the newby to inlines? I really like the harvester crush rib sabots as they load 10 times easier than anything else, especially in a fouled barrel and they have shot fantastic for me. Powerbelts sucked accuracy wise with both pellets and straight FFG. TC shockwaves were impossible to load in a slightly fouled barrel.

I am hoping with the better gun and the peeprib I may be able to extend to 125 yards or so.

 

[southdakbearfan]

I chronographed White Hots, Tripple Seven, black powder, Pyrodex, R and Pyrodex P and Blackhorn. I use Pyrodex P loose powder in my traditional Thompson Center Hawken. When I won the state shoot Hodgden gave me a case of powder and I shoot so much I went through that in a year.
Back to the chronografing, the Blackhorn was 100 fps faster than anything else. I have thre traditional and two inlines. I have had some CVA and they tend to foul much more (like my Savage center fires)than my Thompson Centers. If I remember correctly 110 gr of Blackhorn was pushing a 250 gr Shockwave at right around 1850fps. In these craxy times I would like s flintlock in the event we cant get caps or primers. If your fouling bad enough to inhibit seating some sabots run a nytex brush through the bore during your shooting sessions. Also some powders are more fowling than others. I shot the entire state muzzy shoot of 60 rounds with P Pyrodex in a traditional with patched round ball without running a single patch. Blackhorn is good that way too. I think I only shot 1/2 box of the White Hots because of fouling. They produced kind of a hard gritty fouling.

I have read the pellets tend to foul a bit more and would agree, I am getting good velocities on the white hots and accurate groups. Once I switched to the harvester crush rib sabots I could do 6 to 7 shots easily without doing anything. TC Shockwave/Sabot - had to wetpatch every single round. I shot the TC's, Hornadies, some TC hard cast sabots and powerbelts with a buddy who was really struggling to get a decent group from his 700ML. We then ordered a variety of the Harvester bullets and sabots and wow what a difference for both of us in both group size and loading ease. He told me that those are the only bullet/sabot combo's his rifle has every shot under 3" groups with. We will see what the new one likes when I get it.

I have about 900 Remington 57* primers that I have been using in my inlines since I no longer have any cases that can use them. They seem to ignite well, even in cold so I intend on using them up over the next decade so I am not worried too much about primers.

I may eventually try blackhorn, but I will need the different breech plug and I have quite a bit of Pellets and loose FFG to burn up. Blackhorn would be nice for the clean up factor, but after cleaning my nephews CVA Wolf, it was amazing how much easier a break barrel with quick release breech plug was.

I did upgrade the sight on my old CVA buckhorn to a ghost ring as I hated the factory sights.

 

[southdakbearfan]

I can see myself getting more into it down the road, flintlock or percussion maybe in the future. I have about 2500 lbs of lead stashed for sinkers, jigs, bottom bouncers and bullets.

 

[southdakbearfan]

Did you have any luck or ever try any round balls in your inlines?

I have read they don't do too well due to the twist rates, but I have also seen where some seem to have success with an undersized round ball in a sabot.

Might try some hard cast bullets in sabots, possibly some conicals too, just to mess around a little.

I haven't got to try the new one yet, but the older CVA like 240's and 300's.

 

[southdakbearfan]

I got out with the recent warming to sight in the new smoke pole.

I was really happy with the peeprib and the accuracy I got with pellets. Ended up with white hots as nothing else was in stock. 300 gr harvester scorpion pt.

Need to get a lower front sight as the best I could get to was 1/2" low.