Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Browning Hawken

Found a John Browning Hawken today at a local gunshop and I'm interested in buying it. Looks like what my vision of a traditional muzzleloader needs to be. Any thoughts on this rifle?
Thanks,
Lee

It sounds like the Jonathan Browning Mountain Rifle that they offered back in the '70s and '80s. Slow twist, round ball only as I remember. Pretty damned good rifle.

Thats more info than I have up to this point.
Thanks.

I remember when they were still cataloged, but not offering a left-handed model didn't excite me. Check out this guy's post here: http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?p=2151250#post2151250

I've owned 2 of them and neither was accurate.

Try this load 70 gr fffg powder an a patch round ball work up to what ever shoot the best at 75 yards or 1 inch high at 50 would work .Think you would find 80 gr your best load but as far as maxie go try a few some of my 1-66 twist shoot them better then round balls at the 50 yard targets

My buddy has a .50 JBMR, and uses 100 grains of FFFG hehind a bear greased patched ball.
The thing has dumped three deer now , the farthest at 110 paces.
With 60 grains of powder it is more than accurate enough to keep up with most of the crowd at a rendezvous.
Cat

I had one....when they were first introduced.....tried various loads with different thickness of patches and the SOB wouldn't group the round balls on a chit house wall!!

Great looker.....just wouldn't shoot!

Probably will be someone come on that states that theirs would shoot 1/3 MOA groups! Mine would too...for one shot!!

I have two of these rifles, a 50&54. Have won many black powder matches with both, They have a single set trigger which is activated by pushing it forward, Crisp 2 or 3 oz let off.

70 gr FFG in the .50 and 90gr in the .54 were the accuracy loads with a good round ball and .030 patch.

In the .54 i used up 140 gr. for hunting. Took two Colorado elk and several deer. They are much more accurate than the Encore rifle I have now.

LC

Having used both the Browning Hawken and an early Ithaca Hawken (built with Cherry Corners parts), both .50's, I found the sweet spot for accuracy to be at 50gr. FFFg w/PRB. Heck, I even killed a few deer with that load, not a big deal. Put the ball where it needs to go and it'll kill. Sold them both to finance an Ohio-style .45 half stock build.

I had one and traded it off. I couldn't get it to shoot right. Everytime I turned around the lock was loosening up inside. It was a beautiful rifle that had allot of issues.

Well I looked real hard at a couple of used ones.One 50 took my eye so I used my little drop in bore light to check it out and see what kind of condition the barrel was in and it looked ok but the bore light wouldn't come back out. Seems they have a tapered powder chamber near as we could tell.Had to remove the nipple ,pour in some powder and shoot it out, ( not much powder and yeah it worked) no I didn't buy it. I thought it was heavy and wouldn't be any better than a T/C. Magnum Man

The Ithaca was a good rifle.

i had a browning in 50 cal. i found it VERY accurate with 60gr 3F
and it would take a very stout load for hunting. it also shot conicals very well altho it had a slow twist.

carried it hunting a few times and realized why the mountain men had horses.

i sold it off when i got a Robinson (hunter) in 54 calibre cuz i have never been into horses.