Got invited to a friends farm for the KY early muzzleloader season. Showed up with my trusty TC renegade and about 7:00 pm center punched a 8pt about 160-170 lbs with a PRB over 75 gr fff as it stepped into the clear in a dry creek bed. With the smoke and flash I momentairly lost sight of the deer but didn't see or hear him crashing off or anything. I climbed down and started to reload before checking things out but thought well go look and see . He was stretched out in the creek bed right where he had been standing. In thinking about it of the 6-7 deer I have shot with a PRB at ranges from 15-120 yds none have cleared their shadow and most went down so fast I didn't see them fall. A small sample I know but my buddy has had pretty much the same experience. What make the lead round ball so effective. I've shot deer with smokeless cartridges from .243- 30-06 but none have generatedthe DRTs I have seen from those lead round balls tooling along about 1700-1800 fps.

Heck, it's no wonder, they're pre-expanded

In Idaho, you can use it during a general rifle season but not during a ML season. For that, it's solid lead only & no sabots.

He's talking about the success he's had with an ordinary round lead ball.

I haven't hunted with a muzzle loader in quite a while. Ordinary lead did just fine. I used conicals, a buddy used round ball, and both worked great.

Guy

Back when I ran round balls in my MLers they expanded quite well despite the low MV. Shot placement and a large chunk of lead does great things.

Amen. I have shot nothing but patched round balls in all my ML deer rifles, and always marveled at how well they killed stuff. Sometimes we mistake technology for wisdom.

True. It was over 20 years ago that I shot my first mule deer with a traditional .50 cal T-C rifle. Instant drop and death. I remember thinking that the ol' mountain men were better armed than I'd thought.

Guy

Sort of weird. I typed this on my Ipad and it often does a error occurred reload resulting in having yo start over with what you were typing . That occurred with this thread and I thought I had lost what I was typing. Do I moved to the Rifles forum and started over. So now I have two nearly duplicate threads running on this subject. Sorry for the. Duplicate.

bangeye, I wouldnt worry about it.


Jerry