Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting No Excuses bullet review

I drew a CO unit 43 bull tag and have been searching for bullet choices for my hunt. I recently received 2 boxes of No Excuses 535 grain 54 cal bullets. The owner is a great guy. I placed the order and had them in two days. He didn't ask for a CC though I tried; he just said to send him a check!

Anyway, the bullets looked great but I was skeptical whether my 1/48 twist Lyman Deerstalker would handle such a big bullet. I tried a few groups with Goex ffg before switching to my "accuracy powder" Pyrodex Select. 80 Grains produced 1060 fps and two shots touching and one out twice. I have not benched a side hammer muzzy in a while and felt the fliers were me. I moved up to 85 grains and concentrated on my follow thru and was rewarded with a nice 1 inch group at 50. The slow lock time and ignition requires extra concentration when normally used to firing centerfire scoped rifles. Velocity at 85 grains was ~1120 fps out of the short 24 inch barrel. This puts the load in the class of an old 50-70 best I can tell. I moved out to 100 yds and was rewarded with another nice 3 shot group well under 2 inches.

Needless to say I am tickled. A little sight adjustment and I should be set to get away from the bench for field position practice. The bullets are sized .540 which load extremely easy and in fact can be shaken out of the bore in my rifle. I have had similar issues with other bullets. I did come up with a solution. Rather than hunt with a fouled bore, I bought some 100% silk from a local sewing store (the ladies were a little puzzled when I tried to explain my purchase ) I cut this into 1/2 inch strips and used them to patch a portion of the bullet. This provided enough resistance to hold the bullet nicely on top of the wad and charge, and apparently did not hurt accuracy.

I fired one shot across the chrony with 90 grains and velocity jumped to 1260 but there was a substantial increase in recoil. I think I will stick with 85 grains and 1120 fps. Recoil is stiff with 535 grain bullets and a sub 7lb rifle.

Here is the rifle with my last two groups.
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Here is the bullet with a 'little' 240 grain 44 cal Gold Dot
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