Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders New to Muzzleloader hunting, suggestions?

I drew a any deer, anywhere in SD muzzleloader tag, here in my home state. I've done a ton of hunting over my lifetime but have never shot a muzzleloader before. I have a Thompson Encore and have just purchased a .50 cal barrel for it. Besides ammo (sabots, pyrodex pellets and .209 primers), what else do I need? The barrel I bought comes with a ramrod. What type of cleaning supplies? Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

blackhorn209 would be a lot better choice for powder.

Black powder solvent works well, but so does Windex with Pyrodex, black powder or 777, but BH209, which is wiser choice, you use regular cleaning solvents that you use on your center fire rifles.

Using sabots,you might pick up some plastic bore cleaner/solvent that is used in cleaning shotguns that are shooting plastic wad cups

You can fine kits in the ML departments that have all the brushes,mops,jags, bullet puller and patch spuds to clean your ML

Run Blackhorn and save yourself a lot of trouble. Premium bullets also seem to save a lot of headaches.

What he said, about the BH209 at least.

For me, Pyrodex has an unfortunate combination of being harder to light than BP and still corrosive. Some cling to it for reasons of their own, which is fine, but I never recommend it to anyone starting out. BH needs hot primers, a clear flash channel, and good bore resistance from the projectile for good ignition. Those things present, it's great stuff. 777 needs special, expensive primers to reduce the buildup of fouling in front of the chamber, and has gone bad on me for no good reason a time or two. Stiil, it works well when fresh, with good power.

If you can find it, real black powder is wonderful stuff, and not as hatd to clean as some seem to think. It can be hard to find locally. Fortunately, a guy near here has literally tons in his bunker.

I've never used BH209, so I can't comment on that. This is what I use in my Encore. If you're at the range shooting it, I generally have to swab it out after about 7 rounds. When it starts getting dirty, I need to use my ball starter to push the ram rod all of the way in that last little bit. Like Pappy said, if I used hotter primers, I might not get build up in front of the chamber. But remove the breech plug and swab it out and you're good to go.

295 gr. 50 cal. Power Belt hollow points
Two 50/50 777 pellets
209 primers (nothing special)
TC Black Powder Bore Cleaner.

To answer the OPs question:

You need a cleaning jag (I recommend boretech) and a cleaning brush (iosso nylon)

Depending on your bullet of choice you may need a special jag to start the bullet without deforming the tip

I’ve got an encore with a .50cal Bergara barrel. I shoot the following:

- 110 grains by volume of Blackhorn 209
- 250 grain Barnes TMZ (which is the yellow sabot and gives me a better fit and better accuracy than the Barnes TEZ blue sabot)
- CCI 209 primers

This is a 200 yard rifle for me.

I can’t recall if you need a different breech plug for the Blackhorn - I think you probably do

In my experience Blackhorn works very well for all the reasons noted above

I clean with Boretech shotgun blend as in my opinion it does a better job on the plastic fouling. No worries about copper fouling given the use of sabots

Hope this helps. My son and I have found that the extra 10 days we get on the front end of the season for Blackpowder season can be very productive and we’ve killed some nice bucks despite the fact that early October can still be brutally hot in our area

One final tip, get the powder, primers, bullets, and sabots you need NOW. If you wait, you may lose out, or be forced to "settle". I bought a big jug of BH, have the other stuff out the wazoo, collected over a number of years.

One positive trait I've noticed about MLs, and not just inlines, is that at ordinary ranges, almost any load will land pretty close to others, which can be handy if you have supply problems.

For a special opportunity like yours, I wouldn't cut any corners I didn't have to.

I have used and like blachorn in a 50 cal tc inline. Also really like these bullets, shoot very well in my rifle. Hard to argue with a big chunk o lead. I wonder about expansion with slower moving jacketed bullets.
https://www.prbullet.com/pts.htm

I agree with the rest on the blackhorn but when shooting pellets I always found pyrodex pellets to be cleaner burning and more accurate than triple seven. CVA barrel blaster works good but so does simple green or alcohol for a cleaner. Anti seize on the breech plug. Mark your ramrod when loaded in a clean bore that way you have a reference to know you’re always seating your load all the way but you don’t want to crush the pellets

True that. This stuff is great (for me)
It’s works great cleans up easy.

Another vote for BH209