Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Knight muzzleloader question

If I can borrow an Al Gore word, the consensus on PBs is that the ones from 295gr up are more dependable. My son killed two nice Fauquier County, VA bucks in a week using my .50 Renegade, 90gr FF777, and IIRC the 295s. Pass-throughs on both, and short dashes til they fell. An 8 and a 10, both good sized.

90gr is about as much as you want to use to avoid blowing out the bases. 70-90 is all you’ll ever need. Trying to pick up some speed by using light bullets is a waste of time. Carry a nipple pick and use it frequently.

+1, it's like a dog walking on its hind legs. Unless you go all the way with sabots, smokeless, and a scope for long ranges.

The next time I hunt deer with a smokepole, I'll be using an original 3-band Enfield made in Birmingham England in 1860, not some Italian-made replica. It shoots a .577 caliber 500 grain pure lead Minie' bullet over 60 grains of 2-F Goex, lit off with a musket cap. It shoots "minute of pie plate" groups out to about 75 yards, plenty accurate for close range deer. You guys who shoot into the next zip code need to add a little salt to your powder charge- - - - -it preserves the meat until you can hike over and do the field dressing.

The .577 Minie ball is a real game getter. Works well on whitetails, and wild hogs.

Or a mag percussion cap. Some 209 primers are not a lot hotter than a good magnum cap.

I have not tried any. No reason not to though.

My 250 gr out of my savage were always so incredibly accurate, consistently that I never bothered experiementing.

I was getting 3 inch ENTRANCE wounds on a lung shot with the Savage and the 250 XTP. Incredible performance. Accurate, too.

I have killed a pile of deer with an mk85 with 90 grains of Rbblack under a harvester sabot and a 240xtpk

I'm the guy renegade50 was talking about last week. I've shot nothing but pellets out of the same old Knight your talking about with percussion caps. Dad killed a pile of deer with it before I got it. Look the manual up online and you'll see it recommends 2 pellets. I've had some funky ignition problems this year, but it's usually 100% reliable. I do like the newer models with shotgun primers though. Break open cross bolt safety, I think I'm gonna retire the old Knight mk85.

.452 I suppose?