Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders .429 or .452. Standard sabots or Crushed rib

General consensus on bullet diameter for saboted bullets in a .50.

.429 or .452??

Also Crushed rib or standard sabots? Whether a Harvester or MMP.

I know each muzzleloader is its own animal but trying to see if the needle points heavily towards one or the other.

The bullet/ sabot diameter is just personal preference as far as I can tell. I keep only one size sabot (.452) on hand to keep it simple. I bought a few packs of crushed rib sabots but so far I am not seeing any measureable difference in performance. Your bore size will determine which sabot and bullet fit best. If it's too hard to get started or too easy then try a different sabot or bullet diameter until it fits snug but not too tight. Been getting good results with tc shockwave sabots and boat-tail bullets. To each their own though. Just takes a lot of time to try all the different combinations.

I shoot 300 gr .452 Scorpion PT Gold bullets in my Optima V2 LR with 100 grs, Blackhorn. I tried the Harvester Crush Rib sabots to no avail. I ordered the Harvester short black sabots, that was what the Dr ordered for my rifle

300gr scorpion pt gold .452” in black crush rib from my encore


270 gr Speer deep curl .430 in green crush rib from my Remington


Accuracy on both loads is exceptional and so is performance on whitetail.



Across the board the .452/black crush rib has been the easy button for quite a few around here.

My 50 caliber Pennsylvania flintlock likes two wax lubed felt wads over the powder charge, topped by a patched round ball. I use a "dry lube" patch made of cotton denim infused with machinist's water soluble cutting oil. A .490" ball and a .017" thick patch gives the best accuracy, over 70 grains of 3-F powder.

What about jacketed bullets and sabots?

I never tried the crushed rib style, but my Wolf wasn't real fond of Powerbelts, iirc. It may have been my previous ML rifle. I've slept a few times since then, but I know one of them shot them very poorly.

I mostly just stuck to .451/2 because they're the most readily available. Once I found out what the rifle liked, I stocked up. I did shoot some .429 and accuracy was fine, but the fine print in our state muzzleloader regs is sorta vauge about the definition of legal bullet diameter. I just went with the .452 to avoid a possible future headache.

One thing about M-Al’s, bore diameter varies a smigin. I shoot a Knight, which generally have a larger bore than the average T/C.

In my 50 I use crush-rib sabots with a .452” bullet, though I could go with a tad tighter combination. One should experiment before picking a load to sight in with, you can push it back out, no powder needed.

With my 45 cal I use a crush-rib & a .400” bullet. I never do any swabbing between shots, just reload.

M-AI??

I've always understood that the biggest bullet/thinner sabot was usually best. Think I got that from MMP, but bot sure.

I buy their sabots in bags and use 452 bullets.

Dad has....ideas.

To save him money I got him 100 sabots and a box of XTPs.

Nope. "I always use 44 bullets".

Grrrrrrrrr!

Throw that shït in my box and order him some sabots and whatever
bullets, .4295 or .430. He compared them to old ones and felt they
were too big. "Be hard to load, might be dangerous."


Throw those sombitches in my box.
And order .429s. When Dad was here, made him "sign off" on them.

I read good things about the .475 bullets in a sabot. Thin petals that shed from the bullet fast.

Harvester Crush Rib load awfully smooth and easy. I see no reason to use anything else when buying sabots and bullets separately. As far as bullet diameter goes we’ve used .400, .429, and .452 for our deer hunting. They all work. Personally I have taken bucks with the .452 250gr Hornady. .429 200gr Barnes XPB, and the .400 200gr TC I’m told is a Hornady. The Barnes is wicked. I don’t strive for smallest group size rather sight in and fire some confirming shots. Our shots will not be much over 100 yards at most.

With all my combinations, I have never noticed a difference between .429 or .452 or crushed , or anything. I get about 2" @ 50 yds with a cheap TC impact. However, I have not shot it in years cause I bought a few TC Renegades and a Hawken so I am more real black powder ,roundball and patch. I make my own roundballs and patches so it is quite reasonable to shoot.

I use crush rib with Speer 44 mag bullets. 2 of the CVAs they go in like butter, the 3rd CVA that has a nitride barrel they go in really hard. All 3 CVAs shoot really good.