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I recently bought a Traditions muzzle loader in 50 caliber and plan to use it to hunt deer. I want to use a 255 grain boolit in a sabot. Should I shoot it as cast (works well in my 45 Colt) or cast out of pure lead? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.
since its going into sabot, either lead will work fine.
For hunting there is a big difference on performance with pure and alloys , depending on velocity /and yardage (BHN matters)
pure lead works fine, in my opinion it is almost too soft. The damage it does on exit is extreme. I have used wheel weight (clip on) lead also, but now I use a mix of the two. either way, you wont have a problem with muzzleloader speeds. they hold together and mushroom well. Most of my experience on deer is with much heavier bullets, so with a .225 grn bullet pure may be fine for you. I butcher my own deer, and just didnt like the loss of meat. Stay behind the shoulder and most of your worries are for naught. Ive used straight WW lead for shotgun slugs for years with excellent results. Most go by the theory of soft for deer, and harder for larger game or bear. I don't have a tester yet, so cant give you any real data on BHN.
I have a 50 cal traditions rifle that uses sabots. With the sabots I buy, I have to use bevel base boolits. They fit better than the flat base boolits. The fb boolits push the petals of the sabot way out and you can't push them down the bore. I bought the bb boolits at a lgs. 452", 255 gr. They shoot fine.
For deer hunting, the softer the better.......muzzle loaders kill quicker, due to the ability to use soft lead. Smokeless loads usually require a much harder mix due to the increased velocities, involved. Too hard of an alloy, you just poke a caliber size hole, through the animal, and can be in for some long tracking. Especially, if you shoot for the area, just behind the shoulder. I quite frequently hunt with a Marlin 1894, 44 Mag, and moderate loads using a 265 RNFP solid at 13 BHN, as tested with a LBT hardness tester.. My alloy is a air cooled 50-50 mix of pure lead and my recovered range lead. I have yet to have a deer go less than 75 yards, before being recovered. Most of the time it's 100 yards or longer. Not that big of a deal, except when you don't have much of a blood trail.....which is more often that naught, when poking a through and through hole, just behind the shoulder. I am seriously thinking of going to an alloy of 8-9 BHN.
The quickest kills that I have experienced were deer that were shot using pure lead shotgun slugs or pure lead in muzzleloaders. Few years ago I took this buck with my ROA and a pure round ball. Deer went down in sight, traveling approximately 10 yards.
Attachment 211628
Winelover
If you can find some? (hint: EBay) T/C Break-a-way sabot are the best I've ever used. All the other sabot available today are simply clones of each other.
As far as cast materials: BHN for hunting purposes. A touch of clip-on wheel weight added to a pot of pure lead so to bump the pot's BHN factor to 8 or 10 is ideal for you're purpose. (deer)
I use one of my 50's with sabots and 429 cal 260 SWC's for elk and they are devastating. The ballistics of the saboted boolits give you an extra 50-100 yards without having to do drastic ballistic calculations in your head. My load is 75 gr of 3F Goex. My alloy is moderately hard since I use the same boolit in my 444 Marlin. I size them, of course, for the 444 but sizing is not necessary if they are just to be used in the muzzleloader.