i put this here because i use smokeless powder but i swage my own bullets and paperpatch them. my 16 year old son before a couple of days ago never took much interest in my 2 45/70s. he has a 270 that he shoots at the field behind the house off of our deck from time to time. he was getting low on 270 shells so i said, why dont you take the cpa out their and get that ice cream pail full of bullets out of the basement and bang away at those crows and such way out their. well he did but it started to rain and now im sure he will be doing that often. he isnt used to the long range peep sight yet so i just unscrewed the eye piece and let him use the big hole as a peep. it looks like ill be doing a lot of reloading but the 45/70 is easy to do and it is good he learns to shoot with out a scope. i shoot a 450 grain pp bullet at about 1600 ft per second and thats got plenty of zip and range to it. the barrel is a gain twist smith barrel out of canada and really accurate. some how since he was 11 years old most of my guns have ended up in his room but this one will stay mine and he can use it anytime. he wants to be a game warden so learning guns is important for his job some day.