Shooting PacNorWest style in the Rock Pit

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sabotloader

Keep Shooting Muzzleloaders - They are a Blast
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Sunday.... was suppose to be a cooler day here in north Idaho so I really wanted to get out and do some shooting. In our current weather/fire conditions about the only place I feel confident shooting (to many years in the Forest Service) is the Rock Pit. Basalt doesn't burn well and everything in contained in the interior of the rock pit.

Decided I wanted to do some sabotless western style shooting. At first I taken the White Lightening out of the rack and was going to shoot it to get some velocities on the 50x270 bullet shown on the rifle. It has really been a long time since I shot that rifle - even contemplated using this rifle during or Idaho ML season, Idaho rules are very limiting. The Lehigh bullet shown would not be legal at that time but during rifle deer season - O ya!

IMG_1349.jpg


Sunday when it came to go I changed my mind and went with the Western ULite and a 50x325 bullet. This bullet often fits the bore without any modifications and the ones that do not just about fall down the barrel and do need a minor amount of knurling. U-all would be surprised how little contact is need with the barrel to shoot accurately.

Again the goal was to collect some velocities to see how the bullet would graph out how the bullet would look when put through the ballistic calculator.

When I got to the pit I set up 4 birds on the rock wall at a 100 yards. I wanted to shoot a couple of rounds to check hoe the rifle was shooting, it had been sighted in last year shooting the Lehigh/Bloodline 325's. Loaded up a 120 grains of T7-2f, a MMP black sub-ridge, and 325. Ignited the whole thing with a CCI #11 Mag cap (they are less expensive than the RWS Dyamint Nobel 1075+ placed on a Treso nipple that I had drilled the flash hole to .031 from the factory .028. I really like the Treso nipple as the CCI fits very snug, the 1075+ even tighter making the breech water tight. Hunting wet weather around here this is important to me. It also, though, does create a small problem at the range. After 6-7-8 shots the nipple post becomes so dirty the cap will not fit correctly and does not ignite reliably - so it is important at the range to clean the post after a few shots.

Back to the mission - my first shot on a cold clean barrel struck home without a problem. Ran a moist patch and loaded a second round with the same results - bang - bird gone. One thing I might mention the front sight on the rifle is an aftermarket setup. A Williams Streamlined ramp, a Williams .343N Fire Sight and a Fire Sight Hood. The Fire Sight completely covers the bird at 100 yards so I use a 6 O'clock hold placing the bird on top of the bead (actually slightly above) as the rifle is sighted in with a PBR that makes the bullet impact 2.5" high at 100.

After those two shots - set up the chrono off the muzzle of the rifle. Took two more shots at the remaining birds on the wall and dispatched them. Then to get some more shots in I walked 3 more birds down to the wall and got 3 more velocities. The average velocity computed to 1848 fps. Put the numbers through the Barnes Ballistic Calculator and printed this information sheet.

Lehigh_50x325_CF-HP.jpg


Seems like this should do the job for an open sight rifle through the ranges that I would normally shoot.

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