Smokepole Season Shake Down

This past weekend, I got my Hawken checked out for deer season. Not much had changed from the previous year. However, I had a wee bit of Hodgdon Triple-7 left over from 2013. The previous week, I had used it in my .54 Hawken and found that it had gotten much hotter than previous years. I suspect that having so little in the bottom of the 1 lb jug caused it to happen. I brought a 3/4 full jug from 2006 and it performed perfectly.

The other problem I encountered was a bad case of hard balls. Muzzleloader bullets for a traditional gun need to be made of dead soft lead. I don’t know when I had cast this batch of balls, but they had grown ridiculously hard. I recast them as well as cast some fresh ones out of pure lead. I shoot balls cast from a Lee Precision .53 R.E.A.L mold. Normally I quench in a bucket of water, but this time I dropped the balls onto a wet towel. The result was the softest bullets I have ever achieved. The BHN was below 8. Whereas the problem bullets required a mallet to start, these new balls could be started with just thumb pressure. That’s what you want. Note to self: cast fresh balls every year.

Here are some more GoPro tests. I tried mounting the GoPro Hero to muzzleloader barrels using a bicycle handlebar clamp. I like the clips that are turned toward the shooter more than I like the ones pointed out the gun barrel. The wide angle lens makes it hard to see the target.