Smoke and Mirrors

When I started shooting muzzleloaders, Nixon was president and the options for propellants were reminiscent of the Henry Ford School of customer service. You could pick any powder you wanted, as long as it was black. Today there is an amazing array of propellant options for our hunting muzzleloaders, and choosing one for your needs can become a bit confusing.

I’m always curious about the technical side of muzzleloaders, and figuring out this stuff is what I get paid for. I spent a good part of last summer doing an extensive test on black powder and black-powder-substitute propellants in a modern muzzleloader. By the end I was tired, dirty, burned out and pretty darn sick of shooting muzzleloaders. But I had some answers.

To keep a constant throughout the test, I used a Knight Rolling Block .50-caliber rifle, Remington STS No. 209 primers and Hornady 250-grain SST bullets in standard black sabots. The only thing that changed during the test was the propellant I used. I measured velocity and pressure with an Oehler Model 43 Personal Ballistic Laboratory. This unit measures pressure with a strain gage attached to the gun.

While the pressure numbers are not absolute, they are consistent from shot to shot and very accurate when compared to each other. Bullet velocity was measured with the Oehler three-sky-screen system, with the third screen used to provide a proof channel to help identify errors. This is the same set-up that I have seen used in multiple ballistics-testing facilities throughout the firearms and ammo industries.

I shot all the substitutes and several black-powder selections using 100-grain charges and 150-grain charges, all measured by volume. These were selected as the two most popular hunting charge weights that can be used both in loose granular powder and with all the current pellet-style propellants.

What I found out could fill a small book, but I will summarize by saying that not all propellants are created equal. There is some real misinformation out there, perhaps even dangerous information. I witnessed some very wide pressure swings. On the other hand, that’s pretty much isolated to one particular product, and most of the other propellants work acceptably well.

The obvious question is, Which one is the best? It all depends on what the definition of “best” is.

I think consistency and accuracy are one part of the equation. I did not shoot for accuracy in this test, but I have tested for accuracy with all of these propellants in the past, using a wide selection of muzzleloaders and bullets. Over the years, I’ve collected a huge database of muzzleloader accuracy information to draw from. Even before this test I already knew which propellants were consistently accurate and which were not.