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Picking the Best Muzzleloader
Muzzleloaders continue to gain in popularity as a great way to extend your hunting season. They are also a lot of fun to shoot. Whether you’re looking for a muzzleloader for yourself, or for a gift, there are a lot of options and price ranges to choose from. And speaking of gifts, muzzleloaders make outstanding gifts, especially around the holidays. Here’s some of our favorites to help you in picking the best muzzleloader.
A quick run down on muzzleloader basics. Most modern inline muzzleloaders all use the same standard elements. For powder, most have switched from using loose powder, to compressed pellets that are precisely measured for repeatable accuracy. You can still use loose powder, as it keeps the tradition alive. Classic, sidelock-style muzzleloaders are a great example.
For primers, inlines tend to use the hotter 209 primers, which are the same used by shotgun shell reloaders. Bullets tend to fall into three groups – Solids, sabots (pronounced sah-bo) and hybrids. Solids are simple. They are a chunk of metal, like lead, copper or other material. These include lead balls, and conical bullets that have a cupped base. When the gun goes off, the base expands to grip the barrel’s rifling. Sabot bullets have a regular bullet that sits in a plastic shoe. The plastic grips the grooves of the barrel and then leaves the bullet as it flies toward the target. Hybrid bullets include the extremely popular Powerbelt. This type of bullet usually has a plastic base on a large bullet, often a mix of copper and lead. The plastic cap makes sure that the gasses pushing the bullet down the barrel don’t escape, giving you an accurate bullet with a lot of oomph behind it.
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