Extend deer season with muzzleloading rifle

Thousands of Wisconsin deer hunters will be wrapping up their 2019 season this weekend, but for those of us who use muzzleloading rifles, the fun’s just begun.

While many will be packing away their semi-autos, bolt-actions and lever-actions after Sunday’s hunt, blackpowder hunters will be gearing up for 10 more days of deer hunting, Dec. 2-11.

Most of you probably realize that any weapon can be used during the firearms deer season, and that includes a muzzleloader. When some counties (like my home county of Waupaca) were shotgun-only a few years back, the muzzleloading rifle gave hunters a bit of an edge over a shotgun firing a slug.

Muzzleloaders are true rifles, with rifled barrels and a lighter, flatter-shooting bullet than a 1-ounce shotgun slug. With three Pyrodex or other black powder substitute pellets down the pipe, an inline rifle can produce 2,200 feet per second with 250-grain bullets.

For comparison, a .30-06 centerfire rifle firing a 220-grain bullet produces about 2,400 fps at the muzzle. So yes, an inline front-stuffer can be a serious tool for whitetails and even larger game.

I put my Thompson/Center Encore .50-caliber muzzleloader to good use on opening day, dropping a nice 100-pound doe at about 50 yards.

I recently switched from Hodgdon Triple 7 pellets to IMR White Hots, because the Triple 7s were absorbing moisture while in the gun for a few days and not firing when I needed them. Another member of Fox Valley Muzzle Loaders Club who hunts on the club grounds in Waupaca County with me had a similar experience, so he switched back to traditional black powder.

I don’t like the fowling mess and the corrosive properties of black powder, so I thought I’d try the White Hots, which like their name, are white in color. So far, so good.

If you’ll never shot a front-stuffer, the thought of shooting one can be a bit scary. I remember buying my first black powder rifle, a .50-caliber CVA mountain rifle with double set triggers, for the princely sum of $100 from Midsouth Shooters Supply.

Just as back in the 1980s when I bought the gun through the mail, muzzleloaders can be ordered and shipped directly to you without a Federal Firearms License, as long as the receiver can’t accept modern smokeless barrels (the T/C Encore and similar rifles must be purchased through an FFL holder). And the prices remain low.

You can still get a decent muzzleloader for under $200, although for a few dollars more, you can get nice features like a breech that removes without tools, cerakoted barrels, fiber-optics sights and more.

I was afraid I’d blow up that first sidelock rifle the first time I shot it, contemplating whether to tie a string to the trigger and fire it from a distance. But when I edited the “Black Powder Gun Digest” book with Sam Fadala when I worked at Krause Publications in Iola back in 2000, Fadala told me a little secret about black powder and their substitutes: they are slow-burning and don’t create the high pressures of smokeless powder.

In fact, Fadala told me you could fill up an entire rifle barrel with black powder and it would not explode. Please don’t try that at home or anywhere else.

Black powder rifles have their own safety rules. First, never load loose black powder directly from a flask or powder horn directly into a rifle’s muzzle. A remaining ember could result in a flash or worse. Instead, use a powder measure. Since most modern shooters use a form of pellet for their powder, loading is made much simpler.

Second, mark your ramrod with a marker to indicate a full load in the barrel. In my case, I use two 50-grain pellets of White Hots and a 240-grain “Pennsylvania” conical lead bullet by Hornady. The ball or bullet (some hunters favor a plastic sabot with a .44 Magnum pistol bullet, but I find the plastic residue in the barrel tends to throw accuracy off) must always be seated directly on top of the powder, or you can create dangerous space, similar to having an obstruction from mud or snow in the barrel. By marking the ramrod, you’ll know when your bullet is fully seated.

Third, don’t forget your gun is loaded and load it again. When I worked at Gander Mountain in Appleton, our gunsmith took in a black powder rifle that wouldn’t fire. When he started cleaning it, he discovered there were three separate powder-and-bullet loads stacked on top of each other. Luckily the gun didn’t fire or the owner might have found himself in the hospital.

If you ever accidentally load a bullet in a muzzleloader without first adding powder, or load a double charge, simply use a bullet puller (threaded screw tip that fits on a ramrod) to pull your bullet and start over. The newer guns with quick-remove breech plugs make such mistakes an easy fix.

Give muzzleloaders a try and stretch your deer season. Don’t forget the antlerless firearms deer season Dec. 12-15, too. This also is open to any weapon, including the smokepole.

Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.