gandilamont

I bought a TC Black Diamond .50 cal. It is illigal to use sabbots, or jacketed bullets where I live. So I am restricted to balls and small conicals. What kind of velocity can I excpect from these. The balls weigh 175 grains and the conicals weigh 275 grains. TC Says that my gun can handle 150 grains of powder. I will be hunting mule deer with this gun.

cayugad

When shooting roundball you better keep the powder charges low, around 50-60 grains. As for the conicals, I would worry more about accuracy and less about velocity. You put a big conical in the right place and it will get the job done.

I shoot 460 grain No Excuses out of my Black Diamond XR. Another lighter but very accurate load are the 270 grain Buffalo Bullet Ball-et. I shoot them with 80 grainsand they would be an excellent deer load.

AmericanPioneer

Yay for No Excuses bullets and the Buffalo Ballets. I use them both and they do an excellent job. I shot one deer in the front with a .50 cal Balletand it exited out the rear thigh. Dropped it in its tracks. Shot deer with .54 535 gr. No Excuses and it hits like a cannon. I use 495 gr. in my .50 cal. I just dont like the lube on the ballets. It is sticky but you can take it off and put different lubes on.

Triple Se7en

If you think the lube on the Ballets is sticky, you should try the lube on the Hornaday PA 245 gr conicals. The bullet has stuck to my index fnger once or twice...lol

I'll bet the 275 gr. bullets you have are the T/C Maxis. I think the best Maxi accuracy for 1-28" twists is the 350 and 370 grain -- but only out to around 75 yards. I never had any 100 yard success with any T/C Maxi of any grain size in that fast twist.

Pittsburghunter

What Triple Se7en said is true with the fast twist you need a longer bullet which means a heavier one. A friend who owns a 1:20 twist White Mountain Carbine had real good results with anything above 420g with that rifle.

I don't have bullet restrictions so I have not tried any of the heavy conicals yet but soon will be in a fast .54 rifle.

Cayugad has one of those rifles and loves to shoot it so I would follow his advice for the Black Diamond.

gandilamont

Well, what conical bullet do you recommend for a black diamond? I am using the TC buletts right now. By Oregon hunting regulations the conical can not exceed twice the diamiter of your caliber. In otherwords, it cant be longer than one inch. That kind of rules out long heavy bullets. Unless the heavyer bullets are not longer than that.

cayugad

My Black Diamond XR is scoped. This was off shooting sticks at 100 yards give or take a yard. It was during deer season and I was going to head into the thickets to try and get a deer. So I wanted to change to a large conical. The hole on the far right (the smaller one) was from a 375 grain Buffalo Bullet SSB all lead spitzer bullet which the rifle was loaded with from hunting fields all morning. They also shoot excellent out of the rifle with 100 grains of Goex.

I did not swab at all during this shooting. The 85 grains of Goex 3f was used because I hunt with Goex 3f. I also shoot TripleSe7en 2f with great results out of the rifle. I was using Winchester W209 primers. Also it is the best I have ever done off shooting sticks with the No Excuse Conicals, but they do shoot well and are legal as far as being under the 1" rule. I think they measured 7/8ths.

gandilamont

Awesome, I'll give those a try. I have been shooting just Hogdon Pyrodex.

cayugad

Pyrodex works all right, but normally when I shoot Pyrodex I use the "P" grade powder in the inlines and the RS in the traditional rifles. I sometimes think inline rifles like a little faster burning powder then the old traditional rifles do. Although I have shot a lot of the 3f grade powders in the traditional rifles as well..

http://members.aol.com/noexcusesb/page2.html I've yet to try Dave's 495 grain conicals and they would probably be illegal for you because of your double the caliber rule, but the 460 grain .503 are real good projectieles and they come pre lubed...