shannerdrake
Well-known member
Hey HT Community, I wanted to start a thread to share my adventures in preparing for an upcoming CO muzzleloader hunt. Particularly the preparation of the muzzleloader. As you know for CO on your ML you cannot use sabots, must have loose powder, and cannot have scopes. This was a departure from my usual ML setup and had to do some preparation.
I started with my old Remington Genesis which has always been good to me. My eyesight is not great, so I opted for a peep and globe setup. Williams Gunsight Makes a package deal that is worth checking out. It is $100 and comes with several globe inserts. Unfortunately, I had shim the rear sight to get everything to line up. I also had to put two shims under my buddy's rear sight as well. This is a very common situation and I wish Williams would include a couple shims. It would cost them pennies and really help the customer - Williams I hope you are listening!
A note on the peep sight, it is awesome when the target is well lit and the sight is well lit. However, it is VERY hard to see the front sight in poor lighting. I did a few things to try to help. I painted the inside of the globe white to gather more light. This helped a bit, but i still struggled to pick out the thinner crosshairs. I actually ended up taking a piece of fiber optic cable from an old bow sight, cutting out the center of a globe insert and gluing the optic in place. I think it will work pretty well, but again - Williams should make this insert!
I was able to shoot a six inch 150 yard group with this sight setup, but it was under near perfect conditions.
Next issue to address was the projectile. In my opinion, there are really only two choices - Thor or Federal Copper BOR Lock. I am sold on solid copper bullets. Read some of the studies on lead fragmentation on big game kills. You should not be shooting things for your table with lead, but I digress. I won't go into Thor vs Fed ML bullets, but I went with the Federal bullets. They have a collar that insures tight fit, are accurate, and can be bought about anywhere. If you lose your custom sized Thors on your way to your hunt how do you intend to replace those? The Feds load easy and are accurate and satisfy the CO full bore requirement. A 270 grain copper bullet at 1900FPS is a solid killer.
Last component to discuss is powder. I will post that separate to keep length down.
I started with my old Remington Genesis which has always been good to me. My eyesight is not great, so I opted for a peep and globe setup. Williams Gunsight Makes a package deal that is worth checking out. It is $100 and comes with several globe inserts. Unfortunately, I had shim the rear sight to get everything to line up. I also had to put two shims under my buddy's rear sight as well. This is a very common situation and I wish Williams would include a couple shims. It would cost them pennies and really help the customer - Williams I hope you are listening!
A note on the peep sight, it is awesome when the target is well lit and the sight is well lit. However, it is VERY hard to see the front sight in poor lighting. I did a few things to try to help. I painted the inside of the globe white to gather more light. This helped a bit, but i still struggled to pick out the thinner crosshairs. I actually ended up taking a piece of fiber optic cable from an old bow sight, cutting out the center of a globe insert and gluing the optic in place. I think it will work pretty well, but again - Williams should make this insert!
I was able to shoot a six inch 150 yard group with this sight setup, but it was under near perfect conditions.
Next issue to address was the projectile. In my opinion, there are really only two choices - Thor or Federal Copper BOR Lock. I am sold on solid copper bullets. Read some of the studies on lead fragmentation on big game kills. You should not be shooting things for your table with lead, but I digress. I won't go into Thor vs Fed ML bullets, but I went with the Federal bullets. They have a collar that insures tight fit, are accurate, and can be bought about anywhere. If you lose your custom sized Thors on your way to your hunt how do you intend to replace those? The Feds load easy and are accurate and satisfy the CO full bore requirement. A 270 grain copper bullet at 1900FPS is a solid killer.
Last component to discuss is powder. I will post that separate to keep length down.
