I saw an ad for Bad Bull Muzzleloaders, and checked them out. They obviously want the best ballistics possible from a muzzleloader. Would it be possible to have a .458 caliber muzzle loader to shoot normal centerfire bullets? The BC on muzzleloader bullets is so low, even though it has 5000 ft-lbs at the muzzle, its below 1900 at 300 yards. Would normal bullets with a higher BC be too hard to load or what? I don't have a muzzleloader, and have never shot one, so I have no clue about them.

Thanks for any replies!

Some MZ bullets are designed to engrave when they are pushed into the barrel, others are designed to be slip fit, and to obturate when the black or substitute is ignited.
Copper will never engrave, in my estimation, and surely won't obturate. You will/would snap the ramrod trying to seat a jacketed projectile.

I would recommend a search under this forum for "hard seating" or similar, and read what difficulties some guys have just seating saboted jacketed bullets in a mz, when they have plastic between the projectile and the barrel.

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Would normal bullets with a higher BC be too hard to load or what? I don't have a muzzleloader, and have never shot one, so I have no clue about them.

There is no such thing as a .45 caliber projectile in the 250 - 300 gr. area with a truly "high" BC.

A check over at Doug's message boards, under the Savage ML section should answer a lot of these questions...and many more.
To save you some time, the answer is yes there are guys shooting Savage MLs w/o sabots. These guns have been rebarreled to 45cal and are shooting specially made .447 to .448" copper jacketed bullets. Copper will engrave just fine, and seemingly does obturate in the bore. They still do not offer high BCs, and whether or not anyone wants to go down this path is his/her choice. I personally have no problem staying with the 50cal and using sabots!

I didn't mean just 250-300 grain bullets, possibly the heavier Barnes bullets that are longer in higher weight ranges. 500 grain bullets in the .45 going 2500 fps seems like it would hold velocity better than the 250 going 3150 fps.

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500 grain bullets in the .45 going 2500 fps seems like it would hold velocity better than the 250 going 3150 fps.

Particularly the velocity of your body being pounded into the ground like a tent stake.

I'm not interested in one, but it provides DGR power, presumably with DGR kick and even more muzzleblast thanks to the muzzlebreak.

actually, it is possible. While they might not quite be the "centerfire" bullets you're thinking of, you can get a sabot from MMP to shoot a .35-.357 cal bullet from a .45 cal muzzleloader. While a 35 cal rifle bullet is .358, in some cases it will most definitely fit just fine in the sabot. Pair it with a solid based .358 bullet around 225 grains or so and you'll probably have a B.C. of something around .380ish depending on your bullet.

MMP .45 cal sabots

You run out of twist rate for a high BC small caliber bullet in a big hurry.

Randy's right. The twist rates in these ML barrels generally isn't fast enough to effectively stabilize a bullet that is bearing directly on the lands in the barrel. However because you would be using a sabot, this gives you a little leeway. While the effect will still be present, it will be minimalized slightly. I have heard and seen several 45 cal factory rifles that would shoot these smaller bullets reasonably well. Interestingly I checked out badbull muzzleloaders and they are custom rifles built on remington 700 actions. Here is the link to any interested:

Bad Bull Rifles

It appears they call for AT LEAST a 100gr charge of IMR4350 which is slow burning. That is nearly twice as much powder as i shoot in my 7mm remington mag! They say dont exceed 140grs of IMR4350. They are shooting 300 gr hornady bullets without sabots in a .45 cal and getting velocities around 3000FPS. I'm sure these things kick but that would explain the high B.C. and trajectory.

The only way to really tell if a small caliber bullet would work is to shoot it and see for yourself. Some say that a 1:14 twist .224 caliber barrel won't stabilize a bullet above 65 grains but I have one that will (69gr bullets into 3/4" at 100 yards). Go figure.