Todd Williams piqued my interest with his earlier posts on his experience with Trail Boss and his Doubles. After a few PM's with Todd I loaded up a few rounds with some Hawk bullets and came away from the range with a moronic grin on my face. What a neat way to start and stop your shooting session absolutely no recoil what so ever and a POI 2"s low. I finally got back to the range today with Chrony in hand and a pocketful of cartridges loaded with Trail Boss.
For reference my hunting loads are 100grs of H4831 behind a 480gr CEB Solid for 2160fps out of 28" barrels. The two loads I brought to the range were 480gr and 350gr Hawk bullets in front of a Trail Boss load. The Trail Boss directions has you marking the case where the bottom of the bullet will be when seated, filling the case with Trail Boss to that line weighing the load then multiplying by .70 to come up with a starting load. I used the starting loads as I wanted to stay well away from a compressed load.
Here are my numbers...
Weight of TB to the base of a 480gr Hawk 35gr.
35gr X .70 = 24.5gr starting load.
Avg velo 1038fps
Weight of TB to the base of a 350gr Hawk 37gr.
37gr X .70 = 25.9gr starting load.
Avg velo 1232fps.
After shooting 6 rounds of each I dropped two full loads into the chambers, at 25yrds I had two neat holes side by side touching each other, which for me is outstanding. Good thing I forgot my camera, if I had posted the pics someone would have accused me of purloining someone else's target.
I know that Trail Boss got a bad rap when when G Wright tried to compress it for BPE loads, Todd W's earlier posts along with my recent experience makes me think that including TB loads in my range session will go along way to making me a better DR shooter.
Your comments as always are greatly appreciated...

Howdy. I have a bunch of 500gr grease groove the blue grease for smokeless) lying around, I might just ahve to go and find dome Trail Boss and shoot them! What was your full load for the 480 and what velocity?

Jorge you will get a different load for your 500gr cast bullet then I did for my 480 Hawk. For the 480gr I used the starting load of 24.5 grs which chronied at 1038fps. In the Trail Boss world there is a big difference in volume between 35grs and 24.5grs. At this load I had a 20fps variation I'm sure with some more work I can come up with a smaller number.

Glad I could help. I think the TB loads are a hell of a lot of fun.

Where have you boys been able to find it?

quote:

Originally posted by CCMDoc:
Where have you boys been able to find it?

Trail Boss is a popular Cowboy Action powder, if you know of a shop that sell powder that might cater to this type of shooter you might be in luck. Saw a few bottles in our local shops in Vermont

A couple months ago Trail Boss was all they had at Cabelas
I use 19 grains with a 405 Lazercast in my 450 Watts. Fun to shoot.

Mark

Hmmmm , what kind of velocity are you getting? This is making me think deer load for my 470......

Was able to pick up two pounds today at cabelas after reading this post while walking into the store.

quote:

Originally posted by FFemt5287:
Hmmmm , what kind of velocity are you getting? This is making me think deer load for my 470......snipped.

From the data here, http://data.hodgdon.com/cartridge_load.asp for the 458 Winchester I figure I am getting about 1050 f/sec. It is not loud; I can hear the bullet hit paper at 50 yards. My original reason for going with the Trail Boss was to have a “poor man’s suppressor”. A subsonic load of 19 grains in the 26” barrel would allow the gases to expand and have a low report.
Should work well on deer.
Last year for deer in Texas I carried it when I was in heavy cover or at the blind with only shots to 100 yards. There is no report on terminal performance as the deer were not cooperative.

Mark

Great Idea- I'll have to try this.

I've been using 94 gr of AA Magnum (AA3100's predecessor) for all my loads currently-325's ,405's and 480's in the Jaeger-
all shoot well-
But, these TB loads offer yet another dimension

Do you filler behind the bullet?

Mike

quote:

Originally posted by retreever:
Do you filler behind the bullet?

Mike

NEVER USE FILLER WITH TRAIL BOSS!! Sorry for the shouting but it's damn important NOT to compress Trail Boss.

I worked up a Trail Boss load in my 450/400 3" Ruger #1. 30 grains is about 80% of the powder space to the bottom of the bullet using a 210 grain 41 caliber Hornady XTP. The velocity is 1850 fps and it shoots about 2 inches higher at 50 meters than full power 400 grain loads going 2200 fps. The groups with a Fastfire III sight are 2 inches. Virtually no recoil out of an 8 pound rifle and a whole lot cheaper to practice with. It ought to be mean on an old boar hog too.

BayouBob,

Wow! You are getting 1850fps with Trail Boss? That's amazing. I'm shooting the 70% load in my 500NE which IIRC is about 24 grs using the 570gr bullets, but I'm only getting 1100fps or so. I would think 1850fps would start giving you some substantial recoil? If not, and you aren't having any pressure issues, that's a best of all worlds situation. Would make a hell of a pig shooter!!

It's the little 210 grain pistol bullet. Even my slender little fiance shot it and was impressed. (She shot my 416 Rigby once and said never again.) I put a Sims pad on my rifle but at 8 pounds it soaks up the recoil real well. My main reason for using the load is cheap practice compared to the price of the 450/400 bullets and 90 grains of Rel. 22.