How many of you use Pyrodex pellets and why? My reasoning against using them is as follows:

1) You can buy a pound of loose powder alot cheaper than you can buy a box of 100 pellets.

2) You can get more shots out of a pound of loose powder than you can get out of a box of pellets.

3) You can tailor your powder charges better using loose powder and not have to work up in 50 or 30 grain increments.

4) In a hunting situation I always premeasure my charges and store them in a quickloader so reloading is no faster using pellets. I have used pellets before too but when I did carry pellets in the field, I carried them in a quickloader. It doesn't take any longer to dump out loose powder than it takes to dump out the pellets.

Just curious...Am I missing something? Thanks for any replies. 8point

I think it's just a way for the powder company to make more money. It also may look simpler to non muzzleloader hunters. I go a little farther with your thought and cast and shoot round balls and bullets. The cheeper I can shoot, the more I can shoot.

8Point, it's strictly convience for me. Less things to mess with at the range. I to use the quickloads out in the field like you do. Price isn't that big a differnece to be a big deal to me. Now if accuracy differed between the two I would certainly go with the more accurate.

Before anyone makes a comment about me saying the price difference isn't a big deal to me. I don't shoot my muzzleloader as much as I do my other guns. So I really don't go through a lot of powder.

You can wrap them up with plastic wrap with a bullet on top, and have a convenient, easy to handle "cartridge" for hunting. I personally use loose powder, however. My guns are sidelocks, and don't like pellets.

Fredj, I should have said that the groups I get out of my omega are adequate for a hunting rifle. At 100 yards they average right at 1" groups. The max being 1-1/4" and some under 1". Since I don't shoot competitively with this rifle I believe that should work well for me out in the field.

You are absolutely right when you mentioned fine-tuning the load for accuracy. Making 30 or 50 grain changes for accuracy with pellets would be very frustrating to say the least.

However the book recommends 2 pellets for 100 yard shots and 3 pellets for 200 yard shots. Most of my shots are 110 yards down to possibly 10 yards. I did assume that this would be a good basis to start from. 2 pellets with a 240 grain XTP gives me the accuracy I mentioned above. If I could not have achieved what I considered acceptable accuracy with this load, I would have gone back to powder be it Pyrodex or black powder without hesitation. I won't discount that I may have just been lucky that this load shoots these groups out of my gun. It does seem to be very consistant with this load though.

In my opinion though. I still believe that the pellets are more convient then the loose powder. There is no doubt however that the powder manufacturers are taking advantage of that convience and making a few extra bucks at our expense.

Can't see as you're missing a thing, 8point. I don't
use the pellets or sticks for all the same reasons
you gave.

Have used the black, Pyrodex, Clear shot, Clean Shot,
and H777. My best accuracy results have been with
Clear Shot for accuracy using the methods you
described in #3. They may use their hype to get this
ol' pup to buy a pound of any new stuff, but from
that point on, only accuracy matters. The best way
to get the best accuracy out of any powder is to do
it in 5gr increments, and ya certainly can't do that
with the pellets.

I has ta use dem pellets acause I`s too ignant to count out dem little grains,they is reel small,an I runs out of fingers an toes afore I`s even got 19 of um.dat an I`m plain lazy from the wuppins I suffered wit as a kid.