Hunting With The .50 Fast-Twist Rifling Pedersoli Missouri River Hawken And Long 6x 1850's Style Wm. Malcolm Scope

Following are excerpts from a great hunting article published on the NORTH AMERICAN MUZZLELOADER HUNTING website...

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"NORTH AMERICAN MUZZLELOADER HUNTING first started shooting this rifle in 2007, and the bullet that first gave us the kind of accuracy and knockdown power we wanted was the 450-grain .50 caliber conical bullet shown in the photo at right. A good supply of the bullets had come with the test rifle, and shooting an 80 grain charge of FFg black powder, we were able to punch a number of 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 inch hundred yard groups - but only after we had mounted one of the long 6x "Wm. Malcolm" circa 1850's styled 3/4" diameter steel tubed "telescopic rifle sights" produced by Hi-Lux Optics.

The lubed bullets loaded easily and shot very well. That first fall I filled several whitetail doe tags at ranges out to 80 yards. Everything knocked down by the rifle and load tended to stay knocked down. Now, I'm not knocking the old patched round ball, but it does have its limitations. The modern hunter looking to do a little traditional muzzleloader hunting, especially if shots are likely to reach out at 100 or more yards, may want to concentrate on such a bullet-shooting rifle. "  

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"One of my favored hunting spots in the so-called "Missouri Breaks" is one place I had always wanted to go after a buck with the rifle. With the rebuild of this website in late 2011, we began to expand our coverage of hunting with trditionally styled muzzleloaders. We knew that the site would always continue to cater mostly to modern muzzleloading hunters - who now make up 90+ percent of all muzzleloading hunters these days. However, I have always had a love of traditional muzzle-loaded rifles and felt that, perhaps, that side of the sport had dropped off so drastically due to the fact that it simply was not getting enough coverage.

I also realized that while I had continued to take a doe or two most seasons with a traditionally styled front-loaded rifle ever since going to an in-line rifle in 1986, I had taken ONLY one buck with a traditionally styled rifle during the 25 years since going "modern". And that's the buck in the photo at left - taken in 2005 with a custom half-stock fast-twist bullet shooting .50 caliber barrel. That year I was wringing out the recently introduced long "Malcolm" scope, and had the rifle shooting very, very well - taking this nice buck at about 125 to 130 yards."



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"Sitting on a favored knoll overlooking a long narrow river-bottom hayfield, by the time the sun began to peek over the ridge at my back, at least 40 whitetails had passed within 200 yards of where I sat with the .50 caliber bullet-shooting Hawken propped on a set of home-made hickory cross-sticks. Four of the deer had been smaller 3x3 and 4x4 bucks - on a couple of which I had eased the rifle up and taken aim through the long Malcolm 1850's style scope.

While this scope can be quickly adjusted for different ranges, and I had my 200 yard mark clearly defined, I had decided to sight the scope about 2 inches high at 100 yards, and simply hold at the top of the back for shots at 200 yards. I'd decided not to shoot beyond 200 yards, even though the powder, charge and Hornady FPB bullet were fully capable of delivering the shot with sufficient energy for taking deer at more than 200 yards."

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                                        To Read The Complete Article Go To -

                                        http://www.namlhunt.com/mlhunt11.html