Smokeless Muzzleloaders

Anyone own one?
I've been shooting Black Powder for over 45 years and for about 15 years of that, that's all I hunted with, including Muzzleloading shotguns for turkey. Probably between bear, deer, and turkey I harvested about 150 animals with a muzzleloader. Used to hunt squirrel and groundhogs exclusively with a .32 cal.
About the year 2000 I considered buying the Savage 10 ML, when it first came out, and soon after the 10ML II, but never did.
Well I recently purchased a Woodman Arms Patriot in .45 cal.
Holy Moly what a gamechanger!! Extremely accurate! No cleanup after shooting. It's even better than reloading. No brass to tumble, lube, prime etc. Just load and shoot.
With the right bullets it's easily a 300 yd. muzzleloader.
Lots of custom smokeless muzzleloaders being built and they can get real expensive!! One guy builds nearly 4,000 fps. smokeless muzzleloaders.
Now what to do with the 12-15 other muzzleloaders I own!!

what powder are you using?

It depends mostly on bullet weight and caliber.
In the 45 Patriot I’m using IMR 4198, Reloader 7, and N120 with 225-250 gr. bullets.
N110 with 200 gr. and under.
N130 is acceptable but I’ve not tried it.
Woodman Arms has load data on his website.
In 50 cal like the Savage 10 ML II you can use 5744, Accurate 2015, Accurate LT-32 and some other powders as well.
There are guys on Modern Muzzleloader forum that have down pressure tracing with lots of other powders and many duplex loads

Also Woodman Arms makes an adjustable breech plug for higher pressures that you can adj. with any make of 209 primer to prevent gases escaping around the primer due to the high pressures.
I got one and it’s worth every penny.
The Patriot is good with pressures up to 45,000 PSI, but the adjustable plug in other platforms is good to 60,000.
He also makes smokeless drop in barrels for T/C Omegas.
Lots of guys converting CVA Scouts in 45/70 to smokeless.

I'll stick with the old Goex

I have a savage ml 2. Hunted with it for years. Yes it's a game changer. I hunted deer with bow and muzzloader because muzzleloaders we're more accurate than rifled slugs had less recoil and were cheaper to shoot. And I like to shoot a lot. I could also hund firearms and black powder season with the same gun a bonus when I was young and broke.

I shot lots of deer each year mostly with a .45 cal xtp and 80gr of gox ffg. When I went to the ml2 with same sabot and bullet every single deer started dropping or a stumble run off 20 yards or less. No more running out of sight. That's when I saw that getting above 2000 fps makes a huge difference in terminal performance. I also made my longest kill on a deer at 302 yards with it and watched her drop in the scope.

I had the stock and barrel cut down on that gun so my kids could use it since it had less recoil. Now it just sits not used since it was cut down a bit small for my daughters size at the time .

I would love to have another couple of them. Like the bad bull stuff made in KY but won't pay that price.

Providence you could toss a new stock on it or add some spacers back to normal length if it would get used again.

Heard arrowhead makes a good one.

I had thought about it but I figured as soon as I got one our G&F would open up a primitive season and sure enough this spring it's happened. Only they call it an Alternative season. Strait wall 30 cal and up and no semi-auto. Basically an early modern gun season. Instead of a smokeless ML I'm looking for a 350 legend.