Great Performing Combo

For several days, the snow had fallen so hard that just seeing a deer beyond 50 yards had been impossible, let alone getting a shot. Still, I had hunted. And while I had managed to ease up on a few bedded does and fawns, I had not spotted anything with antlers since the first snowflake had floated down from the heavy cloud cover. Fortunately, the storm had passed through during the second night, and morning broke with a high, light layer of cirrus clouds- and without a hint of a breeze. I knew it was going to be a great morning, and I knew exactly where I wanted to be.

I had taken a stand that allowed me to intercept deer on their way to and back from a river-bottom hayfield. The short alfalfa had always drawn the deer down out of the wooded ridges after a stretch of bad weather, and this morning was certainly no exception. In the first twenty minutes of shooting light, more than two-dozen deer had walked past within range of the .50 caliber Knight DISC extreme carried for the hunt. Then, I spotted the buck I had been waiting for.

The wide-racked ten-pointer jumped a pasture fence about 250 yards away, and ever so slowly made its way in my direction. At what I figured to be right at 200 yards, the deer turned and headed toward a long narrow point that would take it to the top of a high ridge. As the deer stopped momentarily, I found the buck in the scope, and using the second of four crosshairs, I held right behind the shoulder and eased back on the trigger. The rifle roared and the whitetail kicked high into the air and made a run for the heavy cover, but only made it 30 yards before going down.

Knight Rifles "Long Range Hunter" version of the DISC Extreme had just lived up to its name.

Actually, the rifle was part of a combo that had already proven itself on several earlier management hunts - on which I had harvested 7 does from 35 to about 160 yards. Topping the .50 caliber rifle on those hunts was a brand new in-line muzzleloader scope from Leatherwood Hi-Lux Inc. The company had dubbed the scope their "HPML" model, short for "High Performance Muzzle Loading". And in addition to the regular center crosshair, this scope also features three lower and shorter crosshairs, or cross bars, for aiming at longer-range targets.

The scope had actually been developed on this particular rifle, shooting modern saboted 250- and 260-grain spire-point bullets. And with a 100-grain charge of FFFg Triple Seven (or 150-grain Triple Seven Pellets charge), I found that when the Knight "Long Range Hunter" was sighted dead on at 100 yards with the primary crosshair, the prototype of the scope shot through the summer would put hits with the 2nd crosshair about an inch high at 200 yards. The 3rd crosshair printed the loads about 1 1/2 inches low at 225 yards, while the 4th crosshair had the high quality

Green Mountain barrel of the rifle and sleek spire-point bullets generally printing about 2 inches low at 250 yards. For this shooting, I had relied on the 250-grain Hornady SST, the 250-grain Barnes "Spit-Fire TMZ" and a prototype run of the 260-grain "Scorpion PT Gold" from Harvester Muzzleloading.

While all three of these saboted bullets produced exceptional 100-yard groups with the 100-grain charge of FFFg Triple Seven, I finally settled on the new Harvester Muzzleloading copper-plated polymer-tipped spire-point for my hunts last fall. Why? Well, the couple of near one-hole hundred yard groups shot during early fall kind of persuaded me, plus I wanted to see if a copper plated bullet fitted with a polymer tip would perform as well as the more costly copper jacketed and all-copper spire-point bullets I'd taken game with for the past several seasons.

All seven of the big adult does harvested during November management hunts went down to single well-placed shots. So, it was with confidence that I headed out on a December muzzleloader hunt, looking to hang a tag on my first buck of the 2006 season. Prior to the hunt, I had upped my charge to 110-grains of FFFg Triple Seven, and found that the rifle would still punch the 260-grain Harvester bullet inside of 1-1/2 inches at a hundred yards. And out at 200 yards, using the 2nd crosshair of the HPML scope, the sleek spire-point was about 2-1/2 inches high. At the muzzle of the 26-inch barrel, the load was good for 2,030 f.p.s. and 2,380 f.p.e. I figured at 200 yards, the bullet would still drive home with just over 1,100 foot-pounds of retained energy.

My shot on the big ten-pointer was practically center of the chest cavity, punching through both lungs and exiting out the opposite side. I'd allowed for the slight rise of bullet impact with the 2nd crosshair, and had held just below where the bullet hit. The actual distance of the shot proved to be 193 yards. My .50 caliber Knight "Long Range Hunter", hefty charge of FFFg Triple Seven and saboted 260-grain Harvester "Scorpion PT Gold" had done everything any hunter could have asked of the combination. Live weight of the deer was probably right at 300 pounds, and to watch that big buck go down in the snow after just a 30-yard run was a good feeling. I knew right then that I was shooting one winning combination. - Toby Bridges, Shooting & Hunting Concepts