Muzzle loader elk season remarks

I tagged along with my (70-year-old) baby brother for Idaho's December muzzle loader elk season, we hunted a little above snowline in the rough country above the North Fork of the Clearwater. Paul was carrying a modern front-loader, a .50 cal. with a stainless barrel, positive safety and plastic stock. According to ID F&G rules it had to have a visible hammer. After a lot of grief he has come around to using musket caps and real black powder and is getting decent accuracy. 110 gr of powder behind a 350 gr. "maxiball" (no sabots allowed in ID) and a 26" barrel, it really goes CRACK!

We saw a herd of five grazing downslope, maybe 40 yards. Paul picked one and fired and they all took off. He reloaded and got in place on an opposing slope, then I went down to do some tracking. Saw just a couple spots of blood where they were standing, followed the blood trail. It got pretty big, a spray pattern so I figured she must have taken the shot in the lungs. A couple hundred yards I found her wedged between two down lugs with her feet in the air.

Gutting her we found an entry wound high on her rib cage, a collapsed lung, perforated diaphragm, half her liver bloodshot and leakage from her intestines. The bullet was right under the hide on one butt cheek. It was hardly mushroomed at all. My own thought is it might have been harder than need be and I think we'll get a mold and make our own, 20 to one or maybe softer.

I was just along for the ride, but I think I'll get a front stuffer and a tag for next year's hunt.

jn

This is the bullet I shot at my 1st muzzleloader elk back in 1982. Except for mine being a .54 cal, sounds like situation similar to your brothers. 40-50 yds, a little down hill, broadside. Broke a rib going in, through both lungs down low, clipped the top of his heart, chipped a second rib on the way out and stuck under the hide on the far side, considerably higher than the entrance wound.
Bullet was cast in a Lyman Maxiball mold from recovered jacketed pistol bullets. They weigh about 416 grains from the mold and the recovered bullet from the elk weighed 347 grains, not a lot of expansion but shortened substantially. The offside of the bullet in this picture is almost flat. Congrats!
Attachment 44904

Thanks, Doug. That looks good, there. The bullet we recovered looked pristine except for a tiny bit of lead wiping off the nose - kind of an incipient mushroom. It never hit a rib near as we could tell. The maxi-ball that Paul uses looks like the Lyman, except the larger-diameter section is just below the nose, with the two lower lands just snug on the barrel lands. He buys them, why I am suspicious they may be too hard.

jn