How many of you got started into muzzleloader shooting and hunting with the rifle shown here - the Thompson/Center Hawken rifle? Originally built in.45 and.50 caliber, the rifle was introduced in 1970.and remained in production until just a few years ago.

1. Traditions Muzzleloaders Serial Number 148538

Some still consider patience a virtue. Thompson/Center muzzleloader hunters know it's not just the gear you put on, but the time you put in. When you hunt for the moments, and you only get one shot, make it count with T/C's muzzleloaders.50 Caliber Muzzleloading RIfle STRIKE. A More Accurate.

I acquired my 'first' T/C Hawken back in 1971 - Serial No. The rifle had a.45 barrel on it initially, but within a couple of months I had acquired a.50 caliber barrel, also with a low serial number. Since I had gotten the rifle to hunt deer with, I gravitated to the.50 caliber barrel more than the.45.

The big 370-grain.50 cailber T/C 'Maxi-Ball' delivered a lot more wallop than the 240-grain.45 bullet of the same styling. Prior to getting this rifle, with both.45 and.50 caliber barrels, I had never attempted shooting a muzzleloader at 100 yards. I became so obsessed at getting the rifle, especially with the.50 caliber barrel, to keep 'em in the 'Kill Zone' at 100 yards, I mounted one of the early Bushnell 2.5X long eye-relief handgun scopes on that barrel - to tap whatever the barrel could produce. The 1972 photo at left shows a much younger and trimmer me. Preparing to take an off-hand 100-yard shot with the rifle.

Keep in mind, back then I was fresh out of the Marine Corps - and during my stint in the service, I had repeatedly qualified as an 'Expert' marksman. Leaving the Corps, I went directly to work as Associate Editor for GUN WORLD magazine, where each month I spent a great deal of time on the range test firing a wide range of firearms. Due to my interest and experience with muzzleloaders as a kid, I became, unofficially, the 'Black Powder Editor' for the magazine.and handled all of the publication's coverage of muzzleloading and black powder shooting. (It was during this period when I put together my first book - Black Powder Gun Digest.). I finally accepted that was as good as accuracy was going to get, and hunted with the.50 T/C Hawken for two seasons, taking several whitetails, a good mule deer buck, an Aoudad and a couple of wild Texas hogs. The big 370-grain 'Maxi-Ball', propelled by a 90-grain charge of FFg black powder, plowed through everything except the near 400-pound Aoudad (Barbary) ram.

The old (and damaged) 1973 photo above right shows that recovered slug.which still weighed 364 grains when pulled from under the hide of the sheep's opposite shoulder. The first TRUE bullet rifle I ever had the pleasure and opportunity to shoot had been built by St. Louis gunmaker H.E.

Dimick - a competitor of the Hawken brothers. The rifle was very similar to the H.E.

Dimick rifle shown here. It belonged to a good friend, who shot it regularly through the 1970s. That.50 caliber rifle had a rifling twist of 1-in-22 or 1-in-24, and would keep a big 1.140' long 500-grain bullet in tight 2-inch groups at 100 yards. Propelled by an 80-grain charge of GOEX FFFg, this rifle delivered the big bullet with enough authority, and accuracy, for taking deer out to 200+ yards. In fact, my friend demonstrated that he could punch a tighter group with the old 1850's rifle and load at that distance than I could with my nearly new T/C.50 caliber Hawken and 370-grain 'Maxi-Ball' at 100 yards. The fact is, the 1-in-48 twist chosen for this muzzleloader, and other T/C muzzleloaders that followed, was not proper for either projectile - yet somewhere around 1,000,000 traditional T/C muzzleloaders were built and sold in this country over a 40-year period. What if Warren Center had gotten the rate of twist right.maybe two different rates of twist - a faster rate of twist for shooting conical bullets, a slower rate of twist for shooting the patched round ball?

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Traditions Muzzleloaders Serial Number 148538

What if serious muzzleloading hunters looking for an effective game-taking range of greater than 50 to 75 yards had been able to group more aerodynamic 350- to 450-grain conical bullets inside of 2 inches at 100 yards? I f Thompson/Center had actually spent some time to research the fast-twist bullet shooting muzzeloading rifles of the 1840's and 1850's.and had built their Hawken to produce that kind of longer range accuracy.do you think the modern in-line rifles and saboted bullets would have taken over muzzleloading so quickly? If you cut your muzzleloading teeth with a T/C Hawken, and especially if you continue to shoot and hunt with one of the rifles today, please share a few of your experiences - and what you settled on as the best shooting and best game-taking load. There are a few hundred thousand T/C traditional muzzleloader owners out there still looking for a super accurate big game hunting load.

Toby Bridges For More On This Topic, Go To. Thanks Charles. Now, I could get some excellent accuracy out of several.50 caliber T/C Hawken rifles.when shooting the patched round ball. I had one that shot its absolute best with 70 grains of FFFg. And another that shot its absolute best with 80 grains of FFg.

The twist is just a bit too fast to shoot a patched ball at velocities much faster than 1,700 f.p.s. One custom.50 caliber I shoot, with a 1-in-70 twist Green Mountain barrel, shoots exceptionally well with 100 grains of FFFg - getting the ball out of the muzzle at just over 2,000 f.p.s.

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