This stuff's the real deal.
I just got back from giving it a first try at the range. My overall impression is quite positive. It proved to be accurate and easy to clean.
I was shooting my MDM Buckwacka (23" Barrel) using both 240g xtp and 250g shockwave bullets paired with TC mag express sabots. My primers were CCI 209m shotshell primers. All shots were 50 yards.
I started with the 240g XTPs at 80g and worked up in 5g increments.
My first three shot group measured 1.25"
My next two three shot groups measured 0.75" with 85g and 90g.
At 95g my group openned up to two inches, so I went back down to 90g and tried the 250g shockwaves which have always proved to be very accurate in that gun.
I shot several three shot groups which ranged from 2.0" to 0.75"
For me, this qualifies as very good shooting.
As for clean up, it was a breeze. After some experimentation I found that running a damp patch down the barrel between shots did help with loading as the barrel on this gun is rather tight. The patches were pretty black but I don't know how much of that was do to the primers. CCI has always struck me as rather dirty.
Overal, two big thumbs up. No crud ring, no failures to fire, easy clean up and accurate, what's not to like. The only downsides I noticed is poor availability. No place in my area carries it, so I had to order it on line and pay the hazmat fee, thus making it rather expensive. Also there was no big cloud of smoke.
I rather like the big noxious cloud that pyrodex produced, but with all the upside to this powder I guess I can learn to live with out that.
Tomorrow or Thursday I hope to make it back to the range and do some shooting at 100 yards.
Until then,
Good shootin' to y'all.
..........sometime later.........
OK so I made it back to the range today and shot at 100 yards. Accuracy remained exceptional, three shot groups averaged one to two inches. Those larger than that were entirely do to my weak efforts behind the trigger and were not any fault of the load.
I tried not swabbing between shots and found to my surprise that it truly wasn't necessary. I fired twenty one shots without swabbing and my best group (1") came with the last three shots. A little hoppe's and a couple of patches and everything was shiny and new again. Pretty damn cool.
Best load: 90g BH209, CCI 209m primers, TC 250g shockwave.
Still miss the smoke though.