Minnesota Waterfowl Hunting

I just put in two solid minutes of due diligence on whether smokeless powder was legal in MN during muzzle loader season, couldn't find much.

Anyone have a link or "know for sure"?

It's probably not specified as being illegal, if it isn't, due to how dangerous it'd be to load a muzzleloader with smokeless.

I'm guessing you know this and have something up your sleeve? Like a custom machined muzzleloader with a breech that could handle the extra pressure??

Don’t know. Out of curiosity though, when talking about smokeless powder, I’m guessing your talking about the powder used to reload shotgun shells/pistol/rifle whatever, not the pyrodex pellet stuff (smokeless alternative to black powder) that inline muzzle loaders use. That right?

I think savage and Remington make a smokeless muzzleloader. Never heard about the legalities in mn but, I’d say it’s legal being it’s a muzzleloader.

I hated those pellets. Finally made the switch to blackhorn 209, I’ll never go back to triple7 in any form.

So basically there is traditional black powder (pyrodex) then there is synthetic black powder (buck horn 209). The synthetic is nice cuz it's a lot less corrosive/less smoke, etc but you have to be careful shooting it as it has more punch to it - so pack it with less grains. I am currently running BH209 in a Remington 700 UML.

There are "custom" muzzle loaders that will accept smokeless gun powder or just like the stuff that propels regular bullets. You need to load accordingly and of course have to be able to take the pressure. A production gun would prolly blow up.

These guns are tested before shipment to shoot 1 MOA at 500 yards.

I know for a fact savage make (or made) a ML that would accept smokeless. Almost certain it's legal as long as you're still loading from the front and primer/cap are seperate from the charge.

Stute Slap wrote:The synthetic is nice cuz it's a lot less corrosive/less smoke, etc but you have to be careful shooting it as it has more punch to it - so pack it with less grains. I am currently running BH209 in a Remington 700 UML.

I don't know that it has that much more or less "punch" to it. I.e. if you shoot loose pyrodex/777 grain for grain you get close to the same velocities. You do have to load it down compared to pellets because of the absence of the bonding agent used to keep pellets stuck together. For guys that shoot 150 gr of pellets seems clsoe to equivalent of 90-100 gr of loose.

BH209 is what I mainly run although it seems like it's the most finicky to temperature/condensation issues. It also has lower ignition probability so running hotter primers and aftermarket breeches to ensure ignition is more important than say 777 loose. I do like BH209 however as I can shoot 25 shots without cleaning in between if need be.