A Dozen Shots With The .50 TC/GM Renegade

I had an interesting shooting session Saturday that I thought I'd share with you guys.

One of the guns I plan to use this deer season is my TC Renegade with a .50 caliber Green Mountain Long Range Hunter barrel. I haven't shot this gun in the last few years and thought (but wasn't sure) that it was sighted in for 240 grain/.429 Deep Curls. Also, I'd never shot it beyond 100 yards and wanted to verify trajectory out to 150 yards because that's the distance to the back end of one of my food plots.

The day was beautiful - sunny and low humidity. But the wind was a little more than I would have liked, persistent and squirrely.

My plan was to take two shots at 25 yards to verify that the scope was set for the load I was shooting (it was), then take two shots at each 25 yard interval out to 150 yards. That's what I did.

Here's the gun.



And here's the target.



Now here's the interesting thing. I was shooting a 95 grain load which produces an average velocity of just under 1650 fps with that bullet. Looking through my files I found I had an old ballistic chart for that bullet that I'd printed a few years back using the Ballistic Calculator at Handloaders.com. That chart was for a velocity of 1600 fps (close enough?). Here's the chart. You can compare it to the real world results yourself. As for me - I've always been impressed by how close the results of that calculator are to my shooting results with various loads and guns.



Here's a link to the calculator. http://handloads.com/calc/index.html

Good shooting! I need to break mine out again.

With 1/28 twist mine shoots patched round ball the best

Do you have one of the Green Mountain LRH barrels MoTex? If it's an original Thompson Center Renegade barrel the twist is 1:48".

Same with mine. I bought about 20 different conical s and never could get any consistency with them. Round ball will shoot 2" groups at 75 yards.

Sorry for the late reply, the gun is a Hawken and was purchased aoround 1978. I thought it was a 1/28 but could be wrong. I know it won't stabilize a conical.

I have a hawkin replica with the 1:28 inch twist it shoots conicals, saboted pistol bullets etc. better than round balls. My brother has same gun with the slower I think 1:40 inch twist it does much better with patched round balls, and I believe that is how they are advertised to shoot as well.

Good shooting. All my tc hawkens were 1/48, sub moa at 100 with 90 gr of Pyrodex and 245 gr green tip powerbelts. It’s going out with me the first weekend of December. I can’t wait.

T/C Hawkens have a 1:48 twist which is a compromise for shooting conical or round ball loads.
The T/C 375 gr. Maxi-balls with 90 gr.of FF Goex work well in all of my T/C Hawken and Renegade rifles.
Zero at 60 yds, I consistently break the top of a 3” bullseye at 30yds and the bottom at 100 yds.

Those power belts are very accurate in T/C BP rifles. The 245gr. Have a bad reputation for poor penetration and splintering on deer size targets. The 295gr have the same accuracy and more consistent penetration.