A friend of mine died about 8 years ago, and I inherited all his lever gun and black powder ammo. There were 60 rounds of 45-70, 5744 loads in the assortment. I sighted in my Browning 1886 with a 100 yard zero. I used it in a Cowboy action side match called "speed rifle", which is 1 or 2 sighters then on the clock 5 rounds as fast as you can, this is **** off hand. My buddy never won a match of any kind, he had a lot of "kiss your sister seconds", but not one first. Using his ammo I won with no misses (5 second penalty) and a total time of 2.2 seconds. I was the first shooter, so the steel target plate only had a 1 1/2" group at about 70 yards. When I returned to fold of gunshop commandos, I told his best friend that he finally won a match. I had a pile of his cast bullets, his can of powder, and the load data off the 3 boxes ammo, BUT I could never that load to shoot like that again! I have gotten other really good results with AA5744 and with Trail Boss.
With Trail Boss: load the case to the bottom of the seated bullet, but DO NOT compress the powder, use a standard large rifle primer and it will do very well. Different brands of cases have different volumes, so fill a case with the correct charge. Measure from the case mouth to the top of the powder, mark that distance from the bottom of the bullet, and use that as a seating depth guide. If your crimp groove isn't aliened properly (and you will want to use it), adjust the powder level so there is less than 1/16 inch of space between bullet and powder. This is Hodgdon's method for best load, I've used it on 45-70 and 38-55 loads, they will be in the area of Black powder velocity.(These 38-55's did a 5/8" 10 shot group @ 100 yards out of my high wall.) Ivan
