Inside Out Outdoors

I had one lone goal in the 2014 season and that was to finally get a harvest on video.  I had been trying for 3 years prior and just was not able to seal the deal so to speak even though I kept getting closer and closer (I actually videoed Paul from the tree while he sneaked up on and shot a button buck we had come in and lay down, but it just looks like he is shooting at the ground in it).  But that all changed in a matter of 2 hours, if that, into my first hunt last year.  Watch it for yourself and I hope you enjoy!

As November continued on, the "fun" was just beginning to for me.  The weekend after my small unloaded gun failure, Paul and I found ourselves perched 25-feet up a pine tree on section of Alcoa gamelands in Rowan County, NC.  Muzzleloaders in hand and me running the camera as well, we sat that still morning hearing duck hunters break the silence as daylight slowly crept over the trees.  The occasional muzzleloader shot rang out as well, putting that feeling that "it could happen any time now" in us.  And it did, just as heavy fog rolled in.

Cory and I decided to hunt Butner game lands with two other buddies of ours for the opening day of the Eastern NC Muzzleloader season.  We had about an hour drive from my place in Burlington, NC to Falls Lake so we left the apartment around 4:30 a.m. and planned to meet up with the other guys around 5:45 to start heading into our spots.  It was a cool morning in the upper 40's to low 50's.  The cooler temperature had me excited for a couple of reasons: first, I would hopefully not be covered in sweat after the walk in to our stand location and, second, I had high hopes that it would have the deer up and moving around in the morning.

Now that it is the off season, and I had a full season to try out Hornady's new SST-ML Low Drag sabots, I wanted to share the results with our readers.  If you are anything like me, once the off season starts I begin to correct any issues I may have had the previous year.  If you had problems or were not impressed with your current sabot for your inline muzzleloader then I'd highly recommend using these.  I've been hunting with a CVA Accura .50-cal for the past few years and started out by using the CVA slick load 300-grain sabots.  Although these CVA sabots loaded easily and grouped nicely at 100 yards, I was not impressed with their performance on game.  There were two deer shot with these sabots and neither had an exit wound.  Having only an entry wound can make tracking a hit animal difficult, especially in the South where we rarely have the pleasure of tracking in the snow! 
 
After seeing the Hornady sabots in the local sporting goods store one afternoon I went home and did some research.  I found that others were really impressed with these new bullets so I went back the next day and picked up two boxes of them.  Then came a trip to the range the following weekend.  I was happy with their performance on paper as only minor adjustments were needed to get them grouping literally on top of each other.  I also had the pleasure of taking three deer this past season with these bullets and with the results I won't be changing for sometime now!  Every one of the shots resulted in a pass through and the lethality was exceptional as each of these animals dropped within 50 yards or less of where they were shot.  I was shooting the 300-grain sabots and had my rifle zeroed at 100 yards as most of my shots are within that range.  If you look at the ballistics for this bullet they are very impressive.  Hornady recommends to zero them 3 inches high at 100 yards, making your shot at 200 yards be 3 inches low.  That's a 6-inch spread from 0 to 200 yards...not bad if you ask me for a muzzleloader!  I plan to get back to the range and do as suggested by Hornady so I can be more comfortable with a longer shot this coming year if one presents itself to me.  If you want to take a look at the ballistics for yourself you can find them here.
   
-Paul Nicolucci

 I set off October 11th for Raleigh to hunt the NC Eastern Zone with my muzzleloader.  I got a taste of it when I hunted the morning of the 9th in the Western Zone up at South Mountains Gamelands in Rutherford County and was ready to get to a more familiar place with a better deer population.  I had made up my mind the night before that I would hunt where I shot a 9 point on Butner-Falls of Nuese Gamelands back in 2009 so when I saw a small buck laying in the ditch not far from the parking area I knew they had been moving and felt good about my chances.