Trail Boss Powder

Look at the illustration on the cover of Hodgdon’s Trail Boss powder and you’d be forgiven if you associated it only with sixguns and spurs. Indeed, back when IMR first came out with Trail Boss in 2005, it was intended to fill a niche mainly inhabited by cowboy action shooters.

To be more specific, many Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) members wanted a powder suitable for reduced loads out of various sixguns and leverguns. Naturally, the SASS crew shot a lot of .45 Colt with a good deal of .38 Special and .44 Special to boot. All of these rounds share a big commonality — they originated as black powder cartridges. As a result, their case capacities tend to be voluminous.

Certainly, “mouse fart loads” for these calibers have existed for the better part of a century. Problem is, most rely on a small charge of extremely fast-burning powder. The worst-case scenario is double- or even triple-charging one of these cases in a moment of inattention, making for what experienced shooters have termed a KB: Kaboom!

I’ve found starting loads for these calibers often have a more mundane problem. While the reloader following published data is of minimal risk of sticking a bullet, a teensy charge of anything in the upper tiers of the burn rate chart often tends to be position sensitive.

Test it yourself — raise the gun at a 45º angle before coming back down to target, so the powder is right next to the primer, and fire a round. Then, fire a second round by raising the gun upwards from a low ready where the powder is adjacent to the bullet. You’ll likely encounter a noticeably different report and level of recoil along with a significant velocity difference. Note: Make sure every round indeed makes it out of the barrel!