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!

The Benefits

For any straight-walled pistol case — and most straight-walled rifle cases — Trail Boss will get you right in the “sweet spot” of a reduced-velocity target load without position sensitivity. Here’s the secret: It accomplishes this because it’s really puffy.

Unlike nearly every other smokeless powder, Trail Boss is almost immediately identifiable by its donut-shaped rings. It takes up a lot of space in the case and therefore doesn’t exhibit much performance difference in “powder forward” or “powder backward” configurations. As a result, I have found accuracy is usually very good, not just because it doesn’t have a tendency toward big velocity swings, but also because nearly every shooter on the planet can shoot a sedate, reasonable load better than one that kicks their ass.

As an additional plus, Trail Boss is very difficult to mistakenly double charge. For the longest time, Hodgdon gave shooters the general advice of marking where the base of the projectile would be, then filling to 70% of the remaining case capacity as a starting load for any straight-walled cartridge. Double a typical powder charge and your bench will likely be covered with little gray donuts. We’d call this a clue!

Put these two qualities together and you’re left with just about the perfect powder for a beginning handgun reloader to learn with. Almost instantly, they’ll reap the benefits of incredibly accurate handloads, assembled with a powder that precludes the biggest potential hazard of reloading.

In Reality?

Oddly enough, performance is incredibly consistent even with the mediocre metering. I’ve found I can mechanically expect the aforementioned .38 special load to give me at least 2″ at 50 feet through my revolvers in those rare occasions I shoot rested. Velocity should run about 700 fps, give or take 50 fps depending on barrel length. However, I have an incredible affinity for the load simply because its genteel nature allows me to shoot my snubbies and small-framed guns up to their full potential.

For similar reasons, Trail Boss also has excellent utility in both .44 Special and .44 Magnum. I will admit the 3″ S&W 629 in my collection is not a very fun gun to manage with max-power loads. However, Trail Boss has provided the foundation for some very sensible, sub-900 fps loads with a number of lead bullets. I’ve found it’s a lot easier to shoot this gun accurately when every trigger pull isn’t a test of will.

As a final note, readers may note Trail Boss has been hard to find as Hodgdon recently paused production. If you see a dusty jug on a store shelf, snag it. In response to a recent email, the powder manufacturer told me they were optimistic they could once again bring this great product back to the market though did not have an ETA. Until then, reloaders may want to investigate Vihtavouri’s N32C, another powder with high load volume like Trail Boss, developed for Cowboy Action Shooting and provides similar benefits to the reloader.

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