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Pulling the Trigger on a New Muzzleloader, Part 2

March 18, 2009.

(Continued from Part 1)

My Knight KP1 has arrived. It's heavy — much closer in weight to field artillery than to the mountain rifles I prefer — but really a very nice gun.

I went with the stainless barrel and laminate stock (stock photo below).

The rifle points very nicely and seems to carry comfortably despite its heft. It's definitely a pretty rifle, especially if you're a sucker for laminated stocks and stainless metal finishes like I am.

To load the 209 primer, you hit a thumb release behind the hammer and break the gun open. I've never owned a break-action firearm before, and find the smoothness of the way the gun opens and then clicks shut again very satisfying. I'm also excited about how protected from weather the primer will be.

Several things were not as advertised.

The Knight website states that the stock is checkered. This is not the case. Nor is it smooth finished, as many of Knight's stock photos (including the one above) show. Rather, gripping surfaces are finished with a stippling technique — a coarse, texturized treatment of the wood surfaces on the forearm and pistol grip.

I don't have anything against the stippling, but it's clearly done because it's cheaper than checkering, and the literature and photos are unacceptably misleading.

Another key discrepancy is around the weight of this rifle. The Knight literature lists the weight at 8 pounds — quite a heavy rifle to lug up a mountain after elk. In fact, however, the rifle I received is a whopping 8.5 pounds, even worse than I expected.

It certainly feels solid when you hold it on target, but this will be a boat anchor of a gun in the field. Perhaps the listed 8 pounds is accurate for the synthetic-stocked version, but not for the laminate stocked version?

Regardless of these concerns, I really do like this rifle. It seems very well machined and points very nicely. The trigger seems perfectly nice when I dry-fire the gun, but will be curious to see how I like it while sighting in.

I mounted my Talley rings and Leupold Ultimate Slam scope the night after I got the rifle, and I like the way it's coming together.

I've got 2 different Barnes sabot bullets to try, along with Triple 7 powder in both granular and pellet format. Now, I just need to find some time to slip out to the range and evaluate some loads.

On a side note, I went out last week to the local Sportsman's Warehouse and handled a T/C Triumph. This was one of the other muzzleloaders I was considering. It's significantly lighter than the KP1, but had a cheap feel to it. I also found the mechanism for opening and re-locking the break action to be clumsy.

I also handled a T/C Pro Hunter. The pistol grip wasn't as awkward as I had thought it would be. It's definitely a nice gun. It was, however, about $200 more than the KP1, and the KP1 is already getting pretty steep. I suspect the T/C Pro Hunter is a nicer gun, but I'm still OK with my choice.

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