thoughts on Elephant bp

[adkmountainken]

I received 2 full cans of Elephant black powder and was curious if anyone had or still does use it? I have never used anything other then Goex, how does it compare?

[Bob Roller]

I never tried Elephant BP in a muzzle loader but did use it in pistol ammo.
The GOEX had more punch.
Bob Roller

[adkmountainken]

that's what I had read too but 2 free cans will not go to waste i'll use them for some purpose!

[bgf]

Free is a fair price for it !  It won't hurt anything except maybe frustrating you if you expect Goex level performance.  I have some elephant priming powder and even that is hard to ignite and very SLOW...plus gunks up pan and fouls touch hole like you wouldn't believe.  Have fun with it and don't worry about wasting it.

[Skychief]

I had some given to me several years ago.  Used it for plinking with revolvers after trying it in my rifles.  Considered using as a garden fertilizer.

Best regards, Skychief.

[Mike Brooks]

I use it in cartridge shotguns. Works fine in that application. Found it to dirty for ML rifles and fowlers.

[P.W.Berkuta]

Mad Monk did a write up of it sometime back try doing a search on it.

I have some in 2F I use in my 12 gauge and it's "OK" but dirty compared to GOEX. Back when you could only find Elephant you used what you could. Mad Monk said in his write up was that they used poor quality charcoal which produced a large amount of fowling. They did change their formula and used better charcoal in their later production and the powder was much better but then GOEX was back in production and there was less of a call for the Elephant powder. This info I wrote was the short info on the stuff. Do a search on here and GOOGLE to get more complete info.

[stubshaft]

I still have a couple of pounds of it as a very last resort powder.  It is DIRTY and as others have stated lacks the punch of GOEX.

[hanshi]

More than 15 years ago I used quite a bit of it because Goex and G-O weren't always available.  I had no complaints with it and it killed deer quite well.  Don't recall if I ever chronographed it so can't say how it compared with Goex for velocities.  Seemed pretty accurate for the most part and was cheap.  Dirty?  They all seem rather dirty, to me.  It wasn't the best but it was what we had.

[Gene Carrell]

I continue to use both 2 and 3f in flint and caplocks. It is dirty, but fouling is soft. This allows 20 to 30 shots between cleanings, depending on weather conditions. I get best performance and accuracy this way.

[Mike Brooks]

I continue to use both 2 and 3f in flint and caplocks. It is dirty, but fouling is soft. This allows 20 to 30 shots between cleanings, depending on weather conditions. I get best performance and accuracy this way.

That's interesting. I couldn't get shot #2 to go down the barrel after the 1st shot. Maybe they had some good lots and bad lots.

[James Rogers]

I still have a can of that nasty stuff in 3f IIRC. GoOD for a powder wedge or something like that but I won't be using it down any of my gun barrels.

[Eric Kettenburg]

There was definitely a dividing line between 'lots' or production years or something like that.  Bill Knight would be able to provide details; I had initially tried some that was of the allegedly "bad" variety and it was indeed just nasty.  At some point Bill was somehow involved in recommending improvements to whomever was running the operation and I got quite a few cans of the "good" lots.  I've had no problems with that stuff, still am using it and don't find it any dirtier or whatever than standard Goex.  As noted above, it sure has killed some deer and turkeys so I've got no complaints.  Might try some of the less expensive European stuff at some point - is it Wano? to see how that compares.