I hunted for years with my TC Hawken. Three years ago I bought an Omega and put a 4X scope on it. They are both nice rifles. The Hawken does take quite a bit more TLC.
Any load that works on elk is fine for whitetails. As far as amount of powder and such, your going to have to find what works best in your gun, for you. But I find the amount of powder does not really influence the shot as much as types of bullets you choose.
Guess my first question would be where are you hunting and what are the rules? Can you shoot a modern Sabot and Bullet or are you stuck here in Idaho and are required to shoot lead conicals?
Well then... I can tell you what I would recommend but I also must tell you that I am totally biased. I have shot a lot of these bullets and get great accuracy and outstanding terminal performance.
The bullet is made by Lehigh Defense, if is a .451x230 CF. you can find is here:
Lehigh Defense, LLC. - A leading manufacturer of top quality bullets.
www.lehighdefense.com
I am shooting this bullet from my Knights, either a DISC Extreme or the Ultra Lite.
This is the bullet resting in a MMP HPH-24 black sabot. At this point it is ready to be pushed down the bore.
I use either 120 grs. (vol) of T7 loose powder or BH-209. Both powders perform equally well with the setup. This picture is a small collection of pictures from a previous range trip the Rock Pit.
After sighting in I setup a group clays on the Basalt rock wall. All of these targets are at 100 yards.
After shooting the 6 clays I to shoot the clay chips I located through the scope as shown in these pics.
I have shot these bullets across a chrono and created a Ballistic sheet showing the results
I think you can see this bullet is a heck of a performer.