Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday, brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturers of the new Victra 20-gauge shotgun suppressor. We all know that subsonic ammo is a lot of fun when paired with a silencer, but availability can be a problem for some cartridges. Thanks to Trail Boss powder, you can create subsonic loads safely for just about anything.
Silencer Saturday @ TFB:
- Silencer Saturday #435: Father’s Day Gift Guide 2026
- Silencer Saturday #434: Give Me A Brake (On My Suppressor)
- Silencer Saturday #433: Scout Rifle Silencers
- Silencer Saturday #432: KAC Silencer Design Theory
- Silencer Saturday #431: What Other NFA Rules Could Be Changed?
Disclaimer: Reloading is an inherently dangerous activity. The author and TFB take no responsibility for your actions or inactions in any way related to your own reloading activities. Do not engage in reloading without understanding the risks, and always observe all applicable safety guidelines. Never exceed published reloading data.
What Is Trail Boss?
Hodgdon’s Trail Boss powder is probably the most unique smokeless powder option currently available on the market. One of the first noticeable things about Trail Boss is the weight, or more accurately the lack of weight. Those small black plastic bottles that hold one pound of powder… don’t. Only nine ounces of powder fits in those canisters, and it is filled to the brim. For those of you who do not speak Imperial measurements, nine ounces is a little more than half of a pound.
The next obvious difference is the shape of the powder flakes. Trail Boss looks like a donut, with circular flakes that have a hole in the middle. The flakes are also a little puffy compared to some other powder flakes. This creates an intentionally bulky powder charge that fills up internal volume without putting as much potential energy as other powders would store in the space.
Trail Boss has been very hard to find for several years. I had to use some secret Insider industry sources to get a few cans of it recently for a test. However, my local Scheels had it on the Shelf the other day when I went in. This was an unexpected surprise, and I bought several more.
This powder works so well for subsonic charges because it was actually made for low-velocity Cowboy loads firing lead projectiles. The name of the powder is a giveaway here, with cowboy motifs and imagery. Cowboy action shooters want the least recoil possible while still consistently expelling the projectile from the gun. This created a use case for a bulky powder that would fill cases like the .45 Colt but without the recoil of more traditional propellants.
Trail Boss Subsonic Loads
When working with subsonic loads, these powder characteristics mean it is almost impossible to dangerously overcharge a case. I say almost only because lawyers hedge their statements. I have never seen nor heard of a firearm damaged or destroyed by an overcharged Trail Boss load. Even if the powder column is compressed, it is still practically impossible to pack enough energy into a case to create an overcharge situation.
Contrast this with other subsonic loads, which frequently use small amounts of pistol powder. Some of those loads in a rifle case will use five or six grains of a powder like Tite Group to create a subsonic load. In a rifle cartridge that would hold 40, 50, or 60 grains of powder in normal circumstances, a double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple charge might not even be noticeable.
My first exposure to using Trail Boss for non-traditional subsonic loads was with one of the old hands at the gun store. We had worked together for many years, and he was always working on some kind of rifle or reloading project. On one of our range outings, he brought a Savage in .338 Lapua Magnum. This is back when those rifles were still somewhat obscure. We had a lot of fun engaging targets at a thousand yards and watching the difference in kinetic energy compared to our .308s.
Silencers were also less common at the time, but he had a Yankee Hill 338 can on his rifle. He pulled out an ammo box containing a special subsonic load he had cooked up. That load consisted of a full case of Trail Boss with a 300-grain bullet. The somewhat surreal combo of a massive rifle, a silent gunshot, and a very loud impact on a steel Target made quite an impression on me. It may even have had more of an impact on my wife, who has been asking me to buy a .338 Lapua ever since.
Hodgdon publishes a specialized set of subsonic load data, often utilizing Trail Boss. My most recent project with this powder was in the .458 Winchester Magnum. If a 300-grain sub was fun, how much more fun would a 500-grain sub be? Trail Boss is the only powder listed by Hodgdon in this application. I tried some other options that were on the border of subsonic, like a reduced H4895 load, but they were all still too fast. 19 grains of Trail Boss did the trick through, pushing the 500-grain projectile at about 850 FPS. My .458 is not threaded yet, but I wanted to make sure I could create appropriate ammo before heading down that path.
As of writing, Trail Boss is listed for subsonic applications, including .223 Remington, .300 Blackout, .30-30 Winchester, .308 Winchester, .30-06, .338 Federal, .38-55 Winchester, and .45-120 Sharps, among other things. There are many forum posts online with people trying this powder in all sorts of other cartridges, but if you choose to go that route, you do so at your own risk. Without encouraging that practice, Trail Boss is probably the least dangerous powder to experiment with. Thanks for joining us for another edition of Silencer Saturday. We’ll see you back here next week.
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