We are kind of on the same wavelength,, and most of my clean barrels should very close to a dirty barrel especially up to a hundred yards. With that being said, popping a cap and leaving the residue in the barrel should be no worse than Leaving a 22 Rifle that's been fired and not cleaned, and I do that all the time. Caps aren't corrosive, so even if it is never cleaned and unloaded with air pressure, There shouldn't be much of a problem, as far as corrosion. The money and time we spend cleaning muzzleloaders, is at times, funny. I used 777 powder with noncorrosive caps, and I don't know what the corrosion factor is, but From my research, not real high.i absolutely refuse to pop caps before loading. Any rifle that places bullets from a clean and dirty bore in different positions on the target quickly goes away.
Any rifle remaining unfired at the end of hunting day is uncapped and remains loaded.
You can always use a co2 discharger at the end of the day.For many this topic is a moot issue but for many who are starting out and planning to hunt this may help. With hunting seasons starting to ramp up, these questions also start popping up.
I hunt all in-lines and use the same practice on each gun. I live in a city of about 135,000 and within sight of the Mayo Clinic. For several years I'd just wait until dark the night before opener and put a small charge of BH209 in the barrel with a plug made of paper towel, sneak out the service door of the garage and point the gun in the air and let it rip. Some neighbors got a little testy with this procedure after seeing me do this, so I took to just popping off four primers out in the garage with the gun pointed in a waste paper basket. Things are much better on the neighbor front now.
With the wonderful shortage of everything black powder these days I won't use the Winchester primers I have the guns dialed into for fouling the barrel so I picked up a couple flats of regular cci shotshell primers to use for this, but I honestly think any primer including the lower heat muzzleloader specific primers will work for this too. It's fouling we want, not necessarily the heat.
For side locks I think the same method of fouling a clean barrel for hunting can be used only with one's choice of caps. For the range one can just run a light load down range to foul things. I don't know why but my sidelocks don't seem to shoot a wild first shot in a clean barrel when using T7 granular and that's all I use in them.
I'm not a fan of letting a round off in the dark at the end of the day either. I'll pull the primer, give the gun a wipe with an oil impregnated cloth and case it up. A simple primer the next morning and I am good to go. Unless one has been in some serious wet weather, charges within an inline gun should be just fine. If you suspect that the charge might be moisture compromised, pull the plug at home or camp and dump it, cleaning the plug and wiping out the barrel before reloading using a new sabot....the bullet will be fine to re-use. Sidelocks are another thing and I'll let someone more in touch with possible damp load issues offer advice on them.
Can you tell us how you fouled the barrel? With a primer or a powder charge?I remember after reading Dutch Shultz accuracy method, fouling my bore during testing loads. I also thought I should do that while hunting and in fact, convinced both my hunting partners to do the same. We had a pretty rainy hunt for the first few days and embarrasingly we all had misfires. I now do not pre-foul. Using 99% alcohol, I clean oil out of the bore and patent breach, as well as nipple & flash hole and load for the hunt. No misfires since. Second shot without swabbing, of course will be slightly different point of impact but to me it's irrelevant for hunting purposes.
Dutch advocated pouring a small charge of powder down the bore and igniting it (no patch or projectile). You were then supposed to swab once down and up with a lightly moistened "moose milk" patch and then proceed with your testing of loads or competitve shooting. I was able to develop some pretty good loads this way and accuracy was superb. In his defense, I believed this same process was necessary in a hunting situation though he never stated or advovated that. Moisture was drawn into our ignition channel through the outside humitidy and resulted in misfires during the trip. Hard lessons are the ones I remember most.Can you tell us how you fouled the barrel? With a primer or a powder charge?
Thanks
Yes as well as 3rd, 4th etc as long as I swab between shots. If there is a difference its only an inch or so. This is 1 of my 700MLs at 100 yards. Top hole is 1st shot then the next 2.Does your second shot shoot to the same poi as the first shot Bronko?
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