My cousin and I bought a new Traditions XLT recently gearing up for muzzleloading deer season. We also picked up a .50 cleaning kit and an assortment of rounds, Pyro Pellets, and Goex powder. Winchester Triple7 209 primers.
My cousin is more experienced than I, and we started with Powerbelt rounds (245g green belt) and 2 Pyro pellets.
We zeroed the Bushnell Banner scope in 4 shots. About 1 or 2" at 50 yards with the scope. (I had to remount the scope initially, since we bought the super cheap Cabela's mounts. I had to reverse the front mount to get a bore sight. Just for information, since the scope could never have inclinated that far to the left. Bore sighting is very important. This kept us from ruining the scope by running out of adjustment before we got to the range!) Be careful of really cheap scope mounts...
Things we did not have that I wished we did have:
We did not have a range ram rod. Nor enough end attachments.
A starting rod. See below about loading a sabot vs the Powerbelt.
We did not have the cleaning kit at the range.
We did not have the jag to remove a lodged bullet.
So here are my major questions with anecdotes along the way. I hope you guys can help!
After the 4 shots of Pyro pellets and Powerbelts (which worked great until...)
Then we also had Hornady XTP bullets in the kit from TC. After 4 shots of pellets, and my complaining that we were not cleaning the bore between shots (which is accepted range practice here...) the sabot round was jammed.
We load the rifle with 80g of Goex black powder. We try to load an XTP sabot, and MAN was that thing tight! We could not move that sabot far enough down the muzzle on the black powder charge. The mark on the ram rod was .75" from where the Powerbelt and Pyro pellets were. We decided that was not a safe set-up. Pulled the breech plug, tapped the powder out and went home (after sighting in a gorgeous old Winchester .257 Roberts!)
So. If I could ask you guys these more specific questions.
1) This Pursuit XLT does not have the quick breech plug. The cleaning kit had only a Push-patch end for the rod. Not the slotted cleaning end type you thread the patch through first. When cleaning between shots, do you just use a slotted patch attachment to run Windex up and down the barrel? And then poke a paper-clip through the plug hole? Next shot...
2) When we tried to load the XTP TC sabot, it was soooo tight it ended our session, we had to extract the thing later, using the cleaning rod and 2 guys to push it out the breech end with even steady and great force! Luckily we did that well, since the bore was mirror clean after a thorough cleaning.
Do you need a different ramrod end for a sabot round than for a conical like the Powerbelt? It seemed like pushing the Sabot XPT round just make it tighter since the rod end was puching the plastic sabot, and not the bullet.
3) The Breech plug is really hard to clean out. It was easy to extract because of the Teflon tape. We used a needle to clear the tiny hole, which was about 1.5mm. Tiny! Do you have any suggestions to keeping the breech plug clean during a range session and cleaning it out fully after? Would a soak in Goo gone help? By a range session, I mean 10 shots max. We got to 4 shots without a cleaning at all, but couldn't load a sabot at all for shot 5!
4) We had a TC cleaning kit which came with this blue bore-cleaning solution that was very thick. I'm used to Hopp's nitro solvent which I know gets all over when cleaning a smokeless rifle. Is there a was to hose off a scoped black powder rifle for cleaning with solvent that will not destroy the greasing of scopes, or any tricks to keep the scope dry during cleaning?
5) What is the best between shot cleaning method for a non-quick remove breech plug? What attachment do you clean the bore with on the range, and what do you do to the breech-plug to clean it for the next shot without removing it?
Sorry for how long this is, but I want to move to in-line muzzle-loading from center-fire hunting entirely, and the change is pretty major!
We are new to black powder and have already benefited from the advice here, greatly.
Thanks for being here all of you. God bless and good hunting!
Kestrel in NYS
Cleaned up some missellings, etc. Thus the edit.
My cousin is more experienced than I, and we started with Powerbelt rounds (245g green belt) and 2 Pyro pellets.
We zeroed the Bushnell Banner scope in 4 shots. About 1 or 2" at 50 yards with the scope. (I had to remount the scope initially, since we bought the super cheap Cabela's mounts. I had to reverse the front mount to get a bore sight. Just for information, since the scope could never have inclinated that far to the left. Bore sighting is very important. This kept us from ruining the scope by running out of adjustment before we got to the range!) Be careful of really cheap scope mounts...
Things we did not have that I wished we did have:
We did not have a range ram rod. Nor enough end attachments.
A starting rod. See below about loading a sabot vs the Powerbelt.
We did not have the cleaning kit at the range.
We did not have the jag to remove a lodged bullet.
So here are my major questions with anecdotes along the way. I hope you guys can help!
After the 4 shots of Pyro pellets and Powerbelts (which worked great until...)
Then we also had Hornady XTP bullets in the kit from TC. After 4 shots of pellets, and my complaining that we were not cleaning the bore between shots (which is accepted range practice here...) the sabot round was jammed.
We load the rifle with 80g of Goex black powder. We try to load an XTP sabot, and MAN was that thing tight! We could not move that sabot far enough down the muzzle on the black powder charge. The mark on the ram rod was .75" from where the Powerbelt and Pyro pellets were. We decided that was not a safe set-up. Pulled the breech plug, tapped the powder out and went home (after sighting in a gorgeous old Winchester .257 Roberts!)
So. If I could ask you guys these more specific questions.
1) This Pursuit XLT does not have the quick breech plug. The cleaning kit had only a Push-patch end for the rod. Not the slotted cleaning end type you thread the patch through first. When cleaning between shots, do you just use a slotted patch attachment to run Windex up and down the barrel? And then poke a paper-clip through the plug hole? Next shot...
2) When we tried to load the XTP TC sabot, it was soooo tight it ended our session, we had to extract the thing later, using the cleaning rod and 2 guys to push it out the breech end with even steady and great force! Luckily we did that well, since the bore was mirror clean after a thorough cleaning.
Do you need a different ramrod end for a sabot round than for a conical like the Powerbelt? It seemed like pushing the Sabot XPT round just make it tighter since the rod end was puching the plastic sabot, and not the bullet.
3) The Breech plug is really hard to clean out. It was easy to extract because of the Teflon tape. We used a needle to clear the tiny hole, which was about 1.5mm. Tiny! Do you have any suggestions to keeping the breech plug clean during a range session and cleaning it out fully after? Would a soak in Goo gone help? By a range session, I mean 10 shots max. We got to 4 shots without a cleaning at all, but couldn't load a sabot at all for shot 5!
4) We had a TC cleaning kit which came with this blue bore-cleaning solution that was very thick. I'm used to Hopp's nitro solvent which I know gets all over when cleaning a smokeless rifle. Is there a was to hose off a scoped black powder rifle for cleaning with solvent that will not destroy the greasing of scopes, or any tricks to keep the scope dry during cleaning?
5) What is the best between shot cleaning method for a non-quick remove breech plug? What attachment do you clean the bore with on the range, and what do you do to the breech-plug to clean it for the next shot without removing it?
Sorry for how long this is, but I want to move to in-line muzzle-loading from center-fire hunting entirely, and the change is pretty major!
We are new to black powder and have already benefited from the advice here, greatly.
Thanks for being here all of you. God bless and good hunting!
Kestrel in NYS
Cleaned up some missellings, etc. Thus the edit.