For New Year's I was able to go shoot another woods walk at Boyertown today.
I posted yesterday about my shooting pouch. It worked out well today. I did change a couple things from when I shot the woods walk a month ago:
- This time my horn was filled with Goex 3Fg while a month ago it was Scheutzen 3Fg.
- I loaded with 65 grains of powder instead of 70 grains. This resulted in a little less fouling per shot but since I used different makes of powder, I can't draw a straight comparison.
My score today was the same as last month's: 11 out of 20. I consider myself a better than average shot but this course is difficult so I am pretty happy with it.
Some of the targets this time around were a little different. One gong was shaped like a hammer and sickle as seen on the Soviet flag, while the one next to it was a coronavirus. Both were most definitely worth shooting and I wish I'd taken a picture of them.
As I did last month, today I swabbed between shots to keep the black powder fouling down and make loading easy. I need to try shooting .480 balls instead of .490s to see if they shoot well in this gun, and if so, if I can get a few shots between swabbing. I haven't had the chance to do so in the past month.
Before packing away my rifle after the match I ran a couple wet patches down the bore to save some time when I got home. After getting home I ran several wads of tow down the bore, wet with Hoppe's No.9 Black Powder Cleaner. This did a pretty good job of scrubbing, much like a bore brush, so it reduced the number of cleaning patches I needed to use.
However, I'd still like to pump hot water through the bore for cleaning. I have a clamp-on flush tube from Track of the Wolf but it doesn't attach very well to my rifle because of the stock design. Over on the Muzzleloading Forum several members spoke highly of a flush tube that attaches to the barrel using strong rare-earth magnets, made by "The Lucky Bag". I could probably make something similar but decided to take the easy way out and ordered one. I am hoping that it will simplify cleaning my flintlock rifles.
Next Sunday there's another woods walk at the Boulder Valley Muzzleloaders in Green Lane, PA which I hope to attend. This is addictive.
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