I was just wondering this the other day and was wondering what everyone does to clean their gun if they fired their gun in the morning of a hunt and wasn't going to have a place to fully clean the gun like usual and was going hunting that evening? Would it be fine if I cleaned the barrel with Butch's Bore Shine and put a pipe cleaner through the nipple and possibly squirted a little alcohol in the flash channel? All advice would be greatly appreciated.
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What do You Guys do For Cleaning While Hunting?
- Thread starter luieb45
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I've carried these little home made "Field Cleaning Kits" with me for years...I keep 3-4 in my hunting vest all the time.
4 wet patches
4 dry patches
1 lubed patch
1 Alcohol wipe
1 Q-tip
1 Pipe cleaner
1 Muzzle mitt
I completely clean and prep the Flintlock after a shot before reloading, then pack everything back into the ziploc bag and carry it out of the woods, drop it in the trash when I get home...no mess, no stink, no litter, etc...and most important: A clean gun for the rest of the hunt.
4 wet patches
4 dry patches
1 lubed patch
1 Alcohol wipe
1 Q-tip
1 Pipe cleaner
1 Muzzle mitt
I completely clean and prep the Flintlock after a shot before reloading, then pack everything back into the ziploc bag and carry it out of the woods, drop it in the trash when I get home...no mess, no stink, no litter, etc...and most important: A clean gun for the rest of the hunt.
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Never had a reason to clean my gun while hunting. A part of a day won't hurt your gun if you just reload. However I would check under the nipple if a percussion and wipe the pan if a flintlock, if your worried and in humid weather. Otherwise just reload and hunt. Unload the gun before you come in and give it a good cleaning.
Little Wattsy
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Swampy said:
Ditto. :thumbsup:
So I won't have any damage to my gun barrel with rust if I am using real black powder and shoot my gun at 7:00 in the morning and reload then leave it loaded until 5:00 that afternoon and the gun will fire fine with my percussion?
Little Wattsy
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luie b said:
Thats a semi-loaded question as there could always be a little coloring dependind on your local conditions but I hunt in December in the rain and or snow. I would not hesitate to do just that. NOTE: I dont guess I would opt for this behavior EVERY day but once or twice a year during deer season... Not a problem in MY opinion.
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luie b said:
NO, you shouldn't have any problem at all, I've been there done that many times in the past and never hurt the gun. I always made the extra step of trickling 3F under the nipple after reloading and loading in the first shot. Hunting in wet falling snow all day and in rain, My gun always was the one that shot perfectly at the end of the day so I could go home and clean it, get it ready to load up again the next morning. Something I can't say about most of the other guys I hunted with who used pyrodex and didn't do the trickle powder under the nipple trick. Bad weather usually effected them more.
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what exactly do you mean by trickle powder under the nipple?
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Just that, I had a small flask of 3F, would load the gun and then take the nipple off and if I could see powder under the nipple, it usually wasn't much. So I would fill the chamber under it until I saw powder. That way the flame goes straight into powder and doesan't hit metal then hopefully hang a left into the powder. Even a week cap would set it off. Just another insurance you can do to make your gun go off and not miss fire.
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I do kind of a "tweener" for what you're hearing so far. My circumstances arrive in a long day of snowshoe hare hunting. When you reload, you usually don't know how much longer for the next shot or when you'll be going home.
I'm in the habit of swabbing with a spit patch, then a dry patch, then a patch with my normal lube if I suspect the shooting will slow down but the day might be long. That way when I load it's a more or less clean bore with a "double" pass of lubed patch, counting the one with the ball.
Doesn't always work that way if I'm in a hurry to reload, but even when I don't do the extra swabbing I've never had any problems going all day after a shot in the morning. I will say that the extra passes sure make for easier cleanup in the evening.
I'm in the habit of swabbing with a spit patch, then a dry patch, then a patch with my normal lube if I suspect the shooting will slow down but the day might be long. That way when I load it's a more or less clean bore with a "double" pass of lubed patch, counting the one with the ball.
Doesn't always work that way if I'm in a hurry to reload, but even when I don't do the extra swabbing I've never had any problems going all day after a shot in the morning. I will say that the extra passes sure make for easier cleanup in the evening.
paulvallandigham
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Run a greased cleaning patch down( and out) the barrel after seating the ball. That will prevent the bore from rusting if its raining out. Grease, or wax the outside of the metal parts, too, to prevent rusting during a long day sitting in damp conditions. BTDT. :thumbsup:
Blizzard of '93
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all I shoot is cappers so use a pick after dry wipeing the bore than reload. use a patch with your fav lube after loading and wipe good.
I have always just put in fresh powder and patch and ball then or before wipe down the nipple area/pan/flint/frizzen(pipe cleaners are handy here) well to remove moisture grabbing residue these are the places to be concerned with during a wet day.
On camping trips, my son and I like to spend the day roaming around "stump shooting" or small game hunting in season. I run spit patches every few shots when stump shooting and after every shot when hunting, since I don't know when the next shot will be. At the end of the day, back at camp, I remove the barrel and clean it the same way I do at home. I don't load it until the next morning. On bivy/backpack hunting trips for big game, if I fire the gun for some reason other than shooting at game, I swab it with spit patches and clean it at the end of the day when I pick a spot to put up for the night.
paulvallandigham
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You are hunting at high altitude, with very low relative humidity. Down here on the Flats, relative humidity is a real curse, and we don't use spit patches when hunting. They are fine on a range when you know you are going to fire the next shot within a minute or two of loading, but using spit patches during a day long hunt will have the spit dry out, and WILL rust a ring right where the PRB is seated on the powder. :cursing: :shocked2:
My preference for plinking( stump shooting is a form of plinking), and target shooting is to use SPIT to lube my patches. Its free, readily available, and I don't have to carry it in anything pulling on my shoulder or belt. Better than that, we don't have to pay the Arabs money to have it.
But when hunting, HERE, I use my Young Country 101 Lube( a predecessor of Natural lube 1000, Wonderlube,Bore Butter, etc.).
In our December Winter Deer Season here, it sometimes is bitterly cold, over night, but it might thaw out to above 32 degrees F. during the day, allowing the humidity to rise from near zero to well into the 50% or higher range. It depends on where in Illinois you hunt, as the state has at least 2, and sometimes three climate zones.
( The Southern zone, from Cairo north to Interstate 70, where the ground almost never freezes, and the relative humidity remains a factor even when it snows there on the rare occasion; The central "Corn Belt" from Rte 70 North to Ill St. Rte. 17, where the ground does freeze if we get below freezing temperatures on consecutive days long enough, and relative humidity varies greatly depending on the amount of sunlight and daytime temperatures we reach; and the Northern zone, from Ill. Rte. 17 to the Wisconsin border, where the Great Lakes, and the Alberta " clippers" combine to deliver lots of cold, lots of snow, and frozen ground many inches deep. We locals talk about this area as the Lake Effect area of Illinois- referring to Lake Michigan. This is where snowmobilers find enough snow, in good years, to play in, and where the relative humidity is so low that it ceases to be a factor. You know you need to be thinking about relative humidity when you find yourself walking in puddles of water on top of ice.)
My preference for plinking( stump shooting is a form of plinking), and target shooting is to use SPIT to lube my patches. Its free, readily available, and I don't have to carry it in anything pulling on my shoulder or belt. Better than that, we don't have to pay the Arabs money to have it.
But when hunting, HERE, I use my Young Country 101 Lube( a predecessor of Natural lube 1000, Wonderlube,Bore Butter, etc.).
In our December Winter Deer Season here, it sometimes is bitterly cold, over night, but it might thaw out to above 32 degrees F. during the day, allowing the humidity to rise from near zero to well into the 50% or higher range. It depends on where in Illinois you hunt, as the state has at least 2, and sometimes three climate zones.
( The Southern zone, from Cairo north to Interstate 70, where the ground almost never freezes, and the relative humidity remains a factor even when it snows there on the rare occasion; The central "Corn Belt" from Rte 70 North to Ill St. Rte. 17, where the ground does freeze if we get below freezing temperatures on consecutive days long enough, and relative humidity varies greatly depending on the amount of sunlight and daytime temperatures we reach; and the Northern zone, from Ill. Rte. 17 to the Wisconsin border, where the Great Lakes, and the Alberta " clippers" combine to deliver lots of cold, lots of snow, and frozen ground many inches deep. We locals talk about this area as the Lake Effect area of Illinois- referring to Lake Michigan. This is where snowmobilers find enough snow, in good years, to play in, and where the relative humidity is so low that it ceases to be a factor. You know you need to be thinking about relative humidity when you find yourself walking in puddles of water on top of ice.)
I think I'm going to put together some of those cleaning kits like Roundball talked about. But the only time I'll clean my gun in the woods is if I've succesfully tracked the deer or it died instantly because I want a loaded gun when I'm tracking a deer as it proved in this year's shotgun season to be VERY IMPORTANT when I jumped my deer at 2 yards in a fencerow and had to take several shots behind the shoulder at 15 yards to bring this deer down. The only concern for me with the cleaning kit is I'll get the barrel clean, and get the nipple and what's below it clean with the pipe cleaner but what about the area between the barrel and the nipple? Does much fouling subside there? Maybe I'm just worrying too much because people used to only clean their gun at night after a day long hunting trip. What I thought about cleaning that flash channel area is if at around noon when I have all my equipment available if I squirted a little 90% isopropyl alcohol down into that area?
Jethro224 said:
+1
