Buckhuntn01

I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear - I'm still new to all of this so bear with me. Last season I attempted to take a nice buck and fired my Remington 700ml. The cap popped but it didn't fire for about a second or so. Needless to say the buck didn't wait around for the gun to fire. He bolted as soon as he heard the cap pop.

I posed the question last year and overwhelminly the response was I should have fired 2 or 3 caps without the load first. My question is: can I do this like a day before so I don't scare anything going into the woods or scare the hell out of the neighbors at 4:00 am? Pardon the elementary question but I really don't know what to do. Also should I run dry patches through the bore to remove some of the bore butter?

driftrider

What you experienced was likely a hangfire due to excess oil in the bore when you loaded the rifle. The reason one should fire a couple of caps through before loading is because it'll burn out most of the oil and clear the nipple and breach plug.

I don't like to rely on a clean bore because i've found that the clean bore shot can be 4-5" out of the group, which is unacceptable for me for hunting. So what I do is load 10grains of powder with a sabot (no bullet) and fire it off to foul the bore. I usually do it at home buy placing a couple of old dish towels in my (stainless steel) sink and one over the muzzle. I then fire the blank into the sink. The shot sounds like a firecracker (wear earplugs) but shouldn't be heard by the neighbors (don't do this if you live in an apartment or duplex). Word of warning, don't use your wife's decorative hand towels as the shot will burn a permanent brown ring into the towel which makes them really mad (don't ask me how I know this :P )!

Good luck,

Mike


Gun control means putting the second bullet through the same hole as the first- Ted Nugent
NRA Member
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Ben Franklin