Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders SEASON THE BARREL, OR OLD WIVES TALE?

Hatchet Jack was dead. Nobody alive who isn't a fuggin moron would leave their rifle out in the snow for a week.

not with bore butter anyway

If you clean and dry your rifle thoroughly you probably wouldn't have problems with bore butter so long as you store it in the house instead of out in the snowbank. I know I don't.

I don't believe you can condition or season a bore much as a cast iron skillet. What kind of stuff is going to resist the temperature and friction of a shot or more being fired. A lubed bore will affect the poi, however. In my years of match shooting, I always degreased the bore and then fired one blank load, damp wiped, dry wiped and then fired for record, wiping after each subsequent shot. Now that I only hunt with mls, I sight in using two targets, one for the first shot, the second for a dirty loaded second. Clean and repeat. I clean after each session or hunt and coat the bore with RIG. Our old mantra was clean every day for a week, every week for a month and every month for a year. A little obsessive but you don't get rust. When you paid a C note for a barrel in 1965, you took care of it.

Frontier muzzleloading makes anti rust and patch lube. Best stuff ever. You won’t be disappointed. It’s great for cleaning, protecting barrel and lubing patches.

Almost as good as Bore Butter, eh? Even if I used his stuff I wouldn't be stupid enough to leave any rifle in a snow bank for a week. That and I'd like to see the historical provenance for Hatchet Jack other than a Hollyweird movie.

The snow bank was just to show extreme testing levels is all. I used to use bore butter myself but after having my rifles rust up during a hunt, I had enough.

When you can leave your gun outside from December to April and have 2 or 3 tiny ( pin head size ) rust spots on the barrel flat, that's a pretty good feeling. I dont worry about my rifles rusting up anymore.

Me either.
Mines stainless steel.

stainless will rust, just not as easily. Actually the SS lock up section on a cva break action, that sob will rust up so badly you would think its made of regular bare steel.