How to Prepare Your Riffle for the Big Weekend

Is cleaner really better? When it comes to the inside of your riffle boar, the answer is almost. Almost clean is the best way to go into hunting season. This is the procedure by witch you will have the best accuracy and reliability come opening weekend.

First go out and sight in just like you would before hunting season. I sight in or, “Zero”, my rifle to 200yds. I prefer to sight in at 100yds and 1.5 inches high, this allows my bullet to drop in to my cross hairs at 200yds. Then go test it at 200 yards.

After sighting in I go home and clean my riffle just like everyone. But the secret to this whole prosses is I go out and re fowl my barrel. Fowling a barrel is simply shooting the riffle once or twice to clear the whole riffle of cleaning chemicals and not too much that you have to go clean again. Fowling is important because the chemicals used to clean a riffle are still present even if you run 100 dry patches you can never get it all out. These chemicals take up a certan amount of volume wich can cause the riffle to over pressure in some cases. These chemicals also attract dust and dirt witch can also do nasty stuff to your riffle, such as send brass back through the bolt and into your eye. 

This is no joke, my grandpa was on an elk hunt, and in South Dakota we know how rare that is, and his riffle over pressured and put a ton of brass in his eye. He was hospitalized for a week and he still killed the bull. This ritual of refowling  will keep you from such miss haps in the upcoming moment of truth. It’s the big weekend get time to leve the deer to themselves and wate for opening weekend.  I will glady post any pictures of your hunting season thus far and any future success.

Good luck and good hunting.