My 2024 deer hunting season looms this coming weekend, and guaranteed I’ll be out there somewhere looking to notch a tag.
As I’ve grown older, I always look at each season as if it might be my last. I want everything to be perfect, from the carefully measured loads in my .30-06 to the sparkling clean bore in my sixgun. Probably tucked inside my parka will be a .22-caliber pistol “just in case” some blue grouse is dumb enough to stroll in front of me.
As this season loomed, my pal Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, introduced me to a product I’d never tried before, which didn’t seem possible. After all, I’ve been cleaning guns since I was about 12 years old, using everything from commercial patches, bronze bristle brushes and bore mops to torn-up pieces of old T-shirts tied to a string with an old hairpin at the other end to provide enough weight to bring the string down through the bore to be pulled out.
After all, I’ve gone through bags of my favorite cloth patches from Otis, and even have a new one waiting to crack open for a final trip through the bore before I head down the road to put a fouling shot down my barrel. Then it’s off to camp.
But on a table in Gottlieb’s office were a few bags of little cleaning plugs called BarrelBuddy push-through barrel cleaners. Almost weightless, these things are made from some kind of foam and white polymer with a rough front end for holding a bit of bore solvent followed by the foam plug which picks up the residue.
“Take a bag or two and try them out,” he said. So, I did.
These things come in sizes for virtually all calibers and gauges, and the samples I grabbed were for 16- or 20-gauge shotguns, or the .410 shotgun, .416-caliber rifle, .44 and .45-caliber handguns and even a .458 Winchester. It occurred to me if the little plug would fit a .410 bore, it’ll darned sure fit down the barrel of my beloved .41 Magnums.
I grabbed a bottle of Hoppe’s No. 9, a cleaning jag and a rod. Even though I expected the barrels of my sixguns to be clean, the BarrelBuddy plugs made them cleaner. You bet I was surprised.
Clean is Mean
I used to work with a guy who told me repeatedly he never cleaned his guns. This stunned me because it seems common knowledge that clean firearms are safe firearms and they don’t often malfunction.
Weeks ago, I made sure every rifle in my safe was properly zeroed. I had to adjust the scopes on two guns, but after just a bit of tweaking, they were putting rounds where I like them — about 2.5-3 inches high at a hundred yards.
Then, at home, I scrubbed the bores, ran oiled and dry patches down through the rifling until they looked brand new with bore light illumination. By tradition, just before the opener, I put one round through the barrel as a fouling shot. Then, I slide my rifle into the sheep skin travel case I built back when I was 19. The routine has paid off with notched tags, a freezer full of venison and some nice racks over the years.
These things come in a resealable bag, and there were about 40 of them in the bag I grabbed. Because they’re made of a synthetic, they don’t harm the barrel. They’re one of those clever ideas I wish I’d have thought of.
For those who stick with patches and brushes, it is definitely time to be scrubbing your rifle or shotgun and make sure any residue from last year is removed. This also applies to handgun hunters, a term that has applied to me in the past as well. Two of my revolvers have accounted for three bucks over the years, and those experience were for the memory book. And when it was all over, after cleaning and butchering my bucks, I cleaned and stored my handguns because dad and grandpa taught me it was the right thing to do.
Cold Bore Shot
Every deer I’ve ever shot, and nearly every buck or bull I’ve seen shot were taken down with a bullet launched through a cold bore, and as temperatures drop this fall, that term becomes more important.
It’s why I always counsel people to never fire more than three shots per string before racking the rifle, muzzle up to allow heat to exit, and don’t resume until the barrel is cool to the touch once again. Way too many people fire shot after shot until their gun barrel is so hot it can’t be touched. As the barrel gets hotter, the sight picture gets warped by the heat signature and frustration will set in. Groups get looser.
Be sure you can hit the target with your first shot. Elmer Keith knew this, so did Jack O’Connor and anybody else who hunts and shoots. One shot, one kill.
So, cleaning and maintaining your rifle, handgun or shotgun is an important part of the process, and these little BarrelBuddy plugs just make a lot of sense. Anything to make my cleaning chores easier and quicker, I’m in favor of.
Rights Are Equal
A couple of weeks ago when several plaintiffs petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari, which means they want a case reviewed, in an effort to overturn Delaware’s ban on so-called “assault rifles” and “large-capacity magazines,” the aforementioned Alan Gottlieb said this interesting thing in a news release.
“All rights protected by the Constitution are equal,” he observed, “and therefore any infringements on one right should merit the same degree of scorn as infringements against another right.”
Interesting thought, isn’t it? About this time, I was exchanging messages with another journalist about gun control laws. He seemed okay with the inconveniences gun owners must experience in order to exercise Second Amendment rights. It’s particularly true for young adults who might be barred from buying a modern semi-auto rifle. “He can’t buy beer, either,” my correspondent observed.
There’s nothing in the Constitution about buying beer. There is most certainly something in the Constitution about keeping and bearing arms.
Rights are special. I’ve said that before, mainly to people who seem to have forgotten the right to keep and bear arms is there in black-and-white with all of the other enumerated rights. It’s a bad habit, I guess. Call it a flaw in my character.