Miller, I understand the fouling problem, but I didn't have it that bad. However, it has always been my practice to run a spit dampened patch down the bore and then a dry one before reloading. I used flannel patches cut out of my old wornout work shirts.
I may have told this before, but one Thanksgiving, about 1992, my youngest son and I were squirrel hunting that morning. It was a terrible day for squirrels, being very windy. We walked up on a pretty beaver pond and were standing there by it thinking of the possibility of killing some woodies in it later. Just then, on the opposite side, a buck jumped up out of his bed and began to run downstream to our right. My son said, "shoot him Daddy! " I had the set trigger already set, and as I brought the rifle up I brought it to full cock. As I swung the front sight ahead of the running buck I was thinking that only a head shot would kill him, with that light load and little ball. So I swung it out ahead of him and touched the front trigger. Smoke blotted out everything, and I naturally assumed I had missed because I couldn't see him after the smoke cleared. I reloaded, we crossed on a beaver dam, and there he lay, shot through the neck. It was nearly an eighty yard shot, and the low velocity ball had dropped so much that what I meant for a head shot turned into a neck shot.
I grew several feet in stature in my boy's eyes that day!
SRH
