SwampCollie

I still think you have a very good gun and I am sure it will shoot very well for you. I think you may have been mis-lead a little with the 'stainless' 'weather shield' thing - but stlll that gun will work just fine.

Let me ask... did you do the normal thing when you loaded for your hunt? Did you strip the bore of all protection, with alcohol or something like alcohol? If you did the surface rust you experianced should not be considered as a surprise, especially if you live in an enviroment that might have a bit of acid type rain.

I have long ago given up on the thought of 'stipping' the bore to shoot sabots. Agreed the bore can not be heavily oiled - but it need not be stripped. The original thought of 'stripping' relates originally to shooting real BP then when sabots first came out oil would possibly cause the loss of some accuracy. With todays new formulation of sabots and sabots that fit tighter it is not necessary to 'strip' all of the protection out of the bore. You are just asking for the possibilty of rust.

For the last 4/5 years - I have given up on that task. I do not want to be hunting the rotten weather of Northern Idaho with a bare metal bore. To combat this I use Montana X-treme Bore Conditioner. It is an extremly light oil and contains glycol ether that drys and evaporates very rapidly.

As an example I was hunting in a rain/snow combination - i did have a muzzle mitt on the barrel but even then i was unconcerned about the bore rusting as it was still protected. When I got home I ran a dry patch to wipe the bore and collect any possible moisture. Then I ran a very lightly oiled BC patch and a tight fitting dry patch... The gun was still loaded and now the bore is protected for the next hunt. This procedure does not effect the accuracy of the rifle.

Just sharing some thoughts that work for me....