The 1st few years with the .50 Elite were great. I was using t7 and all lead ssb 285's. Deer where going down mostly where they stood at ranges out to about 185. One swab was no problem with the easy loading lead bullets.

Then I thought BH209 might make things cleaner and maybe prevent a little corrosion. Then I went through the usual corrections to make it work. Just bought the Lehigh bp, but havent shot it yet.

Last year I started using the 250 gold dots,hph12 sabots, and about 110gr of bh209 with cci mag s. I grew up with hoppes #9 and loved the smell. Had a couple of old bottles laying around and used it and break free to lube the inside and out when done. After the seasons ended or before a final sighting in for deer season, I'd break it down and clean the barrel with Blue Wonder that lists removing copper, lead and plastic in shotguns and mz's. More often though I'd scrub with cva advanced sabot shooter solvent that is supposed to remove plastic and bp fouling.

This Year, using the above load, I shot quite a bit during the season, so probably didnt use a plastic remover, just hoppes and breakfree. Last day of the season, the gold dots were starting to load hard and I actually broke the hollow alum rod (wasnt feeling good that day anyway, so I probably wasnt as careful as I should have been.)

Took her home and cleaned as usual with a bronze brush and hoppes and put her away till another day.

Then I started scrubbing with the harsher removers and all kinds a nasty black came out. Did this about 6 times. Probably could still dirty a patch. I'll scrub up a bronze brush a try again just to see.

What I found was a tight spot half way down the barrel and another tighter spot about 3-4 inches in front of the breech plug.

This was loading gd 250 w/a hph12. switching to a long black crush rib it got easier, maybe too easy for bh209.

A 300 barnes with the long black sabout they came with loaded easier than the gd, but was a little harder to start/.

OK, please hit me with some suggestions for proper cleaning with bh209 and maybe some websight for the stuff.

Another error I'd made was using a flexable glass? rod for a range rod. I always thought the barnes where way too hard to load but it was the rod flexing. I used an old wooden rod from the tc Hawken days and the barnes wasnt all that bad.

Suggest a solid alum rod for my ram rod, with which jag attached? I have an old spin jag on the flex rod that I'll keep just for cleaning.

I've never used any abrasive in the bore. I did use some 0000steel wool & oil in it this week though. What do you think?