I was over at a friends house who has quite a gun collection, but doesn't shoot most of them very often and mainly is a hunter, not a shooter. Anyway, I was looking at one of his muzzle loaders and the topic of cleaning came up. He told me it was a waste of time to clean muzzle loaders very often and that he hardly ever cleaned his from year to year. He had one, he told me he hadn't cleaned it since he last shot it about 2 years ago. I asked him what he did about rust and he insisted to me that they still rusted even if you cleaned them, so he didn't worry about cleaning them and he just shot them every year and it "shot" the rust out of them. I was amazed, but looked down the bore of the one I was handling and sure enough it was full of rust. I then looked at 2 others he had there and sure enough they were also full of rust. The scarry part, is one of the ones he had was a CVA Optima that isn't his. His hunting buddy let him borrow it long term for his son to use. His hunting buddy bought the gun and said he didn't like it. Sure enough when looking at that one it was full of rust too.

I wondered if the majority of the population was like this, or if most guys cleaned them like they should? I personally always clean mine after shooting it, and I just always assumed everyone did this. However, I also found out two other hunting buddies don't clean them that often either. One does at the end of the season, but not usually during the 2 weeks of the season and the other still had his loaded from the year before so I doubt he cleaned it.