You guys may recall that my 30 April outing with the Remington 700ML was disappointing. Although it started off OK at 50 and 75 yards, it ended with six-inch groups at 100 yards on the last couple of targets. I was pretty much convinced that my WalMart special 3x9 Tasco scope had developed loose bowels.

Saturday morning I set out to prove or disprove my assumption. So I brought along an extra Simmons 4X ProDiamond to switch with the Tasco.

The plan was to shoot my last five 300 grain XTPs at 100 yards to establish a base line, then change the scope and try a few different loads with other bullets I had on hand. The XTPs are what gave me inch and a half groups last January.

So I set out a target a 100 yards and shot those five XTPs. This is what I got.



Now that's not too bad a group, but an inch bigger than my January groups.

Then I pulled the Tasco off of the gun to put on the Simmons, only to find the little ProDiamond was about a half inch too short to fit the scope mounts. DANG!

As I was preparing to remount the Tasco I double checked the screws in the two-piece scope bases. Both screws in the rear base were as tight as could be. But I was able to tighten both screws in the front base a full half turn each.

After remounting the Tasco I loaded up with 300 grain Deep Curls and 95 grains T7 FFG and took five shots at 100 yards. Here's that target.



Now you can see why I had to apologize to Tasco. Never was anything wrong with that scope.

In my disappointing outing in April I was shooting GOEX. So I decided to give it a try again. Five more shots at 100 yards produced this target.



Not great, but acceptable hunting accuracy. A whole lot better than the six-inch groups in April with the same load. Who knows, increasing or decreasing the charge by ten grains might really tighten it up.

Let's give some 270 grain Gold Dot Soft Points a try. Five shots at 100 yards look like this.



I'll take full credit for shot #1 - tickled the trigger before I was quite set. But I'll take credit for the other four shots too.

I was running out of daylight, but wanted to shoot one more group. So I loaded up with 300 grain Hornady SSTs and shot these five.



I don't know why shot #3 went where it did. Everything felt real good for that shot. Probably Sabotloader's fault, or maybe Bronko's or Devil's. All in all, none of those groups are bad considering I just picked a variety of bullets and powder charges and shot them with no real load development.

Anywho, I'm about done with the Rescued Remington. It was a play around project that worked out well. But I just can't take a shine to black stocked bolt action muzzleloaders so I think I'll put it up for sale.

I did succeed in proving a rescued pitted bore muzzle loader can turn out to be a pretty good shooter.

By the way, this is what the bore looks like now after the steel wool and JB Bore Paste treatments I gave it.