I had a long session Friday evening with one of the Sinful Sisters



And some of MountainDevil's home cast MaxiBalls.



The only lube I had handy was a fifteen year old tube of CVA Grease Patch Lube that was near empty. So I put a bunch of the Maxis in a Zip Lock bag and squirted in the remainder of the lube. After working the bag a little with my fingers all of the bullets were coated. Messy to handle, but good enough for a shoot.

After setting a target out at the 50 yard marker I loaded up with 75 grains of GOEX FFFg and began shooting.

Here's the five shot target.



I wasn't too impressed with that group. Not real bad, but not what I'm looking for. The rifling just barely cut the top band of the bullet. I could push it into the bore with my thumb and it slid down the bore very easily. Also, I didn't swab between those shots and had the impression I could shoot them all day without swabbing. The only loading resistance felt was the last inch or two before seating on the powder, and that resistance was the same for shot #5 as it was for #2, 3, and 4.

So I bumped the charge up to 85 grains and took five more shots at 50 yards. I wiped the bore between shots with both sides of a patch moistened with Windex With Ammonia. Here's what I got.



Now I'm starting to get happy. That's not a bad group at all.

Bumped the charge again to 95 grains, took five more shots, and got this.



Now that's darn good. Actually, it's better than I expected with the bullets loading as easily as they do.

Of course, I couldn't stop there. Upped the charge to 105 grains, took five more shots, and got this.



Not too bad, but it looks like it's starting to open up. Let's try 115 grains just for the heck of it.



NOPE! It looks as though 95 grains is the accuracy load.

Let's try another group with 95 grains and see if it holds up.



Yep! Ninety-five is the right load. Then I began to I wonder if I can tighten it up a little by adding a wad under the bullet. So I tried five shots with a 1/16" hard fiber card wad.



That kind of surprised me. I really expected the group to tighten. Well heck, how about a 1/8" thich felt wad. Five shots later I was looking at this target.



OK, no joy. But I learned something - shoot them without wads.

It was getting late and the light was fading fast. But I had time for one try at 100 yards.



That group is OK. Not great, but OK. Certainly good enough for hunting. That wild shot was probably my fault. One day I'll try 125 and 150 yards. But that's another range session for another day.

Thanks for the bullets Devil. I enjoyed playing with them.

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