Got out to the place I wanted to hunt at 215. This was kind of a last ditch effort for a place to hunt. Next year I will return to this area with a blind. Tracks and trails and beds all over. But for today I grabbed a white plastic lawn type chair and carried it out with me.
I sat down at a place that I thought looked good. Looked around for a minute and decided that I would have a little better view if I moved a little to my left. Found a good patch of brush with a couple little trees behind it to break up my outline some and sat down. About 15 minutes later, I was looking to my right, when off to my left I heard a deer blow. I've not actually heard this before, but read about it. The second I heard it there was no doubt there was a deer there. Slowly turned to my left and there was a nice sized doe about 50 yards out. She took a few hops and trotted to about 100 yards out and stopped broadside. Perfect shot between two trees. Put the front sight behind her shoulder and pulled the trigger to send 300 gr. of XTP destruction her way... Except it only made it about halfway down the barrel. At the trigger pull I was rewarded with that hollow pop of a primer in the barrel. No bang. The doe stood staring at me for another 15 or 20 seconds then trotted off.
I don't know what happened for sure. Due to the conditions this year I've pushed the load out after every hunt and reloaded with fresh powder. I'm shooting a 300 XTP in a BCR sabot over 90 gr. of BH209. The only thing I can come up with is that after the last hunt I noticed a couple orange speckles outside the barrel, I'm assuming from all the moisture. I cleaned and re-oiled the outside of the barrel, then ran a lightly oiled patch down the inside of the barrel followed by a dry patch. Maybe I didn't get all the oil out? I thought I would have but I don't know. The only other thing is that I've been using the same primer every time. Maybe it got a little moisture in it and wasn't hot enough to ignite the BH209. Needless to say I came home and dumped out all my speed loads and tossed the primers I was taking with me. I'll take new stuff on the next outing. Hopefully I should get out one more afternoon.