Wirehair

Ok guys did you discharge your muzzleloader before you put it away for the season?

A member of our hunt club was cleaning his gun before a hunt and after he ran a dry patch he went out on the carporch to shoot a cap to clean out oil. He forgot he had left a full charge in it from last year skipped a hot round into the side of the wifes car.

Several years ago my next door neighbor borrowed a gun from his brother. While he was "cleaning" it in the living room it went off (i know what your thinking, i asked the police the same thing) and a 50cal ball hit his son in the right hip and exited through the left. My sons best friend lived 3.5hrs.

Is yours still hot?

Tree climber

accidents are always tradgic,sorry to hear about your sons friend.
everyone should always handle a gun of anykind as if it is loaded.
the ramrod on all B/P guns should me marked with a circle around it at the loaded depth.
You can never be to careful with any firearm.


I am not a hunter I am a whitetail population reduction specialest

remember keep your back to the sun, your knife sharp, and your powder dry.

Ruger-Redhawk

That's a good idea to unload it before storing it. I have a Double ML Shotgun loaded for two years now. I know it's loaded of course others may not. I treat all guns as they are loaded.The cementery is full of people from unloaded guns.That was very tragic about the young man getting shot with a barrowed gun.Always keep that muzzle pointed in a safe direction if it's loaded or not.One foolish mistake is all it will take.Ruger Redhawk

soarkrebel

i alway break my muzzle loader down and clean it . and i mean clean it ,my wife is going to divorce me one day over my doing it in the bathtub. if you want it to be around for years instead of a piece of rusty steel (stainless too) clean it good . my couson didnt clean his from oct to dec. it took about two hours of work before we could get a jag down it. the lands and groove were shot. i hate to hear about accidents that could have been prevented . especially if the guy had used better habits.

1950KID

If you put a ramrod with a metal tip down the barrel of a muzzleloader, you can get an idea if the gun is loaded or not. Just let the ramrod fall down the barrel. If it sounds like the tip is hitting steel, the gun is probably not loaded. If it makes a thud, it probably is. This is not a perfect way to check, but it's a start. I bet the wife wasn't too happy about the car either.

8mm/06

All guns are always loaded at all times. I don't handle a gun without first determining that it is empty. Once I determine it is empty, it is handled as if it is loaded. If I determine it is hot, I then go about emptying it, and then treat it as if it were loaded. There is no other way to look at it. I used to hunt with some others that looked at it differently. I don't hunt with them anymore.
When I was 16 there was a 19 year old kid that used to go in to help and learn at my grandfather's gunsmith shop. At home one evening he accidentally shot himself with a 44. mag. He was cleaning an "empty" gun when it discharged, nicked his neck....just enough to cause life-long paralysis from the neck down. My grandfather was shaken up cause he really liked the kid and it was such a tragic and avoidable error, but the damage was done....... That left a lasting impression on me. All guns are always loaded at all times.

Deleted User

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Adui13

Greets,
Hmmm... nope, dont leave her loaded at all, when I have hunted with ehr its been too wet to trust the load for more than a day or two. ( even then when I got around to emptying it it didnt always go BANG! sometimes it would just go POP SHHHHWAP!!)But, this is probably good advice, and though I have yet to ( thankfully ) make a mistake that resulted in accidental discharge it never hurts to be reminded once in a while.

Just my uneducated opinion!
Terry

8mm/06

I want to clarify my post above....
My statement "All guns are always loaded at all times" was not meant to imply that I keep all my guns always loaded.......I think most everybody knows what I meant.....that I treat all guns as if they are "hot".
I realized, as I reread through the posts, that some young visitors to this site might misinterpret my meaning.
For that reason alone I thought clarification couldn't hurt.
For the record, I have also had some boned-headed scary moments....
One morning, while leaving the truck for the morning deer hunt, I had a momentary lapse in memory, and wasn't sure which way my military gun's safety needed to be for on-safe ( I was 16 and on my 3rd deer-hunt but that is no excuse).....I proceeded to put it the position I thought was correct, then pointed it at the base of a stump and tried to pull the trigger ( to prove to myself the safety was correctly positioned). It went off!!! I was so embarrassed and my dad was pretty upset, but at least I had the presence of mind to have pointed it down and away. All I had to do was unload it and check it's funtion while UNLOADED. My youth and my inexperience ruined the morning calm that day.
Another time, when I returned home from a morning pheasant hunt with my brother, I uncased my double-barrel 20 gauge, broke it open and my heart sank when I saw I had left a live round in the right barrel.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BE TOO CAREFUL.

Edited by - 8mm/06 on 02/01/2002 10:45:51

eldeguello

It's damnhard to properly lube up a bore for storage, iff'n you got a load still down ther!!