The gun shop where I buy guns would take that gun back with no questions.

If I was you, i'd send the gun to TC and tell them the gun was sold to you as a new gun. I'm positive they will send you a new gun, and will be very interested in who's selling their guns in that condition.

I don't blame you for being mad, but don't blame TC. Let TC make it right for you, and straighten out that dealer.

I'll try a drill bit in the plug and see what happens. The breech plug had a very thick coating of a vaseline looking grease when I started. The bore had a thin layer of grease or oil in it but nothing major. I did run JB's in the bore. I started with a thick oiled patch and JB's for 75 strokes. Still not seeing much improvement I doubled the patch for as tight as I could muscle down the bore and that didn't help. I moved on to a JB/oil patch around a brass brush for another 25 strokes, then the same thing in more of a scrubbing motion and the bore is still uneven not that great. Certainly not something I'm willing to keep for what I paid for it. If it was a hundred dollar gun I would be more ok with it. It's certainly not a shiney smooth finish I would expect.

And just for the record, I'm not trying to blame TC or even Dicks for that matter. It's very possible someone shot it and returned it claiming they hadn't fired it. I understand that Dicks isn't a gunsmith shop and they aren't going to look for anything more than if it looks clean or not. I don't care who takes responsibility for it or if anyone does for that matter. All I ask is that the problem gets taken care of. Whether they take the gun back or get in a new one and exchange them, it doesn't matter to me. If they exchange it, great. If they give me my money back, I don't know what I'll get. Maybe another Pro Hunter. Maybe a Knight. Maybe something else. I'll worry about that when the time comes if it does.

Run one oiled patch down the bore and pull it out. Take a clean patch and smear JB evenly over the patch and push it with a .50 cleaning brush on your rod (a .50 jag will be too loose). Be consistant by going all the way down and back up to the QLA then back down. Just run 10 strokes this way and then clean it up with oiled patches then dry patches until all the JB is out. Pull the plug and push a patch all the way through then. See if the bore is shining now?

I thnk you will find that TC uses a very heavy copper based grease shipped in new bores, well anyway my new Triumph did...

These were the first cleaning patches out of my Triumph bore...

Dick's knows if the gun was sold before. If they didn't inspect it it's their fault.

If it wasn't sold before (doubtful) it's TC's fault.

I'm not sure why you're trying to fix it? Put it back in the box, and send it to TC. It's your quickest and best solution.

You must want the gun, or you wouldn't have bought it.

That's very similar to what I did. For the most part the bore is shiney-ish. You can still see all the tooling marks on the rifling. It basically looks like there's several lines on the rifling that run the entire length of the barrel. Looking down from the muzzle end, about 2-3 inches down it looks like a dull ring that goes around the inside of the bore. There's another an inch or 2 back from that, and a third one that's not as bad back a little from there. Even after all the JB's there's also a few places here and there that look like a little dimple or dent in the barrel. That's the best I can explain it. My wife is gone with her camera for the day so I can't get any pictures of it, but I'll try to get some tomorrow.
To make things more frustrating I have to leave for work in about 15 minutes and I still haven't heard back from Dicks yet.
I'm trying to fix it because it's Sunday and I can't do anything else with it.
And I do want it. I'm just frustrated with it.

Well, if Dick's has a no return policy on guns then the scenario about it being sold before, fired and then returned won't hold water. Unless of course Dick's is simply lying about it. This is one of the reasons I will never buy anything from Dick's. They are a lousy place to do business. Most of the clerks no nothing about what they are selling. In any case I am sure TC will take care of the problem for you. Just the hassle of having to deal with it.

i've polished 6-8 new TC barrels. Some of those TC bores are very rough. Tool marks from the reamer are not unusual. Some have gouges in the rifling. It looks like TC does not do a good job of polishing the bores before rifling.

First i get a tight fitting patch and melt a red jeweler's rouge stick onto it. Before the rouge sets up the patch is rammed down the bore and worked back and forth. After about 50-75 strokes, the bore is cleaned well and examined again. If needed, a new roughed patch is made and the process repeated.

My own Encore had a very rough barrel that was nearly impossible to load. Gave it the treatment with jeweler's rouge. After about 700 rounds the bore looks much better.

IMO: TC could do better than this.

I don't know if gun (muzzleloader) manufacturers test fire their rifles or not. But when I cleaned the packing drease out of my new knight the barrel was fine. But the breech plug had a lot of black residue in it that took a while to get clean. It looked to me like a dirty breech plug would be after firing.