does anyone here fowl their muzzle loader barrel before going hunting. This would be loading powder and a bullet and shooting it. then w/o cleaning load powder and a bullet and off to the woods?

when i shoot my muzzleloader w/ scope on a clean barrel its always way off. but then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th shots are all dead on? any ideas?

You answered your own question shot her fouled.

I have another question to go along with this one. When shooting the fouling shot do you have to have a bullet in it or can it be some powder with a patch pushed down on it. Won't that do the same thing and save the cost of a bullet since the precision rifle bullets are not cheap that I shoot.

It will do the same thing and you can save a bulley.

hcurt just throw 10 grains of powder down the barrel for a fouling shot,barrel pointed is a safe dircetion and fire, followed with acouple of dry patches.
I myself only use this fouling shot in my flinter seems my inlines shoot the same clean or dirty

Cant resist ,

No I do not put birds in my ML.

Fowling shots will depend on how your rifle does shooting off a clean barrel. In your case it sounds like you should be fowl. None of my rifles have ever shown a sign of needing to be fowled to make the first shot count. I am real glad of that. If you fowl it you clean it.... Happy New Year

Foul!!

I always shoot my fouling shot with a patch,about 60 grains.

We have found that our CVA Hunterbolts (inline) most often throw the 1st shot out of a clean barrel, so we hunt with a fouled barrel.