quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
Thanks gentlemen.

I have a Johnston's Ultimate Muzzleloader. This is the gun the Remington is based upon.

Until recently, I have found it to be very accurate and a solid gun. To be candid, I wounded and lost 2 bucks with it this year. Both were really close (less than 50 yards). Last year, I dropped a buck dead in his tracks at 309 yards. As such, wounding on a simple shot was perplexing and disturbing.

It was bad enough to wound them. It was even worse because I could have easily, under normal circumstances, have taken a second shot. I can't get the gun loaded. I broke two plastic bullet starters and bent a metal one trying to reload it. It is insanely tight.

Without going through all the grizzly detail, I knew something was wrong. The scope is shot ( a Leopold Vari X 6 I think). It was 8 inches low and 4 inches to the right at 23 yards. In over 40 shots, we could not get it on paper at 100 yards. The gun shop confirms that scope had a major internal problem.

I think the tight barrel is also a problem. I think it is causing accuracy issues. I have been given two different opinions on this, well actually three sort of.

One is that the barrel is dirty. I have tried to clean it as instructed. The patches are clean when I quit. Sort of an off shoot of this is that some think there is a plastic build up in the barrel. I cleaned it and had a gun shop clean it. They said no build up.

I see a video on line of people shooting this very same gun. I see them loading to make a second shot. There ain't one chance in hell that they could load mine like that.

One person is of the opinion that the sabots have gotten harder over time. Perhaps that is true.


What I do know for fact is that I will never hunt with this gun again unless I solve these problems.

All of this is magnified ten fold when one is 30 feet up a tree with a climbing stand trying to reload a balky rifle.

Thanks again.