Wisconsin Rapids mid-range match with my .44-77.

[Distant Thunder]

Chris,

Thanks, it's good to know you're following along on my .44-77 journey and hopefully get something out of my efforts.

I am hoping that adding a second felt up front adds enough to the wet surface area that it pushes all the fouling out the barrel. The fouling that was left behind wasn't dry and hard, in fact it pushed out very easy with a slightly damp patch, but it was there and that bothers me.

If the second felt isn't the answer I make some new washers that a little bit bigger in diameter.

I'm really puzzled as to why it was left behind. If anything my .44 bore wipers fit tighter than my .45s and those have worked great. The brushes are .45, the felts are .45, the only thing different is the rubber washers are smaller to allow for the smaller bore. Are they too small? I don't think so. Maybe two washers back to back would work better.

There has to be a way to do this in one pass! And I'll find it. I do watch my bore pretty close while I'm shooting. I watch the wiper and patch as they fall from the muzzle. If anything seem out of order I visually look at the bore and if there is any doubt I'll wipe again. I usually have wet patches standing by just in case I feel a need to run one through and of course dry patches are always present. For whatever reason I didn't have my wet patches on hand at Rapids. All I had that was within reach was some partially dry out (damp) patches leftover from 300 yards that morning. I had just use two wet and a dry at 300 and planned to use the wipes at 600. The 2 plus 1 really worked well, but it takes a lot of time and requires more effort from the shooter which does wear on me eventually.

This was my first paper match in a year! I wasn't well prepared for the gong match, I was little better prepared for last Saturday's match. I will be much better prepared for Lodi (I hope!).

That last shot that came up a 7 @ 6 I'm pretty sure was my only 7 for the match. I think I just was careless and didn't have the rifle pulled into my shoulder the same as the other shots. It isn't much more than 6 inches from the bottom of the 10 ring to the top of the 7 ring! I find the 600 yard target harder to shoot than the 800 yard target. The only target I know of that is worse than the 600 is the 500 yard, it has very skinny rings.

At most of these paper matches, mid-range and long-range, you pretty much have to shoot better than 90% to win and every point matters! It will often come down to one shot. Mark and Matt both made mistakes that I sure they would like to have to do over, they both shot well and they made a little less errors than I did. I enjoy seeing others shoot well and I enjoy seeing new names at the top. Again, congratulations to Mark and Matt! They both shot very well. Matt did it with an Arnie Seitz 2-D EPP! Mark did it with some old greaser bullet I'm pretty sure!