Fouling your barrel.

I think a problem many black-powder shooters have is that they dont practice with their weapon enough to really know how it acts when fired. This is super important with traditional BP longarms used for hunting.

Not only should you develop an accurate load, you should also be very familiar with how the gun works with that load. You should be confident that your cleaning method allows you to drop the load in and it is ready to, and will, fire. This requires experience and practice, which, many shooters do not have a lot of time for. Snapping caps and washing bores is OK if you want to do all that but if you are hunting, it is detrimental to the hunting process to have to do it. Lately, I have been leaving the nipple out for storage and I just install a clean one the night before I go out, or I can do it at the truck the next morning too

I have developed a cleaning and loading regimen that allows me to basically pick up the gun, take it out to the woods, swab once with a dry patch and then load it. I know that when I cap the gun, it will fire and the first shot from a cold barrel will hit where it is zeroed. My guns are used for hunting, not target shooting so a fouling shot is never needed. The ability to hit the vitals on a big game animal is. It takes experimentation and testing of procedures, materials and techniques. Practice often, learn your gun, and do what it needs to get it to work well for you. What do you think the old timers did when they relied on their guns to survive? Half the fun of shooting a black-powder gun is practicing with it and learning the gun to get the most out of it.

If you finally get a shot at game your rifle will get fouled just fine. Otherwise....why? I hunted one morning in a heavy rain with a flintlock without seeing anything. Back at the truck meeting up with my hunting partner my flintlock fired as quickly as always.

I never, ever, shoot a fouling shot before a hunt. Or to shoot a target either. In my guns it's just not necessary.
I have, early in my flintlock years, had a rifle fail to fire at a deer. So I set about finding out why and how to prevent it. My method might be anal to some but it's not too much trouble to me and it has worked without fail for decades.
I first remove the lock and using a alcohol soaked patch wipe the entire bolster and side flat of the rifle, then remove any excess oil, you only need a drop or two on the tumbler notches. Regardless of how tight your lock is inletted to your barrel oil can and will migrate past this mating and find it's way into the pan.
Then just before loading I wipe the bore with another alcohol soaked patch followed by a dry one. Then I plug the touch hole with a toothpick and pour a small amount of alcohol down the barrel and swoosh it around so it contacts the inside of the TH and liner plus where the plug is screwed into the barrel. You never know where oil might be hiding.
Then using the initial alcohol soaked patch I turn the rifle TH up and remove the toothpick and place a paper towel or cloth in the pan and close the frizzen on it. Now I wipe the barrel again making several short strokes in the bottom of the barrel to force out the alcohol and any oil or dirt present in the bore. Next I run a couple more dry patches through then wipe all the alcohol off the gun I can find.
I leave it this way long enough for all the alcohol to evaporate, or for the ride to the hunting property where I load it for hunting. I leave my rifles loaded until I take a shot at an animal then do it all over again.

Not to plug a product, but with all of this wet wipin', dry wipin, cap snappin stuff to get rid of oils- just stop using oils. Barricade is a better storage/rust preventative/water displacer than any oil. And since it dries there is no need to wipe anything the next time you go hunting or shooting.

Snapping caps has probably caused more misfires than prevented them.

For that non- fouled barrel errant first shot thing- usually a dry patch run up and down the bore after the ball is loaded will cure that.

After cleaning and between matches I always oil the bore, I use Mobil 1, and leave it. Before my next range session I wipe with alcohol and it removes the ol from the bore. I also snap at least 2 caps to help clear the drum/snail of any residual oil. Rarely have a problem.

Mark: I use Mobil 1 as well, but wipe it with brake cleaner....evaporates immediately and super dry bore. I'll bet in the early days, they didn't have Mobil 1 or brake cleaner, but may be wrong?

You are right, they probably used donkey p#** for a cleaner! LOL

There are many great preservative oils out there, but Barricade is, as AlanG posted, hard to beat.

I also want to add to my post above...after loading, if there will be an extended time and/or wet weather, before the next shot, as in hunting..I will run a light Mobil One patch down to the patched ball. Preventative medicine, I call it over and above the lubed patch...

1911tex- understand people work out there own successful "systems", and not to belabor my Barricade point. But if using the liquid Barricade which comes in the "lighter fluid" style can- there is no need for Mobil 1, or Bear oil, or Sperm Whale oil (Barricade is better), no need for brake cleaner, no need to snap any oil drying caps, and that first time you load for hunting, that first patched ball is not going to eliminate the Barricade, so your bore is already protected without further action.

I mention this more for people that haven't tried it.

Hunt with a clean barrel

SDSmlf said:

If you need a fouling load for accuracy, you need to work on your load some. If you need to pop a cap to clear oil, time to review your cleaning process.

If I foul a gun in North Carolina this time of year, after sitting a few hours in our humidity, I’ll be lucky to get enough whoosh to have the ball clear the barrel, let alone expect a real boom that launches the ball sufficiency fast enough to be near the target. Would likely have to pull the load.

In my opinion, a fouling shot is an attempt to bandaid some underling problem, rather than fixing or correcting it.

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I live and hunt in Florida—which is noticeably more humid than North Carolina—and I’ve never gotten that issue. Then again, I usually will put a piece of electrical tape over end of my barrel, but even for times that I didn’t do that I never ran into the issue of too much humidity in the barrel. Might be a problem with the sabot not being all that snug in there.

I just snap a cap to clear and load up

I swab with a dry patch, or two. Wipe out the pan, listen for the whoosh of air, then load. And make sure a good woosh of air from the touch hole.
I plug with a pipe cleaner then go, prime in the field

KTK458 said:

Who fouls their barrel before hunting? If you do, do you use caps, or a squib load?
I like to snap 3 caps before I load for the hunt.

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I do. Twenty grains FFG and a dry patch, then reload. Pipe cleaner in the nipple. Makes an enormous difference in my barrel, no idea why. Otherwise the first shot from the clean bore is off the mark by 6”

I fire it wipe it with a dry patch and load never had a problem so far?