Ok, I finaly got around to doing some serious tesing with my Lyman Deerstalker Friday. I was trying the new .018" Ox yoke patches (lubed with Ballistol) and Goex 2f powder. Now Im not counting my chickens before they hatch, but I was testing at 25 yards, and this advice I seek is knowing that I still need to try out to 50, and from there maybe further, but......
The .018" Patches produced very nice patterns. I also tried some .015" patches lubed with Ballistol. They were not as good as the .018" patches, but they were still VERY close to the same preformance. But the problem is this......The .018" were a REAL pain to load. The first wasnt too bad, but the second and third took me bearing my full weight to get them short started. I could have swabbed every shot, but since Im doing this with full intentions of hunting I decided that realism was more important than match preformance shooting techniques. The .015 patches, though, went down fine no matter how many shots (I was at least doing a quickie clean between every three shot groups at least.)
So
Assuming the .015 patches still preform close to the .018 patches at 50 yards do I really bother using the .018 patches for hunting just for maybe a 1/4" of gained accuracy? Should I just stick to the .015s (again assuming they still produce at 50 yards)? Im kinda torn.
Brian
The .018" Patches produced very nice patterns. I also tried some .015" patches lubed with Ballistol. They were not as good as the .018" patches, but they were still VERY close to the same preformance. But the problem is this......The .018" were a REAL pain to load. The first wasnt too bad, but the second and third took me bearing my full weight to get them short started. I could have swabbed every shot, but since Im doing this with full intentions of hunting I decided that realism was more important than match preformance shooting techniques. The .015 patches, though, went down fine no matter how many shots (I was at least doing a quickie clean between every three shot groups at least.)
So
Assuming the .015 patches still preform close to the .018 patches at 50 yards do I really bother using the .018 patches for hunting just for maybe a 1/4" of gained accuracy? Should I just stick to the .015s (again assuming they still produce at 50 yards)? Im kinda torn.
Brian