Boost Your Rifle's Performance with These Simple Cleaning Habits

 Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases.

We were on the X. The morning air was frosty, and flakes of white danced in the truck’s headlights. I’ll never forget that day. Two of the other hunters huddled in layout blinds would just as soon forget it. It was the kind of cold where loading shotgun shells into your chamber and working your action stung fingers through battery-heated gloves. However, the geese fell into the fakes magnificently, and after seven shots, I had reached my five-bird limit. While I shot, my buddies fought with their shotguns. Actions got smacked, foul language flew, and one friend pulled a can of WD-40 from his blind bag and lathered the internal working parts of his scattergun. My other buddy, after unloading his pump-action, slammed the butt of the stock into the icy mud in hopes of freeing the gun’s action bars. (Recommended: "The 5 Best Shotguns Under $500.")

Cleaning your shotgun regularly matters. But what does regularly mean? Is there a rule? Do you clean it after every hunt, twice a season, etc.? My rule is this: I clean my shotgun top to bottom after every third hunt to prevent rust, remove dirt and grime and improve shot-to-shot pattern consistency. Waterfowl hunts are typically cold, wet and muddy. I use products from Real Avid and Hoppe’s to keep my autoloading and pump-action shotguns performing perfectly. Here are a few other steps:

Remove the choke when you clean the barrel. Clean the barrel and choke threads. Heat, pressure, moisture and grime can weld a choke to the inner barrel threads. Reinstall with choke tube lube to prevent seizing.

If you notice your action working slowly and spent hulls landing closer to your body than usual after a volley, spraying WD-40, Gunk Blaster, etc. into your shotgun’s internals is not the answer. It attracts dirt, causes misfires and makes cycling worse in cold weather. WD-40 and similar products are water displacers—not lubricants—and they leave 
a sticky residue. Go with a dry lube or dedicated gun oil. Most shotgun manufacturers have disassembly instructional videos on their websites. If not, YouTube will. Learn to disassemble your shotgun and clean every working part.

A Cautionary Tale

While the process for rifles is slightly different, it is equally important to keep your favorite big-game gun in tip-top shape. I have an X-Bolt chambered in .22-250 that would have no room for notches had I made one for every coyote that fell to the rifle. Two years ago, my son, using a mouth call, put a double in my lap. I missed both. Something was wrong. (Top list: "The Best Budget Big Game Rifle Shootout.")

When we returned to the truck, my son, Hunter, asked me, “Dad, when’s the last time you cleaned that rifle?”

I couldn’t remember. As it turned out, it had been so long between barrel baths that fouling had built up to the point that carbon, copper, powder, dirt and mud was baked inside the rifling. It took two full days, letting the solvents soak and the brushes work, to run a patch through the barrel that showed zero black fouling.

If you clean your rifle regularly, you can avoid using abrasive bronze/brass brushes and stick with lighter fouling brushes and Hoppe’s No. 9 solvent. I now keep my rifle barrels clean. After cleaning, I shoot three shots to foul the barrel and confirm zero. I’d put off this task with my pelt popper for too long, and it cost me.

Tips to Remember When Cleaning Your Rifle

• When cleaning your rifle’s barrel, use a bore guide to center the cleaning rod and protect the chamber from damage.
• Inspect nylon, brass, and bronze brushes for bent wires. Bent wires can create nicks and gouges in your barrel’s rifling.
• Follow a shoot-and-clean sequence when breaking in a new rifle barrel.

---