cold wether and mini problems

[fffffg]

  a friend of mine uses hornady mini or some suchi bullets and i think 90 grains of rs in nice weather..  he was hunting this year and at about 10 degrees or colder he missed a deer at 40 yards.. im a round ball guy and we cant figure out what went wrong..  to me it may be the scope knocked off or some other problem, but it seems with most cold weather  problems you should be able to shoot a 6 inch group at 40 yards.. he is an experienced shooter and harvests an elk and deer every year, so it puzzels us.. any ideas?  does rs loose that much power in the cold, keeping the skirt from flarring?  would that poor seal  give that terrible of accuracy??  thanks dave.

[Biff Mayhem]

It's possible that your friend needed to return to the range when big temperature changes occurred to check his zero. Another thought would be to ask your friend if the recoil was alot softer when he fired. If it was, then his powder got contaminated/wet... sorta' pooped out!

After reading your first sentence a couple of times, I'm not sure if your friend shot a mini conical or a sabot. Sounds like he shot a sabot/bullet with no flare-flowering of the spent plastic sabot. Those are either old sabots that have degraded & become brittle to the cold -- or the fit inside the bore was real loose. It may of been so loose that the bullet disengaged from the sabot inside the bore before he fired..... I'm not really sure and you may never find out what really happened.

From my seat far-far away, all I can do is offer some guesses.

[fffffg]

 we discussed that it was a hornady, and that it had grooves, with lube in them, we were wondering if the lube froze in the bore...  i doubt hornady would use a lube like that but anything is possible.. one thing he did mention is that the barrel was definitly absolutely clean from oil, water, or any substance whatever... except for elements from loading.. dave..

[rks1949]

It had to almost be degration of the powder charge. At forty yards,almost any charge would hit the deer. Maybe not as hard as you would like,but still hit it. Was the gun left out in the cold over night? It is a know problem(real problem in extreem cold) that taking your gun inside over night in a warm place,from the cold,will cause the gun to "sweat" and leave moisture in the charge. Leave that puppy out in the garage,or discharge it,clean,and reload indoors at night.