:grin: I tried an experiment involving wads this past spring. Our matches are on Sunday, so on Saturday I went to help set up for the following days shoot. When we finnished the range master and I decided it would be a waste to be at a range and not take advantage of it. I had my first B/P loads for a new-to-me Browning '86, and a trunk load of 45's for my '66. Sam (the range master) didn't want to shoot, even my bullets, and he's bigger than I am so I didn't push. In retrospect, I was armed, but anyway. Sam was happy to spot for me. I shot 5 45/70 and while waiting for the barrel to cool some, I shot 10 from the 45, we repeated this sequence till I depleated my 45/70's and had been through 50 of the 45's. That evening I cleaned and put the '86 away, I never took the '66 out of the case. The next dy I took my son-in-law with me. He didn't want to use the '92 I had taken for him to use, so we doubled up on the '66. That made 5 stages at 10 rounds each X two of us using the rifle for a total 150 rounds with nothing done to keep it running except shoot it some more.
Now the experimental part: When I was loading, I ran out of wads with 10 rounds left to fill the box. I was tired of loading so I loaded the last ten without the wad's but marked them with a felt tip so I could use them last if at all. Things had gone well all day and on the last stage I shot before my son-in-law and had no problems with the rifle targets. That left the S-O-L with the ten rounds without the wads. His first two rounds were dead on, third and fourth were a little wide, fifth was a miss, sixth hit but high, seventh and eighth were misses but not too far off, the last two rounds, I never saw hit. Can't blame it on his shooting, he had a clean match going till then, and he's generaly an exellent marksman.
When I cleaned the '66 that evening I paid extra attention to the fouling. It wasn't particularly hard, but more so than I'd seen before, but there was more of it. I've fired over 150 rounds out of this rifle before, and hadn't had a problem with the accuracy dropping off like this before.
I need to repeat it sometime, but that day I became a believer in wads.
