If you are in doubt about how much powder and shot to use in an untried gun, if it is a 12 ga., a 45-70 case full of powder and the same full of shot will make a good load to start with. From that you can work either way 'till you get a load that suits you, always keeping the powder and shot equal by bulk and you won't go wrong as I have yet to see the M-L shot gun that won't shoot well so loaded if it will shoot at all. A 45-70 case holds about 3 drs. of powder when full to the top. In case you can't find a 45-70 case take a modern shell from a gun of the same gauge as your M-L and cut it off not more than 1 inch from the bottom, measuring on the outside and use that full for a starter and work up carefully a little at a time 'till you get a load that is satisfactory and keep in mind that a gun don't have to knock your hat off every time you shoot it in order to kill game. You will find that moderate loads are always the best.

Many people that come to my shop that should know better seem to think that because it is a muzzle loader the more you put in it the farther it will shoot. That certainly is not true of M-L guns or any other shot gun I ever saw. The plain facts are that any shotgun, either M-L or modern will handle just so much load efficiently and that is all. To put in any more than that is just kidding yourself, wasting powder and shot and busing yourself and your gun and playing right into the hands of the doctor or the undertaker. Don't Do It.

Now comes the hard part, if you want to use the old timers you will have to take care of them and that means cleaning. And cleaning means work, but I will try to tell you how to do it with as little trouble as possible.

If you are using your gun every day as I sometimes do in the fall all you have to do is take a cleaning rod and put a wad of fine steel wool on the end that will fill the bore just snug, not too tight and soak it in any good gun cleaner. I like and use Bedfords myself, and push it up and down the bore 'till it slides along sort of smooth like, you can feel when any caked spots are loosened up then just set it away 'till the next day and give it a wipe with a patch with a little more cleaner on it before you load and you are all set. But be sure to snap those caps on the nipples before loading to clear the passage to the barrel or you will have a load to pull.

That method will do very well for over night stands but when you are going to leave it longer or set it away for some time, then it is a different story.

First take out the fore-end key and take the barrels off the stock and if you have a nipple wrench take out the nipples, then pour a little cold water through the barrels to soften the fouling and then get a bucket of hot water, set the barrels breech down in the bucket and with a tight patch on the cleaning rod pump the hot water back and forth through the barrels 'till the barrels are too hot to hold, then set them up muzzle down and let them dry of their own heat. If the patch don't seem to loosen the fouling fast enough to suit use a brass brissle brush instead, or the fine steel wool will do, but if your gun is choked don't scrub up close to the muzzle with the steel wool. It would take an awful lot of scrubbing to do you any damage but why take chances, the fouling will mostly be in the lower half of the gun anyhow.

After the barrels have dried of their own heat, give them a swab with a patch and a little gun cleaner on it and use the same patch to wipe off the outside. After cleaning the nipples in case you took them out, put them back and give both inside and outside of the barrels a swab with your favorit gun oil and you are all done with the barrels. Next take the stock and carefully wipe all fouling away around the locks and hammers and other hardware using the gun cleaner and follow up with the oil. That should keep both you and the old gun happy 'till you want to shoot it again.

Here is a list of the gadgets that the well equipped M-L nut should have to successfully run a M-L shotgun in the field. You should have a good powder flask with charger top. A shot pouch that will hold about 3 lbs. of shot and a charger top. A good nipple wrench and at least one extra nipple and a good wormer on the ramrod to pull the shot charge that you forget to put the powder behind. And don't kid yourself that it won't happen to you . I know better.

Another thing I like to have in the car at least, or in the boat when shooting ducks is a 5/8 dowel 3 feet long to use as an emergency ram rod. I learned that lesson the hard way when another muzzle gun nut and I were shooting ducks in the middle of a big slough a mile from the car here in South Dakota. There were plenty of ducks and we were going great when my friend was trying to push a shot wad down before a flock of ducks made it to our decoys. His cold fingers slipped on the rod and the compressed air behind the wad threw the ram rod at least 20 feet high and of course it came down in the slough in four feet of water and sunk like a rock.

Then all we could do was to both use mine. That went fine 'till a few shots later, I knelt down to hide from some ducks with the ramrod in my hand. You guessed it_I kneeled down on the rod and it just would not hold my 200 odd pounds of beef and the battle was over. It took us an hour and a half to find a stick that would do to load the old guns and the best of the flight was over. We got our limits after all but we had to take poorer ducks than those that were in the early flight. So now there is always a supply of dowels in both the car and the boat and I leave the ram rod in the gun and use a dowel when I am shooting either from a boat or a blind as we do when we hunt crows. You will find that a 5/8 hardwood dowel makes a handy gadget to have around a M-L shot gun. I use them in the shop for many uses, I keep them on hand in sizes from 1/4 to 3/4 and by turning a nob on one end they make a cleaning rod for most any size bore and by cutting a slot in the end to receive a piece of aluminum aloxite cloth they serve as polishing sticks for polishing bores and around the shop I use them as ramrods and use them for the same purpose at the muzzle trap shoots that I put on here and there about the country.