Shooting In the Rain

Last week I talked about the Missouri Shoot I went to and how it was raining all Saturday and so this week I want to tell you what you should do to clean your gun after shooting in the rain. First of all you want to make sure to wipe your gun down after you come in from shooting. First wipe it down with a towel or paper towels and then after you get all of the water off wipe it down with your regular oiled cloth. You will also want to run a Bore-Snake or rod down your barrel if you have one handy because water will get down your barrel.

We stayed in a motel and so on our way back from the shoot we stopped and picked up a couple cans of WD-40 and some other gun cleaning supplies. When we got back to the hotel everyone who was cleaning their guns got in one room because as we found out you will make the room smell of cleaning products. You will definitely want to have a window open or the door cracked because there will be a lot of aerosol fumes in that one little room.

You then want to take the wood off the gun if you can, unfortunately I couldn’t. You will want to take the wood off because you are going to completely spray down your gun with WD-40 because that gets rid of all the water trapped in the receiver and other metal parts that will rust. The reason to take off the wood is because the WD-40 will dry out your wood and that is not good, if you can’t take your wood off you will just have to make sure to wipe it down good with oil to protect it.

You will want to then go through your regular cleaning routine and make sure to wipe the gun off good. I say this because the Sunday of our shoot I was shooting trap and we ran out of targets so the puller was filling the trap and so during that break I began to look over my gun and found rust puddles between my rib. I immediately tried to wipe it away but could not reach so after I got done shooting I went in and took a paper towel and tore it into little strips to get the rust out from underneath my rib.

So that is how you take care of your gun after shooting in the rain. Of course you generally avoid shooting in the rain but sometimes it is unavoidable and you just have to make the most of it.