WARMING TO COLD-WEATHER LUBE

Testing out SPG Sales' new Bear Grease for black powder cartridge shooting enthusiasts.

STORY AND PHOTOS BY MIKE NESBITT

SPG is a highly recognized lube for black powder shooting, primarily developed for filling the grease grooves on elongated bullets, either for muzzleloaders or for black powder cartridges. More than a year ago, SPG Sales introduced a bullet lube for “hot weather” called SPG Tropical and it has become popular with shooters during the warmer seasons. Now, to address the colder areas and seasons, SPG Sales has introduced Bear Grease for cold-weather black powder shooting. Bear Grease is intended for all black powder shooting, both for muzzleloaders using patched round ball or elongated bullets as well as for black powder cartridges.

While Bear Grease is the trade name that SPG Sales has selected for this product, it doesn’t actually contain any real bear grease. The image on the label shows the face of a polar bear and the company says that Bear Grease will not freeze. That can be a real benefit when on the hunt with a muzzleloader. While I won’t try to claim any knowledge of the ingredients in Bear Grease, I can say that I did some good shooting while using it.

I WANTED TO do some test firing with Bear Grease using both a muzzleloader and at least a couple of the black powder cartridges. My first choice was a flintlock .50-caliber rifle shooting patched .490inch round balls. The patches came from October Country – their “daisy” shaped patches of .015 inch thickness. And, mainly for this test, the patches were dry and lubed only with the new Bear Grease. With the .50-caliber flintlock rifle, the dry patches were simply rubbed on the grease to get some of the lube into the fibers of the patches, then they were loaded and fired. The temperature that morning was just over 50 degrees and the lube was working very well, both in terms of getting the patches loaded with lube and shooting with those lubed patches.

My powder charge in the .50-caliber was not a heavy one, just 45 grains of GOEX 3Fg. And my target was not posted at long range; this was just a shooting test to check on the new lube, so the target was posted at just 25 yards. The first patched ball going down the clean barrel was certainly easy and, in the picture of the group on the next page, that shot was the furthest to the right. Then the second ball was rammed down the 42-inch barrel and it was just slightly harder to push but not a problem. And that ball started the three-shot gaping hole in the middle of the group.

The following shots, numbers four and five, continued to be on the easy side; they were no harder to ram down than shot number two. And I certainly can’t complain about the five-shot group. The rifle’s sights were held at 6 o’clock on the target, but I really should have held dead-on for centering hits in the bull’s-eye. So the rifle was hitting right where it was aimed. With results like that on my very first try, I must give Bear Grease some high marks, for sure.

At least two of the patches I had