Fortunately I had taken along my recently acquired 1929 vintage 1892 Winchester 32-20 as a back-up gun, and with it I finished up the twelve remaining chickens without a miss.
When I got home, it took me a while to clear the jammed 1873. The sideplates, toggle links, lever, and carrier lever were removed, and by holding back on the bolt, I was able to relieve enough pressure on the live round to allow the carrier to be tapped back down with a small brass hammer. Once the carrier had dropped low enough, the live round popped right out. The fired round was picked out with my knife and it looked normal. So what caused the problem in the first place? Well, it was pretty obvious. Shortly after the match started, I had to open a fresh box of my reloaded ammunition. I shoot homemade cast lead bullets from a Lyman 311008 mould. As the lubed bullets are seated in the case, excess lube is sometimes left around the case mouth, and I just wipe it away with a cloth before boxing the ammo. But somehow with this box I had neglected to wipe off that excess lube, and since I was now shooting in a match I chose to just ignore it and shoot. Every round with excess lube I fed into the chamber was putting lube into the extractor groove at the top of the chamber entrance and fouling the chamber itself. All that grease was attracting powder fouling, and the rifle had not been cleaned recently. Pretty soon, the chamber was extremely dirty and the extractor groove was so packed full of gunk the extractor could not ride over the case rim far enough to pull the fired case out, and the jam resulted. Yep, I'm going to clean it a lot more often from now on!
SHASTA
