Howa M1100 - Seasoning the barrel & First shots

Seasoning: There are barrel seasoning instructions on the Howa M1100 web site but not in the enclosed pamphlet. Have never seasoned a barrel so might as well get that off the bucket list.
-- Copper plated ammo recommended for seasoning.
-- 10 shots one at a time, AND use rod w/ bore cleaner after each shot, and do not let the barrel heat up.
-- 10 more shots two at a time, same as before.
-- I used CCI-AR ammo (fraternal twin of CCI-MM). (See pic of patches with each cleaning.)
I am sure that NASA engineers could tell that I followed directions. All I know is that I am smiling and one less item on my bucket list.


Got out with my new Howa M1100 yesterday. Plenty of smiles.
With a very improvised bench setup, I and another guy were quickly hitting the same splatter burst imprint hole time after time with just low end Eley (Contact) at 25 yrds. Too little time left to do much at 50yrds so just one mag but still just a larger single splatter burst imprint hole. Smiles. Will shoot real paper next time out since the new scope and new gun drill is over.

The distributor checked the mfgr date for me and it is only 2 months old so it is far from the early production runs and it came with 2 of the newer tweaked mags that were early problems early on. Both mags had a 1 out of 3 feed problem the first time. Better after that and much better again the 3-4th time through. Mags are all polymer construction. Not at zero cycle fail yet with just 100 shots down the pipe (Hmmmm) so I'll just have to go back to range again and work on it... darn.