I have never used Shockey's Gold, but I have read a couple places on the internet about it's affinity for moisture.
Black Powder Substitute Review
SHOCKEY'S GOLD
Going back a bit, "Clean Shot Technologies" had their stuff on the market for a while. It gained a reputation as an aggressive moisture-sucker with fairly low velocities, but had a bit of a following in low-humidity areas for a time. Clean Shot Technologies made the mistake of infringing on Hodgdon's pellet patent. Hodgdon complained about the theft of their intellectual property, the courts agreed, and Clean Shot was no more. It is fair to say that Clean Shot was a fairly peculiar company, with sales offices in Florida, and leased production equipment in Colorado. Hodgdon had to find that out the hard way. Clean Shot had very little in the way of tangible assets. Re-organized under the name "American Pioneer," CST has gained a very poor reputation in the industry, but for better or worse, they are back.
The results with Shockey's Gold were poor. Though American Pioneer claims a lot of things, including that Shockey's Gold is a "premium grade version" of American Pioneer, the only thing tangible that I have been able to detect is the different label on the bottle. The Shockey's Gold sticks are still clumsily packaged in a bottle with plastic beads, and are irregular in size and shape. I've had bags of charcoal briquettes with better quality control. Some of the sticks shaved off parts of themselves going down the muzzle of the Encore, some didn't. A casual look at them shows how crudely made they are, with chips, cracks, and other very rough surface irregularities. This is cobby stuff, to be sure.
As for performance with my Pro-Hunter, it was decidedly inconsistent. With the 250 grain Hornady XTP and MMP 3 Petal EZ sabot, a typical three shot string was 1695 fps, 1773 fps, and then 1598 fps through the CED Millennium. This is the same type of low velocity and wild shot to shot deviation I saw with American Pioneer tested last year in a different Encore and a Knight Disc Elite using 300 grain lead saboted bullets, among others.
Jim Shockey and I have talked about this stuff a bit, and I don't doubt for a Mexican minute that this is the stuff he hunts with. At the typically close ranges Jim hunts at, inconsistent velocities at the muzzle, even as bad as this stuff is, is unlikely to change the outcome. Those with nothing better to do can attempt to make out of this anything they want. But I happen to like Jim Shockey; folks will just have to get over it. Jim doesn't make this stuff, has no hand in the quality control, and doesn't bother with chronographs. I could no more complain to Jim Shockey than I would send hate-mail to Irlene Mandrell if I got a bad CZ.
Like APP and Pinnacle, if used sans lube, it is clean. There was a small amount of crud that formed at the end of the T/C QLA, and some minor amount of crud near the breechplug. It is easy enough to push through, and from shot to shot no swabbing was ever used, or is necessary.
As final, vivid testimony to the moisture attracting propensity of Shockey's Gold, the gravelly mis-named "FFg" loose powder and the "FFFg" loose powder are packed with desiccant packets, if that tells you anything. Due to the low, extremely inconsistent velocities and obviously deficient quality control, I would not bother to hunt with this stuff.