Any gun should be cleaned before putting away but with smokeless a fella can get away with it for a long time without cleaning, not so when shooting BP and even worse with most BP subs (BH209 maybe being an exception). Sure BP and the subs NEED to be cleaned soon after shooting but as already said that is not a problem especially with rifles like a HighWall. Simply open the breech and swab till clean, quick and easy and it does NOT require any fancy Black powder cleaners to do it! Unless a person gets a lot of blow-by and junk into the receiver then there is no reason to disassemble the whole rifle just for cleaning, however if a HighWall does need to be disassembled (a real 1885 HighWall, not the Jap version) then it's quite simple and easy to do. In fact it's one of the simpler designs that with a bit of practice can be completely stripped and reassembled in minutes with little more than a screw driver, the newer Jap version contains MANY more small parts and can be a real bugger to reassemble!