Just when I think I know some stuff about rifles....

Missed a coyote yesterday. That's the bad news. The good news is that he ran 200 yards and stopped to see what the heck was going on. That's as far as he got, which is the good news. But...I felt like I needed to check the POI on the 260, so I did. Perfect. Hmmm...must've been user error on that coyote miss. Well, I put that rifle aside and grabbed my 223 to shoot a group or two. Last time I had shot it, the first round went 1 1/2 high and 1/2 left and then grouped great into the desired POI. I was hoping that was just me and wasn't normal for this new barrel. So...I cranked off the first round and it was 1 1/2 high and 1/2 left. Dang. Then it grouped good. So I decided to clean the bore. Why not. It was pretty dirty. I used Shooter's Choice for a while and it looked pretty clean. But, let's try some Boretech Eliminator, and I got a bunch more carbon and a little copper. Not much copper. Took a while though to get all the carbon. I dry patched a few times and then walked to the bench. I cranked off a fouler. Bad result. Another fouler, which is usually enough, and bad result. Dang. So 3 more foulers, which is way more than I usually feel necessary to do. Then parked the rifle and went to town. Got back to the place and the bore is now cold again. Cranked off a few rounds and no fliers, just a darn nice group. The wonders of a clean bore.

Summary:
I thought I could shoot that rifle forever and not clean it and still get great accuracy. I was wrong. 50ish rounds and accuracy degraded.

I thought I could get the carbon mostly out with Shooter's Choice. I was wrong.

I thought 2 foulers, which works with most of my rifles, would be enough. I was wrong.

So I was wrong a bit more than I liked. And there's that clean miss on the coyote. That bugs me. I swear the crosshairs were on his chest when the rifle fired. Of course, even though I missed him at 125 I did kill him at around 300, but that's not the point. I still missed that first shot. Dang. Oh well....

Maybe if you would have stopped with shooters choice your normal 2 foulers would have don't the trick

Well...heck...I didn't think of that. You could be right. This may be a whiskey night....

My dad complained that the .243 ADL wasn't shooting well. It has had maybe 50-60 rounds through it. I cleaned it and could not believe how dirty it was. Definitely shot better as a result after cleaning and three foulers.

And that's why you need to know your cold bores at more than just 100 yds. My clean cold votes are always high and little left. I have a cheat shear that tells me the 100 200 300 400 500 yard CB.

Rifles are like women. They all have similarities, but they must be treated as an individual.

^^That is mine^^

Each rifle will degrade accuracy at a different round count. Some are a few rounds, 50, 100, or 500. Know where that number is, and know how many rounds it takes to start acting normal. Fortunately I don't have to worry about hunting with a clean barrel. If it needs cleaning I will do it at the range, then promptly foul it back up. Seen more than one have a good zero, get cleaned, zero check and it has shifted. Keep shooting and the zero returns to where it wad before cleaning.

In my experience rifles that shoot to the same place right after a through cleaning and after fouling are few and far between. I remember owning 2 and still have both of them. One until I switched to CFE223 would start degrading in accuracy in less than 30 rounds while the other will shoot good for around 200 rounds before cleaning.

I think it's strange how a rifle shoots better with a clean barrel like y'all are saying but a muzzleloader shoots better with a dirty barrel. Do yall know why that is?

I think, in the case of rifle barrels, "clean" and "dirty" vary widely. Most of us, it seems, like a barrel that is lightly fouled for best accuracy. Then, at some point it may (or may not) become fouled enough for the accuracy to suffer. Folks talk about shooting 300 rounds or more before cleaning, and having good accuracy the entire time. I've never had a rifle like that.

Two fouler shots in the 220 and I'm good. The 270 is the same. The 260 seems to be dead-on clean or fouled, and might even be the '300 round shooter'. We'll see. The 223 is that woman that Fireman talked about. I really have to be careful with my shooting technique on that one. It's also my newest rifle (new barrel), so I need to spend more time shooting it so that I can see what it likes in order to shoot best. That 5 rounds of fouling was a surprise.

This occurs when you set the zero, using a dirty barrel. If you do that, it will only shoot to zero if it is sufficiently dirty, as you have pointed out.

Some target and recreational shooters do this to good advantage. - But by trying to carry that attitude over to the hunt, you place yourself and your hunting partners at a disadvantage.

For my hunting rifles, I set the zero with a clean barrel, cleaning and cooling the gun every three rounds while I am at the range with it.

There are a number of reasons why I do this:

* On a hunting rifle, the first round is what counts the most. Following rounds are less important by an order of magnitude, each. By the time you get to firing a third round at a game animal, they will typically be holed up in the brush, or well on the way to the next county. The chances of a third round doing any good after the first two did not are vanishingly small. Only the first and perhaps a second round need to be considered, big-game hunting is not a firefight, nor is it a shooting competition.

* If some mishap or inclement weather prompts you to clean your rifle in the hunting camp, nobody is going to want you to fire "fouling shots" in the morning and scare all of the game away for miles around. By setting your zero with a clean barrel, you know that a clean gun is your best chance for accuracy for that crucial first round. - And you can clean your barrel at any time without concern over "fouling shots", secure in the knowledge that the next time you pull the trigger, that bullet will be going precisely where you expect it to.

* Carrying a gun with a dirty bore around, humidity will react with the carbon, combustion byproducts and other crud in your barrel, causing some of the crud to swell up and alter its chemical composition. The point here is that a dirty barrel that has just been fired is not the same as a dirty barrel that has been carried around in the woods for a few days.
This not true with a barrel cleaned every evening at camp. ( Whether the gun needs it or not. )
A clean barrel will not markedly change from simply being carried around. - And as we all know, consistency is the groundwork that good accuracy is built upon. A clean barrel is a known quantity, while a dirty barrel that has been transported, then carried around for a while is not.

* Clean barrel: No carbon or copper, no oil or Hoppes#9, just cold, clean steel. The last step in cleaning is to run tight-fitting dry patches through until they come out with no stain. Doing this every evening at camp while you tell lies precludes any possibility of humidity forming rust or corrosion on the bare steel.

When I'm at camp with somebody who has set up his gun to shoot with a dirty barrel, I'm thinking, "What if this goober slips and his barrel goes into the mud, or he gets water in there from this snow? - After he cleans it, is he going to insist upon firing "fouling shots" and scare off all of the effing game? Or will he go out there not really knowing where his gun is going to shoot, and tee off the rancher by crippling or losing one of his animals?"

Neither alternative is what you could call optimal. - And both are simply, responsibly addressed by setting your hunting rifle's zero with a cold, clean barrel in the first place. - A known, easily repeatable quantity that you and your hunting pardners can count on.

My CCB is usually a few tenths of a Mil left or right, and a few tenths of a Mil high or low, depending on which rifle we're talking about. The 100 yard shot will still kill anything. Those few tenths of a Mil are obvioulsy a problem the further out the shot is. My attitude with depending on a sweaky clean barrel for the rifle to shoot well is a handicap. In the scenario of a rifle only holding zero for a few rounds after cleaning will never work in the prairie dog town, and certainly won't work on the all day coyote or hog hunt where, hopefully, way more than a few rounds are fired. No one wants to have to shut down the hunt to clean the barrel, at least no one I know. In the case of mud getting in the barrel, the dry patch has worked, and that's not really cleaning, its more debris removal.

As in anything in life, different strokes for different folks.

Yes some days you shoot more than a couple of rounds hunting and you sure don't want to interrupt the fun or slow down to mess with guns.


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^^BOOM^^

Exactly!

That is one hell of a day predator hunting.

Two different days ... one in east texas one in central texas

Since this chat has come back, I'll mention that I actually didn't miss that first shot. There were two coyotes and the first shot knocked one flat. I didn't see that other one. I tracked the second coyote while thinking I had missed that first shot. I got them both, so my brief worry about the 260 and missing at 125 yards was unnecessary.

The topic is often debated, but those who tout the need to break in a new barrel will tell you it makes the gun more accurate with a clean bore. That is, no clean and cold barrel flyers.

I've found that not lubricates are equal when applied as the last step in cleaning a barrel. Dry lubes seem to work best. I get extremely good accuracy with clean barrel shots after using Hornady's One Shot Dry Lube, which is also an outstanding protectant.

Good post