Often I hear people when talking about how their gun shoots they say that there gun will shoot 1" or whatever, after a fouling shot. Is this the way to measure the accuracy of a rifle, or should you include your first shot in the equation? I am currently working up a load for my 300WSM, and I clean the barrel after every third shot. I load three bullets and go outside to test them, and then back inside to clean, then repeat. I am finding that my first shot is always a bit off then the next two are around 3/4 in. I tried a four shot group, and it did the same thing first one off and the next three touching. The first one isn't way off, but it does widen my groups. Is there something that I can do to keep the first one in? Just as info I run a dry patch through after I clean, and before I shoot. Thanks in advance.

Try using one of the areosol spray degreasers after you clean w/ solvent to "dry" the bore. Some of my rifles will put the 1st shot on from a clean barrel, some throw the 1st a bit wide.

Some benifit from 1 to as many as 6 fouling shots. Some guns must be fouled..I have an 06 that I NEVER clean, when I do it takes about 50 to 75 rounds to get it shooting and it will then shoot 10 shots under an inch...Most need several fouling shots...I seldom clean any gun during hunting season...short of pulling a dry rope cleaner through it.

I don't even want to guess at your reasoning for cleaning after every third shot, but yes, as you have observed, the first shot through a freshly cleaned barrel will not usually group with subsequent shots. That's why, after working up a load for a hunting rifle, once satisfied, I clean the barrel (if needed) and then shoot one shot. The barrel stays in that condition for the remainder of hunting season. That way, the first shot is never from an unfired barrel and will be more likely to group where it was zeroed.

You are being a little obsessive about cleaning between groups. When I am working up loads for a rifle I only clean on two occassions.

(1) If the barrel is fouling a lot I will clean it to keep it under control.

(2) If I change powders and/or primers. I will clean as well as I can at the range and then fire 2 or 3 shots with the new powder/primer to recondition the barrel.

Listen to Atkinson and Stonecreek. They are right about this. What to do is to tape over the end of the barrel with black tape after firing.

He must be cleaning and "breaking in" the new rifle.

To add that I put pieces of electrical tape on the butt stocks of my game rifles so as to have a piece ready after firing it.

[ 10-10-2002, 04:15: Message edited by: Don Martin29 ]

I'm in the process of breaking in a new 300 WSM. I'm up to firing 3 shot groups then cleaning. This rifle seems to want to group under 3/4 of an inch out of a clean barrel. I'm not going to discourage it. I'm going to clean every 3 rounds until it tells me otherwise. This is one ofone or two other rifles I have owned that didn't need fouling to make it settle down. One was a Kimber 300 Win Mag, the other, my first, a 1917 Enfield with all the military wood on it. The rest have needed a bit of dirtying to get them to shoot.

I helped a buddy check his rifle before elk season. It was a ruger 7 mag that had been cleaned well. We were shooting at a orange 3" dot at 240 yds. The first 2 went 1/2" low of the dot. The next one went to 9 oclock and the last 5 went to 11 oclock but even with the top of the dot. Not earth shattering but in 3 shots it went up about 3.5". (yes we were letting the barrel cool between shots) We had a bit of a side wind so we were happy with where the gun wound up shooting. He didn't change his scope and he will not clean his gun till the hunt is over.

Yes, this is a new barrel on this gun. I only have around 40 shots through it. I thought I would break it in the way the barrel maker suggested. I'm usually am not this anal. Thanks for the input though.

My .338 Ruger shoots better from a clean barrel. The first two bullets will print close to each other at 12:00 O'clock, and the third a little off to the right. It always shoots the same way from a clean barrel, so I keep it that way before I go hunting.

Ray, Do you remember the old days when we only had HOPPES #9?And the good hunters still shot their deer/elk every year and most of those guys never ever cleaned their barrels. This cleaning thing has got me worried. I clean my rifle barrels after 15/20 shots because Nosler Bullets says so. In some rifles I can see a differnce and some I can't. Think Rem. bore cleaner and JB bore paste with a little Shooters Choice was/is better than the the stuff we had 30 years ago. In some respects so was I. Any way, when I used to shoot in bench rest matches, the guys that had the big buck barrels only needed one if any fowling shots, and that shot usually was right on the money. There is alot of BS about cleaning barrels these days. Do use a bore guide and use some common since, and let the force be with you.

After the break in period you should be able to fire 15 to 20 rounds before you need to clean the bore agian. If your shooting a stock factory rifle with no modifications, shoot a five shot group from a clean barrel and that will be your standard group size with that load in that rifle.
From that point you can fine tune the rifle to try to reduce the group size. Fine tune your reloads by powder charge and matching bullet weights to bore twist rate. Things like trigger pull weight reduction, full float the barrel, and bed the action.
It takes work to eliminate flyers but it can be done by fine tuning the rifle. I consider a flyer as any bullet striking more than one inch from the main group. How fast you fire your groups can cause flyers. If your rifle barrel is more than luke warm to your touch it is to warm and should be left to cool. light weight sporter barrels on most hunting rifles can and will throw shots when they get hot. As the barrel heats up from being fired fast the bullet will walk away from the main group in most any direction but will usually tend to be above the main group.
Heavy recoil rifles in most cases will not produce extremely tight groups becasue they recoil so hard. Few shooters can handle those heavy recoil rifles as well as the light recoil rifles like the 308. You may be one of those recoil shy shooters and are not able to get a true picture of your rifles accuracy potential for that reason. You must be able to exhale, relax and just gently squeeze the trigger so the rifle remains rock steady on the rifle rest and keep the same sight picture shot after shot.

I'll admit that most all of my hunting has been done in low-humidity areas and that my guns are typically stored in an air-conditioned area, so I'll agree that rust-preventative cleaning is advisable in some places.

Wheather clean or fouled, the MOST important aspect of a hunting rifle is not so much how well it groups, but where it places the all-important first shot from a cold barrel, whether that barrel is freshly cleaned or fouled. I neglected to say earlier that after sighting, cleaning, then fouling, I go back the next day (or at least several hours later) and shoot one shot from a cold barrel to make sure of its impact point. That's the shot that really counts, 99% of the time.

I've had very accurate rifles (in terms of grouping abilities) which never seem to place the cold shot very close to the center of the group. This is fine in a varmint (as in prairie dog) or target rifle. But in a hunting rifle, I'd rather have a gun which fired only 1.5" groups but always placed the first shot close to the center of the groups than one which fired .5" groups, but the first shot was usually 2" away.

Hot Cor Amen brother I know what you mean about high humidity. I hunt in southwest Louisiana where gills might be more suitable than lungs. I clean my rifle alot also