I have a model 70 in 270 calibre. 22 inche barrel. Wooden stock and the barrel floats nicely. I Can run a envelope under it all the way to the action. My first shot with a cold barrel is 3 inches from the next three which group within an inche. Ive attached a photo of a target What do i look for next?

A. Your action bedding is squirrely

B. Your bbl is squirrely.

Glass bed to elminate A.

B is usually solved by making many trips to the range, expending hundreds of rounds of ammo, then rebarreling.

You could try glass bedding and experiment with a pressure point, but your barrel is exhibiting classic symtoms of a barrel that was bent and restraightened somewhere along the process in it's manufacture. This is common. I would just make sure I knew where the cold clean shot was going and sight-in with the warm group.

What is happening is the barrel goes back to the bent state as soon as heat is applied (1 shot). This is a very common occurence with non-premium barrels. I have had some that would put the first shot 3-4 inches from the rest of the group.

You said cold barrel. Is the barrel also clean for shot number 1 and fouled for shots 2-4? That would not necessarily be unusual for a group like this, if that was the case.

Cold barrel and it was cleaned about 20 shots ago. copper cleaned and ran through about 6 times with the cloth patches until clean. I shot it today but left the rifle outside for about 30 minutes prior. this allowed the entire gun to be at one temp. Before i was walking out of the house and shooting within 5 minutes. the stock was insulating the barrel bottom. Im thinking a hogging action was happening where the bottom of the barrel was warmer then the top. acting like a bi metal strip. anyways the groups were back to normal today. It was the same approx. temp aswell. -17 degrees celsius.

Try different bullets & see what happens.