I recently purchased a Remington 700 Classic in 35 Whelen. It came from the original owner's estate and appears to be unaltered in any way. The only change I have made was to make the trigger pull lighter which it needed badly.

What puzzles me is how it shoots. I use a target printed on a regular piece of paper. The first shot will be four inches high and one inch to the left. The next shot will be about an inch lower and to the right. Then the next two or three shots will almost touch each other at two inches high which is where I want it to shoot. This is using Federal 225 grain Bonded Bear Claw ammo but it does the same thing, to a slightly different point of aim, with Remington CoreLokt 200 grain ammo.

My question is what to do about the first two shots. I have had lots of rifles that would shoot a good group for the first two or three shots and then wander up or to the side. Free floating the barrel usually fixes that. Bedding is certainly a good idea. Since this is backwards to my usual experience I wanted to get ideas on how to fix this situation from more experienced people before doing anything myself.

Put a scope you trust on it first. Check mounts, tighten action screws,...

+1 on BNagel's post. Put a trusted scope on it.

Also whenever I get a "new" rifle, my first loads are always with a known or popular accuracy load, usually with Sierra bullets just to see what the rifle will do.
Once i get it doing what I want with the Sierra's, I'll move on to whatever other bullet i want to use with it.
I almost always end up doing some bedding work, especially on Remingtons. I have a HB 243 on the bench right now that has about the sloppiest bedding job I have ever seen on a factory rifle..

quote:

Put a scope you trust on it first. Check mounts, tighten action screws,...

I started with a Leupold VX 3 2.5 - 8 using Talley lightweight mounts. Then went to a Zeiss Conquest 3 - 9 with DNZ huntmaster mounts. Both scopes have been on other rifles and are known to work properly. Bases were new. In fact the Leupold had been on a previous 35 Whelen Classic I owned and sold. Same groups with both scopes.

All scope mounting hardware with both scopes was torqued to the factory suggested inch pounds. Action screws torqued to 40 inch pounds front and rear.

I'm sure you have already done it. But, just to cover one more basic.....is the bore clean and bright?

i've gotten to the point that i bed everything and float the barrels before i even shoot them

Make sure you've got two 'fouling shots' down the barrel before goin hunting!

Bedding, wood rubbing barrel. Barrel needs stress relieving. One of those things.

Responses and more information on the problem.

First of all thanks to everyone that has tried to help.

The rifle has been in and out of the stock several times. Always possible but I do not think there is any binding or problem with the mag box.

When I go to the gun club I always fire at least four rifles in sequence. While I have not timed it, there is probably a minimum of five minutes between firing the same rifle twice. Don't think it is caused by the barrel heating up.

Several boxes of ammo came with the rifle. All of it was reloads with cast lead bullets the guy had made himself. I tried them and a five shot test was all over the target. Probably a six inch group and the rest of the reloads were tossed out.

I thought the bore might be fouled from the lead. The bore appeared clean and shiny to the eye. I still ran some Hoppe's number 9 bore cleaner through it followed by clean patches. Nothing to indicate problems there. Since then I have not cleaned the barrel at all. Not even pulling a bore snake through it.

If the POI wanders as the barrel heats up there are two main culprits. One is bedding and especially the barrel channel. Is the barrel contacting the barrel channel as it heats? The other is the barrel itself and was it straightened? As "straightened" barrels heat up they tend to wander back to their original config. unless they were stress relieved.

I have had a number of rifles through the years that would have groups wander from wood touching the barrel as it heated up. Free floating and bedding almost always fixes that problem.

As for the barrel being straightened, I have no idea. Based on the almost new and seemingly factory original condition, I seriously doubt it. Besides, the groups went from terrible to very nice just changing from the lead bullet loads to factory ammo.

Since I have never had a rifle come down with it's grouping as the barrel heats up, I guess I am mainly asking if free floating and bedding will solve this problem.

boliep

If you want to know if bedding is the problem, insert a bore collimater in the barrel, watch through the scope as you alternately tighten and loosen the action screws. If bedding is good the collimater crosshairs will move very little.
If you want to check for barrel contact, coat the barrel with inletting black or lipstick, reinstall the barreled action, then remove and contact points will be obvious.

Some barrels have an extremely different POI on the cold bore shot, and it looks like you have one of them. The worst offender that I ever had was a new Sako 85. The first shot would be 3 inches higher than the group that followed and it didn't matter what ammo I ran through it. The subsequent groups would have met Sako's accuracy guarantee, and as long as you kept it warm you'd think you had an accurate rifle. Shooting it in the winter with -20-40C temps gave ample opportunity to cool barrels and revealed it as the POS that it was. Luckily Sako has an accuracy warranty and I took it back to the dealer after several hundred rounds. Probably because I'm a good customer the dealer offered me my money back on the spot instead of fighting with Sako so I went that way.

You've got a few choices.

1)You can play with bedding esp if you can do it yourself so you aren't just throwing money away. Then you can get mad and sell it.

2) You can sight in for the cold bore shot. That can be awful frustrating if you like working up loads.

3) You can pull the barrel off and throw it as far you can. A lake with a muddy bottom is a good spot.

4) You can sell it.

A gun nut will take option #3. A sensible person will take option #4.

Make sure the bolt handle is not touching the stock when closed!