1st shot POI difference in warm versus cold barrel

I put a strip of electrical tape over the muzzle of any rifle I'm going to hunt with. At the first shot, it blows off from the air in the bore long before the bullet gets there. I usually make the strip of tape long enough so I can take the remainder and re-cover the bore after a shot.

The tape prevents anything entering the bore if I were to trip on a root and plant the muzzle in the dirt. Or, as my son noticed, a grandaughter sticking a muzzle in the ground to lean on the stock. If she'd fired the rifle after that, it wouldn't have been pretty.
 
Picher said:
I put a strip of electrical tape over the muzzle of any rifle I'm going to hunt with. At the first shot, it blows off from the air in the bore long before the bullet gets there. I usually make the strip of tape long enough so I can take the remainder and re-cover the bore after a shot.

The tape prevents anything entering the bore if I were to trip on a root and plant the muzzle in the dirt. Or, as my son noticed, a grandaughter sticking a muzzle in the ground to lean on the stock. If she'd fired the rifle after that, it wouldn't have been pretty.
Click to expand...
Some years back I used my climber on the first day of deer season. The front QD swivel on my Mark 10 slipped out of the stud and my rifle did a nose dive into the forest floor. Either I didn't tighten it correctly or it came loose. I had no rod or any other way to remove the 3 or 4 inches of mud in the bore.

I searched for a right sized stick that wouldn't break but never did get enough stuff out of the bore to be safe.

Lesson learned; my own dumbness, now I occasionally check my swivels to make sure they are secure.
 
In the world of Weatherby we clean them meticulously before the season begins. We choose our ammo for the hunt and then take the rifle to the range and shoot at least 3 fouling shots. If all is well, we go hunting with the remaining rounds of the same box. We dont clean them again until the season is over.

To keep the snow and rain out I use a scope cover and a baby bottle nipple over the muzzle of the barrel. Electrical tape can work too.
 
Picher said:
I put a strip of electrical tape over the muzzle of any rifle I'm going to hunt with. At the first shot, it blows off from the air in the bore long before the bullet gets there. I usually make the strip of tape long enough so I can take the remainder and re-cover the bore after a shot.

The tape prevents anything entering the bore if I were to trip on a root and plant the muzzle in the dirt. Or, as my son noticed, a grandaughter sticking a muzzle in the ground to lean on the stock. If she'd fired the rifle after that, it wouldn't have been pretty.
Click to expand...
I also use electrical tape over the muzzle of my hunting rifle on a hunt; though I heard that its bad medicine to tape over the muzzle of a shotgun, for fear that the barrel might burst.

If I'm not able to pre-foul my bore before a hunt...I'll send a cotton patch soaked with brake cleaner degreaser (in order to clean-out any oil residue) down the pipe.
 
I hadn't thought about this for some time, but some lever-actions with magazine tubes can spread shots dramatically between cold and warm barrels. Taken into the cold, like zero here today, a cold shot may be 4" low or more at 100, compared with a warm barrel and 75 degrees when sighting in.

They also can throw shots wild, if rested on the magazine tube, compared with a normal hold with the forward hand between a rest and the rifle.

It's not so much of a problem when shooting under 100 yards at a deer-sized animal, so most hunters in the Maine woods need not worry too much.
 
Cold air makes it more dense than warm air, thus making the bullet more difficult to travel through the cold air.
 
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