Lever clean n shoot?

S

stagpanther

New member
I've come full circle--after years of shooting my 44 carbine with a scope I decided to ditch it--just too hard to keep a constant zero and was ungainly relative the top ejection port.

So I put my skinner peep and front sight back on--and I'm shooting well enough for me to use it for hunting in the brush--today I took a batch of 265 interlocks driven by 22 grs of w296 and after a couple of shots I was grouping within a few inches of POA at 50 yds--which for me with my old out of focus eyes is very good. :D

But the first 2 shots were maybe 6 and then 4 inches low. This was with a freshly cleaned and lubed bore and chamber--I'm wondering if the bore "needs some fouling" in order to settle down to shooting consistently--though it could also be me as well, naturally. How often do you guys clean--and most importantly--how do you prepare for that "one and only first cold bore shot" while hunting?
 
Myself, I don't clean my rifle barrels after sighting in/checking zero shortly before the season starts as I want to be certain how that rifle will shoot when it counts. Once the season is over, I clean the barrels. When I do some off-season shooting I usually give them a full cleaning afterward...
 
Excessive lube and grease can be bad for accuracy. This is more evident on faster cartridges like 223, etc. Most AR folks say to run a clean dry patch on a recently cleaned bore prior to shooting. I never hunt or shoot a wet barreled rifle. I had a friend that shot a lubed barrel and when he would sight in the scope pre-season his first few shots were in a pretty big circle. He would adjust the sight and the circle would shrink but not be in the bulls eye. What was happening was the lube was affecting the first few shots and then once the barrel cleaned up the accuracy was better but he had moved the scope zero. He started running some clean dry pads prior to sighting in and/or taking a few shots before adjusting the scope. Wouldn't you know it the scope impact was smaller to start with and the zero as almost right on.
 
I'm just shooting with irons--but similar effect. My problem with a scope was the eye relief put it right over the ejection port, plus the silly Rossi scope mount I could just never get it to stay put on the round barrel.
 
wet

Fortunately, most all my sporters shoot close enough to POA clean or fouled, to not matter at the distances I shoot deer. I do have a Savage Hog Rifle, that will throw the first round about 2MOA high if it is cold and recently lubed. For the Hog, I shoot it and carry it fouled.

But, if rainy or wet, I'll run a bore snake through any of my rifles, including the HOg, for a light coat of lube when the days done. Our season is long enough here that if you do not care for a bore that gets wet till the end of the 2-1/2 month season, you will likely have a rust problem.
 
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