I'm a hunter not a long range shooter and was taught to clean the rifle after shooting it. The last 3 years I have bow hunted only, during general gun also. This year I opted to buy a new rifle and hunt the seasons to help facilitate getting my daughters to locations to hunt that would provide a better outcome for them. I purchased a win model 70 270 FW. Unfortunately during sight in I'm not sure where the first 4-5 shots went the laser bore sighting had me messed up. Got it dialed in and was happy. When I went to clean it at home I realized I was out of hoppes 9 and had to order some, so cleaned the bore with some hurley's gold. Well during the ordering process and looking for what I wanted to order it sent me down a rabbit hole about cleaning/ no cleaning the rifle bore until your groups open up. I wasn't to concerned because this is a hunting rifle.
This is a picture of after cleaning bore with hurley's gold then going to range a week later. 100 yard group.


Went hunting shot a buck all is good. When I got back the order of hoppe's9 and hoppe's bench rest copper cleaner came in and I cleaned the bore with them. No Brush just patches and jag.

Today I went to range to see what if anything would change after my cleaning. I was rather shocked.


100 yards

Top right was my first group, then top left. Note the top was actually at the bottom when I started and went out and flipped it so I wasn't shooting above bore height. After flipped bottom left, then center, then bottom right.

I'm leaving for Georgia to hunt on Wednesday and have decide I'm not cleaning it till after I get back and go to the range to shoot it with a cold dirty bore to see the grouping.

I'm not sure now of my cleaning regiment for my hunting rifle as leaving it dirty goes against what I was taught. Whats your guys/gals thoughts? Only clean it after rifle season then before next season shoot it until i'm happy with grouping then don't clean again till after next season. Don't clean it at all with copper cleaner maybe just run a patch of oil down it or hoppe's9. One forum post I read there's guys that haven't had a cleaning rod down their rifle bore in thousands of rounds. They shoot more in a year than I would in a life time.
I'm sorry for this long and not well articulated post but I need a little guidance or opinions on this. Thanks Hray

This message has been edited. Last edited by: hray,

I watched this last week, it's long but interesting perspective.
The amount of powder through the barrel is a big factor.
Even still, I am a chronic cleaner after every session guy but this is some good info.

As anyone who researches the question will quickly determine, there is no gun-related subject about which there is more disagreement among knowledgeable shooters than cleaning precision rifle bores.

I’m in the clean after every session group, and I am satisfied with the results. Could I get a little better precision by following other practices such as “Shoot until the accuracy falls off and then clean”? Possibly, but first I believe that’s unlikely with my rifles, but more to the point and even though none of my precision rifle shooting is in the “serious” or even competition category, that is simply not how I like to do things in life. Even if I’m not getting the best possible precision from my rifles, that practice gives me the confidence that it will be the same every time I shoot them.

I do believe, though, that the type of bore cleaning solvent used may make a difference in how a rifle will perform following cleaning. The (sort-of) original Hoppe’s #9 is an ancient formula and for that reason alone I believe there are probably much more modern products that do a better job today. Even if something cleans the bore okay, I can’t but wonder whether the residues left by different products, especially if they have some rust preventing benefits, can make a difference in how the first few bullets perform.

My usual bore cleaning method is two or three applications of Gunslick foaming bore cleaner followed by TM solvent a time or two and then dry patches. If it’s after a high-round session, I may use an aggressive copper remover like Butch’s Bore Shine or even Sweet’s 7.62 cleaner. At one time it seemed to me that I was experiencing “clean bore” flyers, especially with my 6.5 Creedmoor Tikka, but I’m pretty well convinced now that they were due to shooter error, not the type of solvent I was using or when.

But finally, different barrels may respond differently to different cleaning methods and regimens. Although I know that many would disagree with me, it seems more likely that a cheap barrel would benefit more from a consistent layer of copper fouling than a higher-quality bore.

I didn't work at Berger for very long before my health problems got the best of me, but I had, and got to listen to some interesting conversations. Suffice it to say, opinions vary. If you're not a bleeding edge shooter or F Class, you likely don't need to clean as much as anyone over age 35 was taught growing up.

If I shoot, I clean. But I dont scrub aggressively.
Been working for me so far!

Once the barrel is fouled for hunting season, I do not clean it until after season is closed. FWIW, I clean everything after every shooting session on everything else. But I learned that a clean barrel could have a different POI than a fouled barrel so I leave it dirty.*

*The barrel isn't really dirty and actually probably has very little fouling. Typically any of my hunting rifles need only be shot 1-5 times to ensure zero before season.

There’s a large contingency of shooters that never clean a rifle barrel until the groups start opening up. The downside is, if you don’t clean the barrel, corrosion can start. As mentioned above, I clean after every shooting session, but not too aggressively.

Thanks for the feedback. Will see how it goes next week when I get back and proceed from there. Kinda leaning on the way yellowjacket does it.but will probably repeat the whole process again to further familiarize myself with new rifle.

A little different, but I just finished a 4 day deer hunt in IL. I did use my muzzle-loader, which has different cleaning requirements.

I’m not so much mentioning the differences with cleaning a M-L, but one day there was steady rain in the morning. The next day heavy drizzle.

I don’t get to worked up, after a few shots, centerfire rifle, dry day. With wetness, I give more attention. The other thing is, there are degrees of cleaning, a damp patch, or more involved.

As to any impact shift, it’s best to check yourself, with your loads. It may or may not be an issue, average hunting shot distance.

After a rainy hunt, my stock comes off. If using the same gun the current season, I’d try to get by without taking it off the stock.

OBTW, I took 4 shots, 2 anterless, one coyote and a nice 10 pointer.

New rifle; clean barrel. Take to range, shoot rifle (not a true break in, but more or less just getting rounds down range). Clean barrel with road, brush and patch.

Zero scope with ammo that going to be used for hunting. I don’t clean the barrel again until I start seeing accuracy degradation. Caveat being; if there’s inclimate weather, and the rifle gets trashed, it will get a full external cleaning an a couple oiled and dry PATCHES down the bore.

That goes for hunting rifles, self defense rifles, and the ubiquitous EOTWAWKI rifles.

I’ve got the feeling that the effect on accuracy would be hard to notice unless you have absolutely top end equipment and are in the elite shooter class.

For the vast majority of us with factory rifles, do whatever you prefer.

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:
I’ve got the feeling that the effect on accuracy would be hard to notice unless you have absolutely top end equipment and are in the elite shooter class.

A good point, I believe.
The people like that will already know what cleaning methods and regimens serve their purposes, and probably look on discussions like this with amused disdain.
The rest of us?

There are frequent harangues about getting training and practicing with one’s handguns, especially for those who rely on them for defensive purposes. As for rifles intended for serious purposes, there are countless discussions about the guns, their obligatory accessories, and how we should have forty-eleven magazines, each loaded with 28 rounds (no more, no less) and stacked in piles next to the bed. Actual shooting practice, much less training, though? That gets mentioned far less, and I can count on one hand the number of shooters of such weapons that I see who so much as mention accuracy in any meaningful way. To add the sprinkles and cherry on top of the sundae, many who own such guns take evident pride in not cleaning their ARs at all, and everyone knows that a drop of cleaning solvent on an AK is likely to send the poor thing into a dismal depression over the lack of confidence in its reliability that would imply.

That brings us to the hunting rifles. I see even less discussion—none, really—that indicates their owners practice with them in any meaningful way, i.e., shooting a significant number of rounds with them under conditions they might encounter in the field. It’s not uncommon to see indications that hunters pull the guns out of a safe, fire a limited group to more or less confirm zero (if that), expend the few rounds necessary for the hunt, and then back in the safe until the next season. My observations at public ranges give me the impression that the vast majority of hunters who fire more rounds than that lack everything necessary to begin to know whether something like cleaning affects their accuracy.

There are of course exceptions to all that, but very few it seems to me.

Production barrels are like women, not wholly predictable in the best of circumstances.

But I can tell you from experience that a squeaky clean high power rifle barrel is not your friend, other things being equal, and as with women, your mileage may vary.

BUT I would hazard to guess that a custom rifle with an expensive barrel, properly blueprinted, installed, and bedded, would be more consistent under more circumstances. The higher the level of long distance target shooting, the more expensive the rigs. Nothing is for free.

A long time ago I had a factory heavy barrelled 700 medium action, that shot the centers out of pennies at 100 yards without a hiccup. And years later I put 3 into a .75 inch group at 200 yds. though I'm sure it was a fluke. BUT, years afterwards I leaned more about copper fouling, and discovered after all those rounds, that Hoppes 9 wasn't really a good copper getter, after trying a copper removed, there was so much copper in that bore I was really surprised. The point being, that all that copper fouling still gave me a great shooter, which tell me again that a surgically clean barrel is not always the best policy. For long term storage with a good quality bore protectant, but for shooting where you're looking at, not necessarily and from my experience, not really. For hunting, or anything, if you want to hit stuff, find out at which level of fouling your barrel gives you the best shot (or shots if not hunting), and work it from that angle.

I am by no means an expert, but unlike sigfreund’s very accurate description of most hunters, I do practice with my hunting rifles.

I may fire a few hundred rounds per rifle prior to and during hunting season. I practice and, as an owner of a decent sized property that requires herd management, I hunt hard and shoot a lot in the bush.

I do not clean my rifles until they start to lose accuracy or until the end of the season. If I am out on a rainy day, I will pull a bore snake through a couple of times to make sure barrel is dry.

I ALWAYS shoot three or four fouling shots on a clean rifle before I’m ever satisfied with my zero or take it into the bush.

I may fail my rifle, but my rifles rarely fail me with this regimen. But, as has been pointed out, this is one of the most disagreed upon topics out there.

Addendum- I do clean my bolts throughout the season to make sure they work smoothly and don’t hang up when chambering that back-up round.

My simple method of classifying barrel condition is as follows:

Clean cold bore - rifle barrel that has had all powder fouling, carbon and copper removed

Cold bore - a rifle barrel that has been cleaned of most powder and carbon fouling but with copper left untouched

Fouled cold bore - a barrel that has not been cleaned of fouling or copper

Monitoring and recording the condition of a rifle’s barrel when taking the first few shot can sometimes give a shooter a general indication of how that particular barrel will shoot under given circumstances.

For instance, the OP has found that the first few shots of his barrel after he stripped the copper, thus giving him a clean cold bore, required several shots to come back to his expected group. This is not uncommon.

Barrels that are shot cold bore, meaning basic cleaning with mild solvents and leaving copper alone, can have a cold bore shift for the first 1-2 shots but then come back to group. This is common

Fouled cold bore barrels are usually grouping from the get-go and the ability of the cold shooter is usually the factor in grouping and controlling fliers

All this said...I have “big bore” rifles that require stripping of copper after each shooting session and the common factor for each is the next time out the first shot from the clean cold barrel is 30-40 fps slower than average. After that, they shoot as expected.

My other rifles are cleaned after each shooting session with mild solvents so each trip to the range is with a cold bore and they all shoot/group as expected with every shot including the cold bore shot. I don’t know that I do anything different when cleaning my rifles but they all shoot well starting with the first shot

Once I notice a change in a rifle’s performance, be it accuracy/precision or muzzle velocity, I start checking for copper fouling, barrel wear, etc. and perform the necessary tasks to bring it back to acceptable levels

Hope this helps...Semper Fi

quote:

Originally posted by Sig Marine:
acceptable levels

Although I have a tendency to get wrapped up in my comments and focus on specific details, “acceptable” or “good enough” for what we want to accomplish with a firearm is ultimately what matters. How and when we clean our rifles may affect the absolute precision they are capable of, but absolute theoretical maximum precision isn’t something most shooters need from their rifles. If a hunter can fire a half-dozen shots every year and harvest his deer to 250 yards every year and that’s all he expects from it, then that’s all that’s necessary. He doesn’t need anything more from his gun, his ammunition, or himself.

Good enough is something that varies significantly among my guns and how I use them. I like it that my Tikka rifles and the ammunition I use are capable of consistent sub-MOA groups because that gives me the confidence of knowing when a shot goes astray, it’s due to my skill, not their characteristics. If, however, I can consistently put a bullet into a 3-inch circle at 50 yards with an AR that I use for a particular drill, that’s good enough for that gun whose barrel doesn’t get cleaned nearly the same as my Tikkas’.

Sometimes discussions like this result in some oh-so-clever … ahem, person’s posting that “Here we go again!” rolling eyes and facepalm meme, but fortunately that hasn’t happened here yet, probably because this one requires a bit more insight and intelligence than usual. Discussions like these are in fact very valuable because they point out that opinions vary, sometimes dramatically, and hopefully that will encourage everyone to seek their own answers and not be led astray (or discouraged) by one person’s ideas.

Edited: Spelling!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sigfreund,

I’ll properly clean a hunting rifle every 25 rounds or so. Otherwise it’s an oiled boresnake after season, or a rainy damp hunting trip. More concerned about moisture and corrosion than accuracy at that point.

I'm back from hunting trip and went to the range today and the cold fouled bore grouped just like I left it before hunting. I'm pleased and more important more confident with it. Next I will run one or two oiled patches followed by dry patches and take her back to range next week to see if anything changes. Hray


100 yards first 3 shots.



flyers on me.

On my precision rifle series gas gun, I clean before a match, usually. But I also fire a minimum of twenty rounds through the rifle to allow it to settle back down, because it will throw some fliers the first twenty or so rounds after being cleaned.

I have had a few rifles that shot the same squeaky clean as they did dirty, so this is not a hard and fast rule.

Know your rifle and what works for you. It may be different based on your rifle, ammo, and cleaning practices.

I definitely do not subscribe to the shoot every time you clean philosophy. And improper cleaning can be more detrimental to a rifle bore than no cleaning.

Have and use a bore guide, or use a coated pull through system like an Otis cleaning kit. Also, let the solvents do their job. Don't heavily scrub with a brush.

Some very well respected precision rifle shooters actually advocate for abrasive cleaners like JB bore compound. They are better than me, and I can't argue with their results, but I haven't tried their method yet.

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