Clean bore vs. "Copper equilibrium"

[VikingsGuy]

To each their own, but I have never done a barrel break-in. Had an uncle who was a world class military sniper (and hunter) in his day and told me it was all BS - I listened to him, all my bolt rifles shoot sub MOA with hand loads, most around 0.7" as that is my hunting goal and I stop tweaking when I get there - my 2 bench rifles shoot closer to 0.25". I also go 65-100 rounds between deep cleaning depending on rifle, but do run a quick hoppes solvent on a bore snake and quick patch through guns before putting in the safe. YMMV

 

[recurveman]

So this is what I do for hunting. I clean my gun up pretty good before I go sight in my gun for hunting. Bore, carbon ring maybe even work at getting rid of some copper.......maybe a little. Then I go out and shoot 10-30 rounds through the gun to check speeds, loads, sight in ect. Then I go hunting with the gun and don't clean it until next time I go hunting. Unless the gun gets muddy, wet, ect.

 

[Durango Mike]

The big thing I have noticed is switching bullet material types, say going from gilding metal jacketed lead core bullets to mono like Barnes requires a VERY thorough cleaning to get the best results, then let the metal fouling build back up with the new material.

 

[Jasza]

I have got a 40 year old brno 308. I bought it from an old timer for a few hundred dollars, it looked in pretty good condition. I probably doubled its lifetime shots through it in my first 2 years of hunting and target shooting. It was perfectly accurate for bushveld hunting (200 yards). I developed a few slower, low recoil loads for it so my younger son could come hunting with me. That's when I noticed a serious first shot accuracy problem. (cold barrel, fouled bore). Would go to the range and subsequent shots would be 1 or 2 inches accurate but first shot would have up to 6 inch drop at 100m, subsequent shots on a warm bore were accurate. With subsonic rounds the first shot drop was as much as a foot over 60 yards!
Of course with hunting, cold bore fouled barrel are the 90 percent of the important shots taken.

I did a rigorous clean with hoppes no 9 bench, it took me about 3 weeks, scrubbing with nylon brush every day and leaving overnight, the blue liquid would be on the swab every morning.
When the nylon brush stopped dislodging copper I took out the phosphorbronze brush and the copper started appearing again, occasionally interspersed with layers of carbon, then back to copper. This went on for about 20 cleaning sessions. Never got all the copper out but the swabs were clean.
Wore out 2 phosphorbronze brushes.

Went back to the range and problem solved.

Now I never let it build up again but I never get down to bare steel again either.
I do a wire brush scrubbing and 3 times overnight soak after every hunting trip and am careful to test if the problem is back.
Switched to Cfe223 powder for some of my lighter faster hunting loads and it doesn't eliminate the copper as claimed, but it does reduce it, or at least convert it to some Grey brown substance that takes much brushing to remove.

That first shot must go where you send it otherwise you lose your confidence, which causes you to compensate and hold over too high on the follow up shot which then goes doubly high.

Interested to hear if someone has experienced this on a rifle made this century?