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Bench-rest shooters will clean and be obsessive about it as they need their barrels to be absolutely consistent, and constant cleaning keeps them in the same condition constantly.
General theory is that for the average shooter to not clean often, but using the same ammo will find a barrel levels off to its best consistent precision on an ammo in say 20 shots. Then it will stay accurate for that ammo fora long string, eventually precision will trail off and then it is time to clean and go again. Could be 100 or 1000 shots, depends on the rifle.
I took several months trying different ammo makes using a lot of shooting of each brand and stumbled on this. I did not clean after every ammo change nor even after every session. I would fire off two shots at an ammo change to "season" for that new ammo and stumbled on something else, for me anyway.
My test would use 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with 5 aim points. I found this consistency, that some days the upper right aim point would always be my best for that day on every target, sometimes the lower left, sometimes the center bull. Could be my first shots, or my last for that ammo. The real consistency was it would change from session to session which told me my bench shooting skill was not consistent day to day, but changed at each set up and was so rigid at that point I would not be in good position for each aim point on that day but just for one bull. Seriously, I noted that on my second session of intense testing, and never did get that corrected.
Back to the original on cleaning. That is why I clean my barrels after approx 500 rounds, more or less. Unless high tide brings the Atlantic to the base of the Rockies - in which case I will use my rifle for an oar.
General theory is that for the average shooter to not clean often, but using the same ammo will find a barrel levels off to its best consistent precision on an ammo in say 20 shots. Then it will stay accurate for that ammo fora long string, eventually precision will trail off and then it is time to clean and go again. Could be 100 or 1000 shots, depends on the rifle.
I took several months trying different ammo makes using a lot of shooting of each brand and stumbled on this. I did not clean after every ammo change nor even after every session. I would fire off two shots at an ammo change to "season" for that new ammo and stumbled on something else, for me anyway.
My test would use 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with 5 aim points. I found this consistency, that some days the upper right aim point would always be my best for that day on every target, sometimes the lower left, sometimes the center bull. Could be my first shots, or my last for that ammo. The real consistency was it would change from session to session which told me my bench shooting skill was not consistent day to day, but changed at each set up and was so rigid at that point I would not be in good position for each aim point on that day but just for one bull. Seriously, I noted that on my second session of intense testing, and never did get that corrected.
Back to the original on cleaning. That is why I clean my barrels after approx 500 rounds, more or less. Unless high tide brings the Atlantic to the base of the Rockies - in which case I will use my rifle for an oar.
