Fouling Shot?

[novabrian]

I was told you need to do a fouling shot or two in order to build up carbon in your barrel for maximum effective accuracy.Is this true? If so how is this done in order to prep your hunting rifle?

[Jpach]

Perhaps shoot a few at the range, make sure its properly fouled, and head home. Good question, I hadnt really thought about that before.

BTW, what are you going to hunt and with what rifle?

[Divernhunter]

Ever since I can remember Before hunting season we would take out the firearms and check zero. Rarely did they change. If we fired 2-5 shots then just cased up the gun and we were ready for hunting season. After season we would usually clean and oil them for storage. Now I tend to shoot many of them year around and if so will clean them after being sure they are shooting where I want then another day make a trip to the range to fire 2-3 rounds thru them so they are ready to hunt.

It does matter alot in some guns and not any in others if the first shot is out of a clean/oiled bore. So will but the first 1-2 shots into a total different area then settle in to shooting where you aim.

[Mail Clerk]

I was told you need to do a fouling shot or two in order to build up carbon in your barrel for maximum effective accuracy.Is this true? If so how is this done in order to prep your hunting rifle?

novabrian,

To my knowledge this only pretains to some hardcore bench rest shooters just before a competition match. In the past it was done at pistol matches too cuz some barrels were actually more accurate if one or two fouling shots were put down the tube.

In your case your refering to "seasoning the bore" just before a hunt. I'd do some interneting on the subject and it should give you more info in detail and instructions on how to do it. It's pretty simple.

Mail Clerk

[ar15barrels]

It does not matter if you foul the barrel or not as long as you know where the first shot and subsequent shots are going to go when you fire them.
So, take the gun to the range with a clean barrel and fire 1 shot.
Note where it goes.
Then fire another 2 shots and note where they go.
After doing this 3-4 times, you should know what the gun does with a cold clean bore.

On the flipside, you can also leave the barrel dirty and do this same exercise to learn where your cold dirty bore hits.

Here are 3 cold/dirty bore groups from my 243 shot on 3 different days:



Those are the first 5 rounds fired each day at the range.

[novabrian]

Perhaps shoot a few at the range, make sure its properly fouled, and head home. Good question, I hadnt really thought about that before.

BTW, what are you going to hunt and with what rifle?

I plan on hunting Wild Boar/Pig with a scoped SKS.