The first round from a clean barrel will always be slower and out of the group. The reason is, there isn't any friction from powder residue in the barrel to get the pressure/velocity up. The barrel must be fouled in order to maintain consistent pressures and speeds of the bullet. This is probably the biggest problem of wounded or missed animals during hunts (other than buck feaver). Seemingly everyone cleans and prepares their rifles the day before the big hunt. They oil the barrels, the actions and do their final fondling of their beloved rifles before turning in for the night. All that oil and solvent does weird things to the first bullet down the barrel. That first clean shot will likely be 200-400 fps slower than the same load from a fouled barrel. Trajectory is messed up, the POI is messed up and bullet performance will certainly be messed up. Hence, a missed or wounded critter. ALWAYS fire at least one fouling shot before going hunting or checking POI or shooting for groups. Flinch
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I don't agree at all with the above statement. I have not found that the first shot goes out of the rest of the group let alone low and let alone slow.
Some rifles do of course and others do the opposite. Those rifles may always do it and others can be corrected.
I have the printout here from my Oehler 35P from the last time at the range with it on May 20 and half of the groups were faster on the first shot and half were slower. One rifle in particular, a new 243 was shooting very small groups from a cold barrel.
On that Springfield it could be a multitude of things but a bad barrel can be forever. If the barrel moves when it's warmed it may be due to stresses in the barrel.
We all face problems like this with some rifles and one has to go thru the most obvious potential problems one thing at a time.
