know your gun and ammo, most of my guns are diffrent and react diffrently to diffrent ammo, I have a 270 win that need no fouling shots, and have a 7mm rem mag that would do better with a few, bottom line is take the gun out and shoot it and see what it will do, I do not own a gun that i can not clean today and run a dry patch down the barrel after i clean it and not hit with in a few inchs of the target, fouling shots have no purpose for me but then again i do not try to shoot pennys at 200 yards either.<P>i shoot my guns year round and when i decide on the gun i will use for a hunt I try to stick to one ammo and take all my guns out and they are always cleaned after i shoot them and dry patched after barrel is cleaned then i take a few drops of break free on a patch and run it threw the bore followed by a dry patch, none of my guns throw flyers 7" off of target.<P>simple thing to do is clean the gun take it out and shoot it and note what the first 3 shots will do, if you have to shoot more then 3 times then chances are the animal is long gone anyway, if you can group all 3 rounds in a 2" group it is good enough for hunting, if you cannot then you might be better off doing a few fouling shots and try it again and if you can group with in a 2" group now there is your answer use a few fouling shots.
