Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters First Shot Goes High

You shooting 3 shot groups? Your load may not be fine tuned yet... It could also be pressure on the barrel. Is it properly glass bedded? How and what are you shooting off of? Good front rest and rear bag? No lead sleds I hope.. Good scope without parallax issues?

I agree. There are some instances where the barrel has residual stresses from the machining process and that results in first shots being out of the group. Those barrels generally react better to a pressure point on the barrel, or a full length bedding process. Op can experiment with pressure on the forend tip to barrel and see if anything changes..

Just damn. Where they all come from.

Ex IBS and NBRSA shooter.

Shoot once.

Among the other causes already listed, have encountered more than one rifle which had a slightly loose thread-connection between the barrel and action--one reason I suspect the reason a "tip-hump" pressure-point became popular with some rifle manufacturers.

I gave my bench setup a lot of attention in the last couple weeks. My 30-06 started stringing horizontally so I suspected my bench setup first. That has been refined and the 30-06 stringing turned out to be caused by the scope. I use a heavy cast iron front rest inherited from an old benchrest shooter and a rear bag.

The most plausible culprit looks to be the barrels connection to the action. I will try shimming the barrel at the forend tip since that is easy to do.

If the front of the action is not square to the centerline of the action, would that also indicate that the threads are probably not concentric? That would seem to be a potential problem too?

One thing to note, upon firing the rifle starts moving before the bullet leaves the barrel
If the butt is dropping down your shoulder due to barrel lift and a not properly compacted rear bag this can result in a high shot.

After this first shot the bag is better settled and POI stabilizes

I'm still wondering about a clean bbl. The three rifles I shoot TSX's/TTSX's all shoot high with a clean bbl. A new SS 308 is the most dramatic--initially I refused to believe it was only a clean bbl thing, but have now repeated it 3 times. A clean bbl (not a 100% clean, but fairly clean) will shoot 4"+ above my normal POI where I'm sighted in at, and takes two or even three rounds to "walk" down to where it should be.

There was a time when the 264 shooters were a pretty exclusive club. The wisdom was passed around. Much was written about cleaning barrels . Barrel life was a hot topic, and clean barrels lasted longer. So with the short life of 264 barrels keeping them clean is very important.The first barrel on my 264 walked. I could take the targets with numbered holes, lay them on top of each other and they would line perfectly when using a good consistent powder. Besides that problem, it was high pressure and slow. .I had it changed.

Your barrel is no where near as bad. But it too suffers from stress. Group size is very important in Farky Class, but is totally meaningless in a hunting rifle.(It just makes load development and sighting in easier ) To get a three shot group, it takes three days to be realistic . Dead cold between each shot . So I would take the first shot as the true one and the rest as fliers. A single shot hunting rifle is not much of a handicap. The second shot is for putting the game out of it's misery.

Yes - forward pressure is specifically designed to cover up for machining flaws, less than true actions and barrels, and failure to lap the barrel into the action. It's the last resort of manufacturers with machining problems.

The first round from a cold barrel always goes an inch or MORE above the rest of the group. It is aggravating for a new barrel to behave this way.

How much MORE than an inch does it shoot high?

This is so untrue. I have SEVERAL barrels that will put the first shot into the group from a clean cold barrel every time. These are barrels that have been verified clean with a bore scope. The OP is not talking about a rifle that shoots in the 1’s here. If the bore is dry and this rifle is doing this there is an internal barrel issue.

I had a rifle that would do this. Not only would it throw the first shot high, but pressure would be higher. That bore had a tight spot in it. That was corrected and the problem went away.

So to get a zero, you fired one shot then completely cleaned the bore, or was your final zero out of a bore that had multiple shots fired through it?

In all four of the rifles that I tested, the first shot did NOT shoot to a different point of impact to the other succeeding shots at 100 yards. It only shot slower. The second shot was also slower, but not as slow as the first shot. These were hunting rifles that typically would group 5 shots in 0.4" to 1" at 100 yards.

I’m not sure what you are talking about

Dang.
To get your zero did you fire 1 shot and completely clean it and cool down, fire another shot and completely clean it and cool, then make scope correction fire 1 shot completely clean and cool. Repeating until you had final zero.
Or did you fire 2-3 shots, make scope adjustments and fire 2-3 more shots to get your final zero.
If you did condition one I would say you have a clean cold bore zero, if condition 2 then you don’t. Not hard.

Have a Winchester Classic synthetic ( early 90's) that I placed a piece of plastic under each action screw and it solved this very issue I had. Now it will shoot first shot in in a half inch group any time I try it. I like to shoot on a windless day....only one shot and then next day fire that one shot and the two targets will be within half inch. What this did was allow me to run a dollar bill all way to the action....and before the bill would go only go about half way. There is a guy with a video on You Tube shows how to do this....remember my rifle when new came with some kind of plastic cement under the front screw and over time it had gone bad so I removed it and replace with a plastic shim cut out of a detergent bottle.....simple solution to my problem.

Don’t believe in windless days, been shooting over flags of some sort for 30 years. I’ve got videos of flag tails going straight up at the 50 while the vane stayed stationary, flags at 25 and 75 never moved. Also have a video that has the 50 and 75 flags moving 180 apart. Windless nope.

Did you clean the rifle each day? Otherwise it’s not a clean cold bore shot. You did prove though that under non exact conditions your rifle moved from its previous POA to POI.

I think the best way to tell if it's a barrel heat vs barrel fouling cause is to shoot a fast group of 3, let the barrel cool for 10 minutes, then shoot a slow group of 3 with 10 minutes between each shot.

None of the above. I’m shooting to the some POI whether the barrel is fouled or clean. Zero was established long ago and has absolutely nothing to do with it. This isn’t a zeroing exercise. This is a can I hit where I’m aiming exercise.