I’ve put together a new build meant for accuracy, and have noticed a trend for the 1st round to shoot outside the rest of the group, usually high and left, or high or left. Basically, notably outside the rest of the group in the 9:00-12:00 direction. The remainder of the group is usually very tight.
Build:
Sionics 18" barrel
Geissele Mk8 Rail (used certified torque wrench and followed instructions)
Vltor MUR
Sionics parkerized BCG/CH
BRT Covert Comp(barely above hand tight)
Sionics assembled Lower
Magpul UBR Gen2
Sprinco Green Spring A5H3 buffer
Geissele SSA-E trigger
Vortex HS-T 6-24
100 yards:
200 yards after firing 5 rounds on steel, then shooting paper:
My buddy built an identical rifle, minus the handguard and scope mount, and is seeing similar results. I asked him to fire the first round of his magazine into the berm before firing his five round groups and his group size dropped substantially.
It happens to me all the time also. Lowlight over Snipershide swears that there is no such thing as the cold bore causing a flyer but rather that it is the cold shooter.
This “cold bore shot flyer” phenomenon is mostly attributed to a non fouled bore.
Most shooters log shots, they know how the flyer will deviate as compared to subsequent shots.
To get consistent first shots, it is better to avoid aggressive solvents and use a CLP-type cleaner to clean out gunk and residue from the barrel, but leaving the copper behind.
If you remove the copper, your shots will be inconsistent until a layer of copper has been deposited in the barrel again.
It’s a new barrel that now has 235 rounds. I clean at about 400 rounds and remove the fouling as well with a quality bore cleaner. I know not to expect the best accuracy until the barrel fouls after a mag or two.
My other SPR has 1477 rounds. I put about half of those through it last year, and don’t remember the first shot phenomenon happening then. I can’t tell you if it happened when it first started shooting that rifle because I was shooting a GI trigger and my groups weren’t as good.
All of my AR’s equipped with magnified optics also have two-stage triggers and all will throw the first round high if a chamber using the charging handle. If I load by releasing the BCG from lock-back, the first round is not thrown and the groups are even.
I believe that releasing the bolt more closely mimics the cycling of the action after a fired round.
Agree with the load function. In Highpower, the rounds from a mag will shoot differently than those singly loaded of a mag with a sled follower. .
The ‘Cold shooter’ is easily tested if you have two guns (hopefully the same) and have the shooter shoot that first and then go straight to the other cool gun. You could even pick and replace the gun for each shot to make it perfectly the same.
Sound like you are not dealing with a clean and cold bore, but rather a dirty and ‘cool’ bore shot. The gun might not be ‘hot’ but is has been shot that day and not cleaned?
I’d try the bolt release load and see what happens.
Not dealing with a clean bore. Once I break a rifle in, I typically only clean when the groups starting noticeably exceeding the baseline of the given rifle. For example, if the rifle averages 1 MOA at 100 yards, I’ll shoot groups again when I start missing easy 1.5 MOA targets.
I’ve been releasing from bolt release since I built the rifle. I’m going to re-evaluate at 500 rounds and see if the tendency to have a flyer is diminished.
I don’t buy cold shooter. I do buy gaijin’s , load via dropping the bolt vs easing it down on first round. Also, fouling can play a role, depending on what you want to do, we commonly fire 2 to 3 rounds on steel before we do groups on 223.
We never do this on 308 or 300WM. Mark, back in the day, cleaned his 308 spotless every week and the first round would hit the BULLSEYE, then the rest of rounds would cluster around it. No cold bore shooter. It happened 50 times in the first years of our long range learning.
Seems to be a small bore thang, maybe ? Or AR thang.
As my buddy continues to shoot his identically built rifle, he is seeing smaller groups. He is now of the mindset that’s it’s a cold shooter issue. We leapfrog on who is better at precision shooting, so I’m not unconvinced he is correct. I have been saving components to do another batch of higher end handloaded ammo, so I’ll have to revisit this issue later. I tend to cycle between shooting issued equipment and better, personally owned gear.
I tend to think it’s more of a shooter issue than weapon system issue. If I bring several guns to the range and shoot a string with one gun then switch to a cold rifle my first shot flyers aren’t nearly as pronounced I don’t doubt for a second there are guns out there that do have POI shifting after the barrel warms from rounds fired but for me I thinks it’s more a mental road block.
My 308 AR does this first round “flier” unless i drop the bolt from lock. If I cycle the CH to charge, I undoubtedly get fliers. I partially think my barrel has a flaw as I have a hard time keeping consistent groups with or without it being copper fouled. Looking to make another upper/barrel combo in 6.5CM for S&Gs.
This phenomenon does not happen with my 5.56 SPR; 18” Rainier Ultra Match SPR profile, KAC lower, Colt upper, KAC FF (MK12) with AE break and collar.