Bare with me for a second concerning cold bore shots. I know this question may sound absurd or TOS-ish but is there a specific range of temp that a “cold bore” is? I know many first shots are critical be it hunting or killing/man stopping. Is there an accepted way of practicing this at the range? Shoot one round and let it cool for how long?
Cold bore shot is:
Dirty barrel (at least one round fired… I do 2)
Barrel temp at ambient. (ie, same temp as the air. 65F air/65F barrel)
I use a digital strip thermometer.
The “cold shooter” is usually the biggest factor to the “cold bore” shot…
Thanks for the tip. I can put the regular thermometer back in the medicine chest.
Interesting question. A few years ago I attended a Tactical Rifle Match, where the first shot of the day was at an 8" steel plate at 600 yds (known distance) to be shot prone off your bipod or pack. Only one shot allowed, no sighters. Temp was about 35 degrees, wind quartering at about 6 mph.
Anyway, we had 24 shooters, and 23 misses. And yes, I missed too…:no:
How many of you hit low?
Really no way to tell. Just a steel plate hanging from a frame via a chain and the backstop was nothing but dense woods and a gentle up-hill slope. But if I had to guess, most of us missed low.
Excellent question. That was my first thought.
Carlos Hathcock taught cold bore shooting by having the student fire one single shot and recording the result and the range conditions. One shot and one shot only for that day. One shooter related how he didn’t understand why until he realized he was collecting data on how he and his rifle performed for that single, often critical shot
Depends on the rifle for me. I have a .243 bolt gun that’s consistently ~1.5 MOA high on the first shot of the day, and a SCAR H that’s just about the exact opposite.
In the long range world its most often referred to as the “clean cold bore” shot, not just the cold bore shot. In the traditional sense of military sniping that is the shot that counts. Same could be said for hunting at long ranges in some cases although you don’t have to worry about it being a two way range and the game may stick around for a second shot in some cases. Some barrels might shoot better with a fouling round or two but as mentioned that would be a cold bore shot. If a barrel is match quality/broken in and the rifle is top notch it should put that first shot the same place as the second. Not sure how good the semi’s are at that though.
Thanks for the feedback thus far. I’m going to keep my eye on this thread. 
I know this question was intended for a different poster…
However, both of my MK12ish rifles shoot low left on cold bore shots. I’d say ~1.5" @ 100 yards. Both rifles are consistent with each other and both are setup slightly different than each (Rails, scopes and muzzle devices). Both barrels are Douglas SPR barrels.
My Ruger M77 270 Win shoots way high on cold bore shots. Something I failed to take into consideration this last deer hunt. I did get my deer but no tender loins…
I stopped getting meaningful variances in “cold bore” shots when I stopped cleaning the piss out of my barrels. After I’ve cleaned, I may get a difference in “CCB”, small, though, and if I have to strip copper, all bets are off. Maybe I’m lucky.
I have seen, however, many, many guys hit low in the cold–not because they didn’t plug it into their calculators, but because they were using a chrono velocity they got from their ammo at 70 or 80 degrees. Modern “temp stable” powders are better than what it used to be, but you can still lose enough velocity to drop you right off a target that small.
I learned a lot by watching Magpul’s Precision Gun DVD. When I was new with long range stuff (Hell…I still am new to it) I watched a lot of it and it gave me some good knowledge and a great starting point. There’s a lot of little tips that were in it that I really like. Cold bore vs Clean bore was one of them. (You can actually youtube that part on the DVD)
That’s definitely something one needs to take into consideration. I need to get my hands on a chrono and do some cold temp testing to see how much my velocity drops.
Thanks!
I googled and came up with this video. Very informative, i learned alot…
Yup that’s the one!
There is another part of the DVD that is on youtube that shows the magpul guys shooting all at a mile and Travis Haley is able to nail a target at a mile with a .308. Took him a few tries, but it was pretty cool to see.