Cold Barrel or Cold Shooter? An Experiment with a ‘Problematic’ Rifle

I’m a big fan of Ryan Cleckner’s Long Range Shooting Handbook. It’s a fantastic resource for anyone looking to go farther than the usual 100 or 200 yards.

One of the topics tackled in Cleckner’s book is the “Cold Barrel.” The Cold Barrel hypothesis is that the first shot (or few) from a gun that’s not been fired will impact the target differently (undesirably) from the shots that follow, because the latter are fired after the barrel has warmed up sufficiently.

As a subscriber to the cold barrel hypothesis, this excerpt from Ryan Cleckner’s book got me piqued:

“When you get to the range, dry-fire a few times before you fire your first group. You might just find that your previously normal poor first group had nothing to do with a cold barrel, and instead was more a result of a cold shooter who hadn’t warmed up yet.”

I have a simple training rifle — a *used* Ruger 10/22 Takedown — that’s always been bad with the first 10 rounds coming out of it. After the first mag dump, that rifle behaves better.

I had always assumed that the first 10 rounds heated up the barrel of that rifle, causing the bore to constrict, thus improving the placement of subsequent shots.

After reading Cleckner’s book, I thought of an experiment to get to the bottom of it. Instead of just dry firing before shooting that rifle, what if I brought a second rifle to actually warm myself up?

A few years ago, I built a custom 10/22 with a Feddersen match barrel and Kidd hardware. This rifle shoots 0.5” groups easily at 25 yards. Shooting this rifle first would do two things: 1) it would warm me up before I touched the used rifle with the potentially problematic barrel, and 2) if my first group was bad, the match-grade equipment would clearly point to me as the problem variable.

On a delightfully sunny day this July, I made a trip to the range, stapled targets at 25 yards, and prepared 5 magazines with a total of 50 rounds of CCI Standard Velocity .22LR ammo. The target had 5 diamonds and my plan was to put 10 rounds in each diamond.

I shot the first 3 rounds out of my nice rifle, without dry firing first. This is what I got:

I proceeded with the remaining 7 rounds in the magazine and got a respectable group. 

This ruled out a cold shooter problem.

This is what the last 40 rounds looked like. 

Having warmed myself up sufficiently, I repeated the above sequence with my used 10/22 Takedown with the potentially problematic barrel. Everything was the same as before: targets stapled at 25 yards, and 5 magazines prepared with a total of 50 rounds of CCI Standard Velocity .22LR ammo.

The first 3 rounds looked like this:

I was a warmed-up shooter when I fired the above 3 rounds, yet the group didn’t look tight. I discharged the remaining 7 rounds in the magazine and got this.

I don’t know what the promised accuracy of this Ruger factory barrel is. The group was decent but obviously bigger than the Feddersen match barrel.

The real test would come with the remaining 40 rounds. This is what they looked like:

As the above photos show, the groups got tighter as the sequence progressed. The barrel had warmed up, so maybe the Cold Barrel hypothesis is indeed applicable to this rifle? (Note: Considering the nature of the experiment, I didn’t want to adjust my sights to re-zero them. So the rounds aren’t impacting where they ideally should.)

I didn’t want to draw a conclusion from one instance, so I repeated the experiment the following day. The Day 2 experiment sequence is the same as Day 1, so I won’t restate what I did and just let the photos speak for themselves.

(Apologies for the crumpled Day 2 Match Barrel target. I tossed it into the trash and then realized I had forgotten to take a photo of it. So I dug it out and straightened the paper as much as I could.)

This is what the problem barrel target looked like:

Based on the Day 2 results, I think I can conclude that for this particular hardware, the Cold Barrel hypothesis is correct.

If I want to be obsessive about it, I could repeat this experiment with other brands of ammo and play with different muzzle velocities. 

I could also buy a new 10/22 factory barrel and repeat the experiment to see if this is an issue with Ruger factory barrels regardless of whether they’re used or new. 

So, where do you stand on the cold barrel vs. cold shooter question? Do you have an opinion one way or another? 

If you’re able to, consider doing this experiment yourself and share your results with the gun owner community so we can all learn from each other’s experiences.

(Disclosure: I’m not affiliated with Ruger, Feddersen, Kidd, or Ryan Cleckner. I bought the products with my own money and did the experiment on my own time and dime.)

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