Originally Posted by hardcastonly

If your shooting for tight groups or sighting in your rifle at the range,
remember, the stress harmonics in a rifle barrel steel,
tend to change the bullet impact, on a target,compared to where the sights are aligned,
as the barrel heats up,accuracy requires consistency,
heavy and fluted barrels are slightly less prone to this as increased mass and increased surface area,
marginally reduce the tendency for a barrel too flex as heat is increased
and because you have very little way of consistently maintaining any specific heat range,
other than letting the barrel return to room temperature,
its makes a good deal of sense to allow a barrel to cool between shots.
you can,t consistently have a warm barrel , like you might have at the range,
on the first shot while hunting either.
most guys I know fire one to three shots, then run a solvent soaked patch or two, through the bore,
followed by a dry patch or two and let the barrel return to room temp over 5-10 minutes before continuing shooting groups
this tends to allow you too keep more consistent groups and a similar to cool barrel impact point.
because warm air tends to rise, placing the rifle in a rack stacked vertically with the action open ,
tends to allow air to act like hot air in a chimney to carry heat up through and away from a warm rifle barrel faster,
than it would if the rifle was placed horizontally to cool.

Originally Posted by Nomercy448