Just wondering if the cleanliness of your barrel has any effect on your guns' pattern.

Lots of people say that a polished barrel will throw the best pattern. I don't recall if it was the Nitro or hevi-shot site that says to clean your barrel between shots when patterning so you can see what the load can really do. On another board, the question was asked about cleaning between shots and most folks with great results run a bore snake or brush/patch between shots when patterning. I never paid attention to that before but I never had great patterns before either. I just picked up a 12 gauge bore snake to use when patterning

On a shot to shot basis I don't personally think it makes that much difference. On a long enough time line plastic fouling will build up (espcially around ports) and that will reduce the effectiveness of them. When I clean the gun, I use a brass brush and a DeWalt drill.... and there ain't no plastic in my bore!

The patterns I have all come from dirty bores.... and from the way they shoot, a clean bore ain't worth the effort because they can't get but so much better.

Im not sure about a shotgun. When I was in the Marines they taught us that a dirty bore would cause a rifle to be less acurate.
There are worse things that could happen..... Carbon built up is flamable, not something you want around when the gun is fired, not to mention if the action isnt clean it will have trouble loading (pump, or auto) shells. (jams).

It doesn't affect a turkey gun.... you might fire 6 shots this year?
I do know that my smooth bore slug gun is more accurate when its dirty though...

on a regular shotgun, I don't think it will make any differents.if you have a ported choke,then it could get plastic around it,other than that no problem.

Black powder is another story(could and could not). in a rifle most deffently.

JMHO ; some people may disagree with me on this ; but there wrong.[8D][8D][][][][][]

Thats certainly true of high volume of fire weapons such as you devil dogs use. On hunting rifles, I use a practice that not a lot of folks do... once I have my rifle dialed in before the season.... I don't clean the bore at all until after the season is over, save perhaps a dry patch to remove debris. Rationale there of course is that any oil in your bore at all will cause you to shoot to a differnet point of impact. So you either need to sight in ALWAYS with a clean barrel... or hunt with a dirty one.

True. It effectively eliminates your cold bore shot when you leave the bore "dirty". A common practice used by competition shooters. The only time you'll see someone cleaning their barrel is if they're done for the day. Once the POI is where you need it to be, leave it alone.

True, plus it was a very convenient excuse for them to make us clean ourrifle after morning chow, when in fact we had cleaned them just the night before! Who'd have thought arifle would get so dirty just by hanging it up on your rack and going to sleep.