I have been shooting a lot of lead only 22 ammo lately just to conserve my stash of CCI Mini-mags. I've noticed some drop off in accuracy and had to adjust the sight elevation a time or two. Last weekend I cleaned the barrel using some 40x bore cleaner and then went to the range. Gun shot 4" high at 31 yards from a bag. Way off. I turned the rear sight down by 10 clicks and everything is fine now. The groups weren't too bad before cleaning, just not normal 2" at 25 yards standing.
I guess I underestimated how filthy the barrel was, resulting in lower velocities and a hair more muzzle rise before the bullet exited the gun. After cleaning, the velocity was restored and the gun returned to "normal" for me.
Is this consistent with your experience? When you shoot non-copper-plated bullets, do you actually have to clean the lead out of the bore say every 1k rounds or so? I don't think this happened when I was shooting only the CCI mini-mags. I probably had 6k rounds through this bore since last cleaning to remove the lead and copper. I do run a patch through the bore occassionally to get some of the carbon out, but that is it, and then only at 1-2k rounds. When I get to shoot it, I shoot it a bunch, say 300-600 rounds per session, unless I'm short on ammo.
Joe
