Vanguard 7mm Rem. Mag-any idea whats happening with groups?

[demented]

  Cold barrel, three shots fired within ten minutes, group size under an inch.   Made scope adjustments, after five minutes, fire one shot-bullet is very close to where I wanted it to impact, two inches high, fairly well centered.  Wait fifteen minutes fire a fifth shot, its three inches to the right of the fourth shot.  Again waiting for the barrel to cool, fire a sixth shot, its not close to any hole already on the paper.  Its not the scope, it had been checked on another rifle, mounts tight-Leupold standard dovetail.  Barrel is free floated, stock screws torqued.  This has been typical of this rifle since it was new, I've about given up on it.  Different factory ammo, several different reloads with three different powders, two bullet weights, nothing seems to make any difference.  The only thing left that I can think of is the action not holding in the stock between shots?

[Lloyd Smale]

my 257 acts the exact same way and i pulled my hair out working up loads for it. I finally came up with the answer. It has a rough bore. I could shoot 5 shots with a cold clean barrel that would go into an inch or less let it cool and the next 5 would go into 2 inch let it cool and the next 5 would look like a shotgun pattern. take it home and clean it and come back to the range and it was back to one inch. I went through just what you did. As a matter of fact i sent back the leupold 4x12 2 times because i swore the scope had to be bad. What i have to do with mine is take a cleaning kit with me to the range and clean the bore after ever 5 shots. I sent the gun to a weatherby service center to see if they would rebarrel it and they told me there guarantee is 3 shots into 1.5 inchs at a 100 yards with a cold CLEAN barrel and my gun met those criterias and if i wanted them to work on it they would need a 100 bucks just to pay for the test firing and more down the road to fix it. Needless to say its my last weatherby.

[dpe.ahoy]

I have several Howa's and Vanguards and all shoot very good, some shoot outstanding.  If I suspected a rough bore, I'd run some fire-lapping bullets down the tube.  DP

[demented]

   Were it not for passing a junker off on an innocent person, I think I'd part company with this shotgun in rifle guise.  I will try cleaning after firing three or four shots, if this works, I'll then try the fire lapping.  Lord knows I've tried everything else....at least twice! 

[Lloyd Smale]

I felt the same way about my 257. Its a real rural area around here and to trade it off would only pass the problem on to someone else. I did firelap mine and it did get a bit better. Is it cured. No. but it does do a bit better.

   Were it not for passing a junker off on an innocent person, I think I'd part company with this shotgun in rifle guise.  I will try cleaning after firing three or four shots, if this works, I'll then try the fire lapping.  Lord knows I've tried everything else....at least twice!