[Jeff Higgins]

More rifle barrels are ruined by cleaning than by shooting. Most folks vastly over-clean their rifles.

I clean my smokeless powder rifles with Hoppe's #9, Shooters' Choice, or Birchwood Casey solvents (it used to be whichever one was either in the goodie bag or given out with the prizes at a match). Since I'm not shooting many matches anymore and forced to buy my own, it's been #9.

I never use a brush of any kind. I simply run about half a dozen wet patches down the bore in succession, then finish up with a couple of dry ones. Done. The only difference with my black powder guns is that I do this exact same drill with water before I go to the #9.

My only exception is my Ruger #1 with a 28" 12" twist Lilja barrel in .220 Swift. I will use a copper solvent on it about every 50 rounds or so. I like Sweet's 7.62. Pretty nasty stuff - follow directions or risk damaging the barrel. My other centerfire, jacketed bullet shooters like the .223, 6.5 Swede, .308, .30-'06, .375 H&H, .458 Win Mag, 7mm Rem Mag, do not get the Sweet's treatment. Ever. They don't need it.

While we are not compelled to use non-toxic bullets (yet...), I have used an awful of of the various Barnes varieties of monolithic copper bullets. I've never been able to get them to shoot as well as traditional bullets in any of my rifles. It has never been due to fouling, however. And I would certainly never expect them, even in matching bullet weights, to shoot to the same point of impact as other bullets. And absolutely would never think that alternating them with a traditional bullet, like a Partition, would result in one tight little group. In other words, I don't think your varying point of impact has anything to do with fouling.

Just take your preferred "non toxic" (I alway thought that was funny as hell - they are all pretty darn "toxic" at the velocities modern rifles launch them) to the range and re-zero the rifle with them. Leave the other ammo at home. Don't expect as good of groups, just zero it. How good does a hunting rifle have to shoot anyway? Our modern obsession with group size has gotten a bit comical. I'll happily hunt anything, anywhere with a 2 MOA rifle and not feel disadvantaged in the least. So, don't worry about it. Zero it and go hunting. And good luck out there.