@id_jon
I am a cleaner cause I have had a couple do that during the time I wasn’t cleaning. I hate cleaning, I hate having to confirm velocity an all that comes with it but Iv gotten down to a pretty decent routine, especially with my match guns, to where if I do a cleaning NOT to bare metal velocity stabilizes to what it was prior and zero is largely uneffected. Example would be my last 6 creed barrel, I never touched it more than a tenth through the whole barrel.
I almost never clean to bare metal because it’s a pain. I don’t even understand how some guys are getting a shiny throat after a lot of rounds, it just never gets there for me. Am I doing it wrong I don’t know but anymore I run a patch of bore tech eliminator down the tube, jam a brush with a patch soaked in C4 in the neck/freebore and let it sit overnight. Next day I’ll patch it dry, clean my chamber and go on to shooting. I’ll bore scope every once in a while but Iv found if I keep up on the above and don’t let it get crazy I don’t have issues. My barrels seem to remain more stable through their life.
I’m not a believer in either or, I clean because it’s not hard and iv been bit once. I do think that if you’re not going to clean you need to commit, Eva use after a thousand rounds it’s a lot of work to get anything done in that first few inches of barrel.