Thread: Groups settling after cleaning

Was reading another thread about barrel cleaning and figured I'd toss this out to the group.

Have a plain stainless tikka in 7mm08 that shoots well with tuned loads. Gun is in good shape with no damage, bore is bright and sharp, nice crown, no real issues to speak of.

Only annoying thing is that the gun shoots well when it's dirty, but if I clean the bore the groups open up and take about 30-40 rounds to for the groups to tighten up again. I prefer to clean my rifles regularly, but this definitely makes me avoid cleaning this particular rifle more often than I have to.

I've tried the following to see if I can figure out why it does this:
- Cleaned the rifle without removing the action from the stock vs removing the action. Result: No difference
- Cleaned muzzle towards action, and also action towards muzzle. Result: No difference
- Cleaned the bore with brass vs nylon brushes. Result: No difference
- Cleaned the bore with brushes only, or brushes with patched jags. Result: No difference
- Cleaned the bore with hoppes, crc556, and dry. Result: No difference
- Wiped the bore and chamber with dry patches prior to shooting with patches vs no wiping prior to shooting. Result: No difference
- Torqued the action screws and checked for barrel contact with forestock when shooting as per online recommendations, tried various torque settings. Result: No difference

I'm going to bed the rifle in the next while in case I'm somehow disturbing it as part of the cleaning process and it's settling, but really I'm out of ideas. Funny thing is, leaving it uncleaned isn't really an issue, I'm just annoyed that I don't know why it does it. What do you guys think?