Listen to yesterday’s podcast. I sure hope you get that s20 figured out. Otherwise you’re going to have to go back and put addendums on a multitude of other podcasts where you have raved so much about it. Plus I’m generally curious about what would make such a great rifle suddenly start shooting poorly.
Also, agreed with your general approach to this in terms of the steps to check everything. However this did bring up something, you mentioned change the load and see what happens. I certainly get where you’re coming from. It’s quite possible that if you’re doing a hand load that the new lot of either powder or bullets just isn’t right, or if you’re shooting Factory ammo that the factory decided to change the powder on you without notifying you. On the other hand, if you’ve never tested the new load on that particular rifle you have no idea if it would have liked it back when it was shooting well or not.
Which brings up something I heard on the Hornady podcast, specifically the one on cleaning where Jaden referenced reference loads. A particular batch of ammo that gives you very consistent performance, not necessarily the best performance. Then that gives you something to test with in the future if something should go wonky with your gun.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be your hunting load, you may find that a particular match load gives you a consistent performance both in terms of accuracy as well as velocities. Then purchase several boxes of it, or if you found a hand load, load up a couple hundred rounds or so of it then stick it in the closet and don’t shoot it routinely, but bring it out as a testing method whenever you’re trying to figure out why something is misbehaving.
Have you ever tried something like that?