Is the barrel shot out?

[Jared2700]

I would check the barrel and action seating to make sure it is still secure and floated properly, then scope the throat and barrel. Next, I would check the crown on the barrel.
The crown sounds crazy but I have a 7 Rem Mag that is just like your 06, had it 30 years before it started doing the same thing. I checked everything, all good. I was talking to a old school gunsmith who told me to take ultra fine Emory cloth and wrap it around a muzzle loader round ball and polish the crown with.
Not sure why or how but, the rifle went back to stacking holes on target again.
It's worth a try before going to a rebarrel job. It's still my favorite shooter.
Good Luck.

There are also brass pointed spire tips available from eBay that you could use valve lapping compound with a drill to recrown the bore. You can also use a brass flathead screw with a rounded head to achieve the same results. I hope this helps.

 

[nicholasjohn]

There was a reply to this thread that discussed bore-scoping the gun to see what the throat looked like. I once did a chamber cast for this purpose, before I got a bore scope, and it worked reasonably well. It was on a Sako .22-250 that my buddy got pretty hot on a prairie dog shoot, and I couldn't get a bullet into the lands while still in the cartridge case when using the Hornady tool to measure where the rifling started. I put the plug in the barrel a couple inches ahead of the throat, and it was easy to see where the rifling started on the Cerrosafe cast. It was about 1.75" down the barrel from the mouth of the chamber, and I could even see the alligator skin texture on the part of the casting that had no rifling on it. I think Brownell's probably still sells Cerrosafe, and it's pretty easy to use. Getting the right funnel is the only trick to the process. I used an aluminum funnel to get the molten metal into the chamber. This stuff works exactly like the directions state. That barrel made a very nice tomato stake.