Deep cleaning barrels.

How often should you and do you deep clean your rifle barrels ?
I have a couple of my trusty old Tikka T3 Tacticals one in 300 Win Mag the other in 308.
These are the heavy factory barrels with , i think , factory brakes on them .
I,ve had them both for approx 12 years now .
I'm guessing i have put at least a couple of thousand rounds per rifle ,down the barrels .
Usual process for me is just to run the brush through the barrels 3 times after a morning shooting and a patch , that's it .
They shoot so well im really leary to deep clean them but i would rather do it now if then have problems surface later .

An OLD saying : "If it ain't Broke , Don't Fix It !!!"

@DMP25-06 nailed it!

I was a proponent of not cleaning until accuracy fell off for quite some time. Unfortunately at one point or another in a few of my rifles the dreaded carbon ring snuck up on me and caused major problems. I personally have gone back to cleaning every 100 to 200 rounds max and inspecting the throat area with a bore scope.

I have also started using a muzzle jimmy from pva and soaking barrels rather than scrubbing them. I find it saves me time in the long run, less patching and brushing over all. I use more solvent but the amount of time i spend with the cleaning rod is less and I can do other things.

I keep a log on the amount of fouling shots I need for each barrel after cleaning. Most only take 1-6 shots to settle in. I have one wierd barrel that takes exactly 23 rounds. It has about 2000 rounds on it and is losing velocity so it just might be the end of it.

The advent of video borescopes has helped change the way I view cleaning and definitely has given me a new perspective on what is actually clean. For me it's easier to have more predictable results with routine cleaning then the occasional deep clean or only cleaning when accuracy falls off.

It depends. My hunting rifles have a "known" fouling regiment and see maybe 10 shots during a season. Then it's cleaned thoroughly.

Guns I shoot alot, they get deep cleaned when velocity or accuracy changes.

Only issue I've heard of was on a Vortex Nation podcast, where a descent shooting high round count Tikka (?) was finally cleaned after 3-4k rounds. It never shot the same. Didn't see it, just hearsay.