I was taught to clean my rifles as soon as I could after shooting and I always have but years ago I read something that got me thinking [always dangerous]. The story was about a fellow who found a 22 rifle in the woods and his efforts to get it shooting again. He described it as being heavily rusted but oddly the bore was bright and rust free. He attributed this to the lube found on 22s and it kind of made sense to me. Since then I only clean the chamber and leave the bore alone and have suffered no ill effects. I actually think that this helps because of the lube coating the bore. I will run a dry patch through to get rid of any unburned powder but that's it. Just curious to know what the general consensus is on this. The world wants to know.

I clean with a patch only,  with a 50/50 mix of hoppes and mystery oil. Scrub with the patches until they are clean, then put clp in. I don't brush my schutzen rifles. 

For modern smokeless, I clean more throughly, but there is a move there in matches that people only clean every 300-400 rounds, that is where their accuracy begins to degrade. Then they have to shoot 50ish rounds in the clean barrel to get their ES down.

After each shooting I would run a dry patch through the bore to remove loose fouling.

I only cleaned my .22 rimfire once a year but was required to shoot 50 to 100 rounds through it after cleaning to get it back to its maximum accuracy.

This target is the first one shot after I cleaned and refouled my barrel yearly.