First-Round Hit
Landing the opening shot on target, the real measure in hunting and field work where there is no warm-up round to settle the rifle in.
A first-round hit is putting the very first shot on target without a sighter or warm-up to fall back on. It is the metric that matters most in hunting and field work, where a game animal or a real-world opportunity does not wait for a second try. Achieving it depends on a trustworthy zero and accurate dope for the exact distance and conditions, since there is no chance to adjust off a missed first round.
The challenge is that the first shot from a clean, cold barrel can behave differently from the rest, which is why the cold-bore-shot is tracked so carefully. Some shooters preserve their first-round capability by firing a fouling shot before they ever need a hit that counts, accepting a known barrel state instead of a clean one. The whole discipline of dope keeping and cold-bore logging exists to make that first round predictable.