How do you get the sand out of the barrel that's left in there after each and every shot from the primer?
Boresnakes, if you use them, are only useful for in the field, emergency, cleaning.
They carry dirt and grit back into the bore unless you wash them between every use.
Everybody has their own do's and don'ts about cleaning. Boresnakes are great. Boresnakes are death. Coated rods are great. Coated rods are death, just like boresnakes. Segmented rods are fine. Segmented rods are death. Very hard, polished stainless rods are great. Very hard, polished stainless rods are death. Bore guides are a must. Bore guides don't matter. Cleaning from the muzzle end is fine. Cleaning from the muzzle end is death.
Rarely clean a rimfire. Clean a rimfire often. Only clean it when accuracy falls off. (Falls off how far? Compared to what kind of accuracy to begin with?) And on, and on, and on. Asking a benchrest shooter that's worried about the gun getting so bad that it *starts* shooting 0.25" groups (THAT'S HORRIBLE!!) is a little different than asking a hunter if he's going to clean it because it's shooting 1.5" groups. (THAT'S GREAT! Still hit the grouse in the head. This gun is awesome!)
Fact of the matter is, you're not likely to ever have anything embedded in your very soft and pliable boresnake that isn't already being dragged/scraped through the barrel on every shot by a, relatively speaking, hard bullet. If anything did happen to be in your boresnake that could potentially do your barrel any harm, the fact is the material the boresnake is made up from is going to be plush enough to give way anyhow. You'll likely die before you see any ill effects from using a boresnake, even if you shoot a couple hundred rounds a day and clean after every session. You'll probably wash the thing now and then anyway.
I still prefer a stainless rod, with brushes that have solvent poured on them, and then patches with solvent on them, and then dry patches, until the thing sparkles. And then a lightly oiled patch to finish off. But I have a boresnake in my match-day kit, too, even though my rods and bore guides are also in the rifles' cases. Usually I'll clean after a day of shooting, but if I put it off some time and think it could use it, I happily pull the boresnake through in just a few seconds and live with that.
Both my CZ and my Anschutz spray shots around to varying degrees after cleaning, until they've had enough shots run through them to get the lube down the entire length of the barrel. Good rule of thumb for that is one shot per inch of barrel. Both shoot rather well after doing so, but they absolutely need those 'seasoning' shots before they settle down. They both shoot accurately enough for silhouette matches (an inch or so out at rams) without cleaning for 1000-2000 rounds or more, save for a wipe of the crown now and then. If I'm taking the Anschutz to the odd benchrest match, it gets cleaned immediately before, as accuracy for that type of thing begins to fall off enough to matter there after a mere 150-200 rounds, if not less. So, it all depends on the amount of accuracy you want/need.
Unless you're hamfisting it horribly while cleaning, the only likely damage your barrel will ever see will come from simply firing the thing and continually running bullets over sand contained in every round, and that's what'll wear it out, if you keep it long enough for that to happen. But even in that case, desired accuracy is relative, and you may or may not notice or care when it starts to worsen from the chamber leade getting shot out, or the bore ahead of the chamber showing more and more wear. A hardcore benchrest dude will replace a barrel long before a silhouette guy would, or a casual hunter or plinker, who may never replace one because it never gets bad enough for them or the type of shooting they do. It's all relative.
