More bullet spread could easily do it. Some of the gun barrel exits are only a few cm or even mm above the cowl in places and not always right near the end of the cowl so if the bullet angle is changed too much of course it could hit the nose/cowl etc.
We spend a lot of time with all this, it works here, and for other people so it must be something broken on the pc, and the only thing that makes any sense is a mod.