Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Is your scope a handle?

pick it up by the scope but I can't think of a comfortable carry position I would use it for more then transferring off the ground to carry position

never have. my hands fit around the rifle just fine.

Pisses me off to agree with our new overzealous moderator but +3.

Probably somebody's shop.

Never, as it does not make sense to me either.

I saw a new scope get hit directly by a rock on the elevation turret. The scope buckled from the impact at the W&E housing. The rifle was slung over my son's shoulder and he slipped on a wet rock. He didn't fall completely down but the elevation housing took the blow.

You have a relatively thin aluminum tube inserted into the housing that contains the W&E mechanism - in many, but not all scopes. Carrying a 7 lb. or more rifle with the weight concentrated on such a joint seems like trouble waiting to happen. Murphy is alive and well.

(I also carry it upside down with my fingers around the magazine, never by the scope.)

Grabbed, yes, carry, no.

+1

So a scope getting whacked on the elevation turret with a rock is the same as carrying a rifle by the scope?

One of the valid ways to use a collimator (which so many people refuse to do because they can "bore-sight" the old-fashioned way) is to put one on the muzzle of a rifle in a vise, and then how doing various various things to the scope affects how the reticle lines up. You can make the reticle do all sorts of things just by pressing the top of the adjustment turrets in some scopes, or pressing the objective and ocular bell in different directions. But damn few scopes change POI just because we pressed on them a little.

This is because even big, tough scopes have to be a little flexible to withstand recoil. If manufacturers actually made them super-stiff, all sorts of problems would appear.

I'm one of those ignorant nitwits who does carry a rifle by the scope occasionally, and have yet to experience a change in POI. So +17, or whatever.

Hell yes it's a handle... Anymore questions???

I like for my rifles to balance right under the turrets...

John, I did not say a rock whack and carrying by the scope were the same thing. There is a joint - at least in that scope - that partially separated. Any joint can be a potential weak part in any structure. Some scopes may be made differently, you know more about that than I do. But you often caution against tightening the ring screws too much because of the thinness of the scope tube. So why put unnecessary stress on the tube and joint?

To me it seems prudent not to take chances; since carrying a rifle by the stock is not difficult!

It does not matter to me how people carry their rifles as long as they are safe with it. I simply chose not to carry a rifle by the aiming device.

Bill_N: I do not partake of the scope as a handle policy.
I am NOT sure whether it is or could be detrimental to maintaining a Rifle/scopes desired point of impact/sight/in?
I use slings and hand carry of the stock.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

been using my scopes as handles forever.

Never any problems (unless there so low I can't carry them that way!)...

CKW,



This must be a hard lesson to learn. A rifle scope is not just an aiming device. This very thread proves that.

I stick my finger in the muzzle and drag it behind me

I only use the Euros as handles, the budweiser beer can material on Leupolds just does not cut it .

I can't make myself carry the few scoped rifles I own by the scopes. I'll either sling it over my shoulder or hand carry it by the stock. Prolly nothin' wrong with it within reason...I just can't bring myself to do it.

Just as long as no one happens to hold it at eye level and use it to look at something.

I don't do it but with a GOOD scope and GOOD steel mounts I don't think it would be a problem. What I get a kick out of it when guys use it as a handle with cheap aluminum see through rings and a $50 scope. When I worked at a gun shop I did a test where I mounted a scope in see through mounts, bore sighted it and then walked around the store for about an hour carrying it by the scope. I then put the bore sighter back in - not even close! Then again if the scope didn't bore sight right with see throughs we would just push on the scope and give the rings a little "tweek"!