Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting 20 MOA Scope Base

I've used the follow rough rule of thumb when considering how much base cant to use on a rifle. Much of course depends on your rifle and load. It's silly to use a 40 MOA base on a rifle that's meant to shoot 200 yds or less, even if the scope has enough the elevation adjustment to use a canted base. At the same time it's also silly to have a rifle, cartridge and scope capable of shooting 1,000 yds. and choking it down with a base and scope that won't let you utilize it's inherent range.

All this is to say, the rifle, it's cartridge, it's scope and it's bases and rings are all part of a package. And each part must complement the other.

Now on to canted bases. Any decent scope maker will now tell you the total elevation travel in the scope specifications. Those numbers are expressed in MOA or MILS.

Any Scope that has a Elevation travel of less than 50 MOA (14 Mils) gets a 0 MOA Base
Any Scope that has a Elevation travel of Less than 70 MOA (20 MILS) gets a 10 MOA Base (3 Mils)
Any Scope that has a Elevation travel of Less than 85 MOA (24 MILS) gets a 20 MOA Base (6 Mils)
Any Scope that has a Elevation travel of Less than 100 MOA (29 MILS) gets a 30 MOA Base (9 Mils)
Any Scope that has a Elevation travel of greater than 110 MOA (32 Mils) get a 40 MOA Base (12 MILS) or more.

I use rounded numbers in the above. And yes there are exceptions, and special purpose applications where deviating is necessary, but generally unless you know what your doing, the above works well and will not get you into trouble.