Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Rifle fit and accurate shooting

Yesterday, I was fiddling with a few rifles trying to decide which to use on my next day trip.
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<br>I tried an old Ruger 77 tang safety that is set up with a Leupold 2x7 33mm and iron sights to boot. Sighting through the scope, I noticed that as I changed powers down to 2x the front iron sight came into view in the scope.
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<br>BUT the iron post was way off to the left from where the crosshairs pointed! This meant that the bore was off by a considerable degree from where the scope was pointing! In a word, YIKES!
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<br>I also noticed that very small head movements on the horizontal plane would make for fairly big jumps in the front sight/cross hair relationship. (Other variables, like canting, had no effect.) The worst part was that to get the two to line up, I had to hold my head so that it just barely touched the stock. This was hard to hold firm and certainly did not give the tight cheek weld that is a good part of consistency in shooting.
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<br>Now this rifle has been in my keeping for about five years and I've hunted with it four or five times with reasonable success the few times it has barked at game. At the bench, it shoots reliable groups and has never been particulary "cranky" about doing so. It is disturbing to see how far off things were in a standing firing position. (It is hard enough getting the normal standing wobbles under control but throw in a misorientation of sights and bore and you've got serious trouble.)
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<br>It now appears clear that that stock does not fit me properly and that I will have to build out the cheek pad a bit -- maybe with one of those Bear Paw slide-on neopreme pads -- to get a better cheek weld. I can do that and fix the Ruger problem.
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<br>But how do I check the fit on my other rifles?
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<br>Most of my rifles are w/o iron sights and I can't figure a way to test the actual cross hair/bore relationship when actually shooting in the field -- rather than from the bench where everything is locked down tight. How can I be sure that the scope and bore are in synch and, if they are not, which adjustments I have to make?
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<br>Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance. 1b
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I'm the last guy you should ask about stock fit. In my youth, I was too small -- the "fit" of an adult's stock was more of a convulsion than a fit. I learned early to live with (and adapt to) any stock that I put to my shoulder. In more recent years, I'm no longer too small -- more likely too tall -- for the stocks on hunt sponsors' factory rifles and shotguns. So I still just adapt to whatever stock I get.
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<br>What you see through your scope is (I suspect) parallax that makes it seem that your scope is out of line with your muzzle. You'll get a better "read" on bore-and-scope alignment by bore-sighting with either an optical bore-sighter* or by the simple means of
<br>(a) parking the rifle very solidly,
<br>(b) removing the bolt,
<br>(c) inserting a fired, deprimed case in the chamber,
<br>(d) sighting through the primer vent,
<br>(e) centering the bullseye in the muzzle, and
<br>(f) adjusting the scope reticle to the center of the bullseye.
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<br>Don't be surprised to find that your reticle wanders all over the target as you "zoom" your scope from its lowest to its highest magnification and back -- one chief reason that I don't like or trust variables, some of which I've found to vary their "zero" as much as a foot or two at a hundred yards, with shifts in magnification.
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<br>*Mine are from Redfield and Bushnell -- no longer available new, I imagine. I'm told that the new Leupold bore-sighter is a ring-tailed hummer, but I haven't even seen one yet.

1B,
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<br>I wouldn't worry too much about the front sight thing -- your scope is set to be parallax-free at 150-200 yards, so at 2 feet you probably have quite a bit.
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<br>Re. scope & bore alignment -- the question is how far are you off if the crosshairs are centered? Is your windage adjustment cranked all the way to one end?
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<br>IIRC there are about 5 full turns in the adjustment on this scope.
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<br>John

Ken,
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<br>The procedure you describe is pretty much how I bore sight all my rifles including the one in question.
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<br>I think the cause may lie in a difference between sighting the rifle w/o external supports and doing so from the bench or other rests. When I have the rifle in a firm rest I don't seem to get that variance between bore and crosshairs at 2x -- only when standing, free-style. I think it has something to do with the other unsteadyness factors in free style making my cheek weld less uniform or rigid and keeping me from automatically compensating.
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<br>In previous use, the scope was usually on 4x with occasional shifts upward to max power to check out bullet impacts at the range. I never have fired it at 2x but I have looked through it while shifting the power from low to high to check for POA movement, and I have not detected any great movement in the crosshair. I don't think the variable is at fault.
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<br>John.
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<br>The parallax issue sounds like it may be valid. I know little about parallax but will look into it. The large degree of movement that minor horizontal head movements cause is still a puzzler to me.
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<br>When I switched the scope a few years ago from another rifle, I recentered all the adjustments to halfway between their full travel. (It is harder to do accurately on the clickless VX-II but I just estimated the halfway point on full cycle turns.) I usually do this after a scope has gone through lots of incremental changes so that I know approximately how much adjustment range is still left and whether the mounts are reasonably true to the bore. I have found some that were way out and needed shims.
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<br>Thanks. 1b

1B, you just described a problem I have with my most recent acquistiion. I hate it when something isn;t square or centered, etc. I was worried that my scope also wasn't aligned with the barrel. I was concerned that I had a disaster that would need a major fix. I was glad to hear Ken's response as I highly respect his knowledge and experience. I solved the problem, at least in my head, by turning the scope up to the point that the barrel disappears from the image in the scope.