I wanted to take a few minutes to share a lesson that I learned at the range this week.
First, I have to say that I have to keep my shooting habit within reasonable financial limits because I am disabled and have a limited income. I am able to have nice guns (or at least guns I enjoy) without spending much money by building up my guns from milsurp rifles. Ditto for ammo, I load my own and cast my own. I haven’t bought factory centerfire ammo in years.
But when it comes to scopes, I cannot build my own. I am limited to buying less expensive brands. I dig for gold amongst the junk by reading reviews and sometimes torture testing before I install. I have come to like BSA scopes, because I have found that SOME OF THEM offer a great value for the money. I have come to believe that regardless of the name, these scopes are built in many different factories by many different subcontractors with very different quality control standards. Every model is different.
The can also be quirky. Over the years I have learned that one of my favorites – the BSA 2x pistol scope – is frequently reverse labeled left is right and up is down. Other than that, they work GREAT.
The lesson I learned this week relates to windage and elevation adjustments. I was zeroing to of my rifles – one of which I was ready to put another scope on because on a previous trip I could not get it to zero. Today I figured out what was going on with both of them: Both of them required 2-3 shots after each adjustment to “settle in” – after which they hit right where they were supposed to! BTW, the dead give away was that I had two groups that were quite a bit apart.
Yes, I did tap on them, and that did not work. Firing two to three shots did. My 8x57 scout rifle – that I upgraded from a 2x to a 2x7 promptly shot a 7 shot 1.25 moa group centered right where I wanted it to be.
When I got home I Google’d the issue and found just a couple of posts that confirmed my findings.
So if you have a scope that is giving you fits, you might want to try shooting a couple of rounds into the berm and then shooting a group on target. I hope this helps someone.
