How To Sight In A Rifle Scope
There are several situations when your rifle doesn’t require a scope. If you’re hunting for smaller game, if you’re practicing your shots at the shortest ranges, and such. In every other scenario, you’ll need a scope if you want your shots to be accurate.
Now, in this article we’re going to talk about how to sight in a rifle scope in just a few easy steps, so let’s get straight to it.
Checking if the scope was properly installed
Before you actually get to the part of sighting in your rifle scope, you should first make sure that it was properly installed. A vast majority of modern rifles come supplied with a pre-built mounting system, which, of course, is different for each model.
Some rifles feature pre-drilled or tapped holes, other models are outfitted with grooved rails. Regardless of which type of a mounting system your rifle scope has, you should ensure that the scope was fitted in properly.
More: https://scopehut.com/how-to-zero-your-rifle-scope/
Adjusting the eye distance properly
This is probably the most important step in sighting in your rifle scope. The manner in which you adjust the eyepiece distance will affect the clarity of the image you will see through it, which in turn affects the accuracy of your scope.
Start tinkering around with the eyepiece until you can see perfectly clear and distinct images. The goal here is to find the best balance between eye relief and fine-tuning the image. Just how far the scope’s end is away from the shooter’s eye amounts to the ‘comfort’ of using a scope.
If the scope is too far away from you, you will need to waltz around the stock until you become able to use it at all. On the flip side, if it’s too close, you’re risking injuring yourself as the backlash might leave you with a black eye.
Finding this balance usually takes time and experience, so don’t feel frustrated if you don’t get it in your first shot. The only thing you really need to worry about is ‘not’ going to extremes, and we can’t stress how important this is. So, just make sure that your scope is neither too far nor too close to your eye as you’re adjusting the distance.
An additional consideration would be eye dominance. If you experience cross eye dominance, there are ways to correct and/or adjust to the situation.
More: 3 Ways to Correct Cross Eye Dominance When Shooting
Level your scope
Basically, to ‘level a scope’ refers to adjusting in such a way that the crosshair actually points at the direction where you’re shooting. This step is a bit harder than the previous two as it actually involves some shooting too.
First of all, assume a shooting position. You can use a mount bench or a bipod, it doesn’t matter for as long as your rifle (and your posture) is stable. Look through the scope – if you’ve done everything right, your crosshairs should be perfectly parallel, and take a shot.
Your scope is ‘on a good level’ if the crosshairs remain the same ever after taking a couple of shots. This means that the mount is good, that the hardware is reliable, and that you’ve completed the previous steps efficiently. If not, let’s head on to the next step.
Aligning the crosshairs
If you’re incredibly lucky, the crosshairs on your scope will be perfectly parallel as is. However, in more than 90% of situations that is not the case. Aligning the crosshairs is another vital step in sighting in your rifle scope.
In essence, some beginner shooters completely overlook this aspect of zeroing the scope in. It is possible to be (somewhat) accurate even if the crosshairs are ‘off’. Of course, this would mean that you’ll need to wilfully accumulate ‘bad’ shooting habits, such as getting accustomed to ‘inaccurate’ crosshairs.
It is possible to memorize the ‘error margins’ of your crosshairs and perform various mental acrobatics to gap them. However, simply adjusting them is both easier and requires less effort.
Each scope is outfitted with ‘turrets’ on the sides. Each ‘turret’ moves the center of the crosshairs in a certain direction. For example, the turret A governs the vertical movement while the turret B governs the horizontal movement. Use them both to ensure that the center of your crosshairs is in the center of your scope as well.
Testing out your scope
Even if you’ve done all this for a couple of times, you can never truly say that you’ve properly sighted your scope in if you don’t test it out. You might have missed a spot, you might have overlooked something, and again, you might have done something completely wrong.
By shooting your scope in different groups (and from different ranges) you will be able to tell how good of a job you’ve done. Of course, you’ll need to adjust your scope as the range from which you intend to shoot increases, so it would be best if you’ve kept the ‘testing’ range in the bounds of 10 to 100 yards.