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| Hitting a wee-bit low at 7 yards |
This is belated follow-up on a previous post.
The problem was the stock. The rifle now wears a Magpul Hunter X-22 stock and a Simmons .22 Mag scope.
I rough-sighted in the rifle at 15 yards, then Belladonna and I made a trip to a private shooting range and we dialed the rifle in approximately 50 yards.
The first group of five were a solid 3.5 inches high and to the right. 3.5" at fifty is the equivalent of 7" at 100 yards. At 1/4" per click that would be 28 clicks to move the point-of-impact 3.5".
I moved it 14 clicks down and to the left.
As you can see the first adjustment did a fair job centering it but they were still quite high (Second group). That means the point-of-impact moved 1/2" per click for the horizontal and 1/4' per click for the vertical adjustment.
The second adjustment was a bit too much to the left but pretty promising for height (Third group).
I made a minor adjustment to move the group a touch to the right then loaded up some magazines for Belladonna to burn through. My magazines are Biden/Harris compliant and hold the square-root of 13 (169 rounds).
This was about 15 minutes of range-time.
This is not "Benchrest" quality shooting but it is plenty good enough to put a rabbit into the stew-pot at 50 yards. The thirteen shots measure 3 inches from extreme-to-extreme.
What is very promising is that five of the shots were "head-of-squirrel" shooting. Not only a tight group but very close to the nail we were using for an aim-point.
The take-home
I know people who would be mortified to put less-than-perfect shooting like this where the public could see it. They strive for one-inch groups at a hundred yards...and they can do it consistently. They shoot off of a bench and many of them don't shoot when it is windy. They would be aghast to have their buddies see these kinds of groups.
I think this is a disservice to new shooters.
Pride is expensive. A weapon that is not sighted-in is at best a stage prop and at worst something that will kill and wound targets you don't intend to hit. Don't let pride or fear of being judged stop you from sighting-in a weapon to the best of your ability. If the only day you can make it to the range is windy, then go to the range and sight in your weapon.
As a practical guy I consider this .22 to be adequately sighted in. It is capable of killing animals up to 20 pounds out to seventy yards. In brushy areas or where the grass is tall you are unlikely to SEE animals that far out.
And if you are patient and take only head-shots or if you put a bullet(s) through an animal's thoracic cavity and you let it lie-down and give the target's lungs time to collapse, it can kill animals far larger than 20 pounds.
I used to like to buy used guns. Usually from someone that needed some money and had one they would part with cheap. I had a bartender friends that would find hard up sellers for me and I would pay them a commission. After hunting season and before Christmas was cherry picking for guns. Anyway, I found that it was very seldom that I would get one that was sighted in even close to zero. Iron sights, scopes, .22s or 30-06s or anything in between were usually WAY off. I doubt if things have changed much in that regard. --ken
ReplyDeleteisn't the square root of 13 about 3.6?
ReplyDeleteDetails, details.
DeleteOh, I post those sight ins too... One rule of thumb I always use is to ONLY adjust one parameter at a time, and always 'tap' the scope after making the adjustment. I usually do elevation first, then windage. YMMV, and everybody seems to have their own way of doing it. That's a good final group at 100x, considering that there was any wind at all.
ReplyDeleteYou are right about tapping the scope after making the adjustment, Old NFO. I have done that and watched the crosshairs move more. Very good point to raise.--ken
Delete