Expert or Student?

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life".

Nobody has asked, but to anwser the question anyway; NO I am not an expert, and I do not pretend to be one. however, I do consider myself a student and have read about everything written concerning guns and optics over the last 42 years or so.

I was at a gun club today with the usual last minute flury of folks sighting in their shotguns and muzzleloaders for the upcoming opening day on Saturday. I am wonder struck at times watching hunters sight in their respective choices for gun season.

Today I observed someone shooting their ML at a lasered 200 yards after stating that he was approximately two inches low and about 2 1/2 inches to the left at 100 yards. I am still pondering why one would be interested in checking out groups at 200 yards when the gun is not even sighted in at 100 yards. All things being equal, if you are off by 2 1/2 inches at 100 yards, you will off by 5 inches at 200 yards.

I soon realized that the person was trying to guess the point of impact at 200 yards and was holding on the top right edge of the rather spacious 3'X3' or larger cardboard. I mention this because I have seen it before and it is not unusual to observe this type of activity at the range. I wanted to try and explain minute of angle, 1/4 min clicks on his scope and the relationship to point of impact at the target, but decided against it. I should have at least pointed out that for starters, before checking out groups at 150 or 200 yards, one should have a 3 shot group centered about 2.5 inches high at 100 yards. The range was busy with people standing in line to sight in, and having only a few minutes myself to check out a shotgun for someone else, I regretably didn't take the time. One should adjust the scope setting to bring your group where the crosshairs are pointing instead of trying to use windage and elevation hold over to move your gun and guess where the projectile might land.

My experience has been with an in-line ML using two or three pyrodex pellets behind a saboted bullet, if your point of impact is dead center on the target and about 1 inch low at 25 yards, you should be in pretty good shape to start adjusting and fine tuning at 100 yards, After you are satisfied at 100 yards, then move your target out to 150 or farther. I did not ask to look through the scope so I cannot speak to whether the scope was mounted correctly and not canted to one side or the other.

For more tips on sighting in a ML, check out my articles on the TC Encore 209/50 and the TC Omega at gunsandoptics.com. Have a great opening day and a successful and safe season.

Dan www.gunsandoptics.com