Every year thousands of hunters and gun enthusiasts buy new rifles and scopes and spent a whole box of ammo to sight in their scope. The problem is it shouldn’t take more than a few rounds to sight in your scope. They just don’t know how to sight in a scope properly.
Most people seem to think they can bench rest a rifle fire a couple shots, then move the sight adjustments a few turns and see what happens. Then repeat until they have a zero. They do without paying any attention to MOA the amount of adjust per click on their scope or anything else. Not to mention there are those who don’t follow the basic rifle shooting fundamentals when sighting in a rifle. This makes it very hard to accurately sight in a rifle.
Bore Sight
Now you don’t have to bore sight a rifle before you take it out to the range and sight in a scope. However, it helps get you on paper to start. Thus making it faster and easier to use either of the two main procedures of sighting in a scope.
There are types of bore sights. The one that is caliber specific and looks like a bullet only with a small laser in the tip. The other type looks more like a laser pointer with a very skinny end. Both work well. However, if you have lots of different calibers of rifles you may want to get the universal style laser bore sighter. As you will save money on not having to buy a new one for every new caliber of rifle you want to boresight. The upfront cost is more but you’ll save in the long run.
How to bore sight a rifle
Bore sighting a rifle scope is pretty straight forward. Follow the directions on your bore sighter by either loading it in the chamber or placing at the end of the barrel. Then look down your scope at some sort of target a distance away. This should be a distance of at least 25 yards, but if that’s not possible the longest distance you have will work. It just won’t be as close when you get to the range.
Now that you are looking in the scope all you have to do is adjust your windage and elevation on the scope until the crosshairs, or red dot is lined up perfectly with the laser dot on your target. It’s really that easy.
One warning with multi-caliber laser bore sighters. Some of the cheap ones are not perfectly centered in their housing. This means if you rotate them in your barrel you will find that your scope and bore sight all of sudden don’t line up. If this is the case don’t worry too much. What you want to do is sight your rifle in at a close distance and understand that when you get to gun range you’ll be off a bit more than you’d expect.
2 Main Procedures To Sight in a Scope
There are lots of ways to sight in a rifle scope. Some people just adjust their scope after every shot and chase that zero around constantly. Not all ways of sighting in a rifle are good. There is however two good easy procedures that can make getting your rifle sighted in easy.
Bench-Rest
The bench rest method of sighting in a rifle works well and can get you dead-on in about 3 shots. However, you will need a lead sled or other mount to strap your rifle down.
You want to start by strapping down your rifle so you can’t affect its movement at all. Aim it at your target and fire one round. Then without moving the rifle, adjust the scope crosshairs so they match up with the hole where your first shot hit the target.
Then re-aim the rifle so the crosshairs are dead center of you target fire another shot. It should be dead on. If not do the same thing again. It shouldn’t take you more than two rounds with the 3rd round just to double-check it’s on.
This method is easy and quick. With only a couple of problems. It relies on a bench rest. Which not everyone has. The other problem is when you start shooting from your normal position without rest your scope may seem off to you. As you aren’t shooting as accurately as your rifle does from a bench rest.
Groupings and MOA adjustments
The other way to sight in a rifle takes a little more ammo and some a lot more attention to the shooting fundamentals. First, you want to get into your normal stable shooting position. I would suggest the prone position works the best for this. Then fire about 5 shots all aiming in the exact same spot, don’t worry where they hit. Just make sure you aim in the same spot each time.
Now that you have a decent group you’ll want to measure how far the center of your group is from where you were aiming. Let’s say it’s 2″ high and 4″ to the right. This is where you need to understand MOA and a little math.
You now take the distance you are shooting at and calculate how many MOA you are off. So let’s say you are sighting in at 25 yards. This means 1 MOA would be equal to 1/4″ at 25 yards, this means your 2″ that you are high is equal to 8 MOA and your 4″ to the right equals 16 MOA.
Your next step is to look at your scope adjustments and see what each click is equal to. Many are 1/4 MOA per click. This means you are 8 MOA off on elevation, and you need to turn your elevation adjuster down 32 clicks, and your windage adjuster 64 clicks.
After adjusting your scope using this method shoot another group of 5 rounds you should be really close. You can always re-adjust. This method does take a little more ammo and honestly, if your groups aren’t pretty close together you should be working on rifle marksmanship and not worrying about sighting in your scope. Until you can shoot a group less than 3-4 MOA this method isn’t going to work well for you.
Conclusion
Sighting in your rifle scope isn’t hard and shouldn’t take a lot of time. A little bit of knowledge about MOA and how your scope works makes a huge difference. It’s best to sight your rifle in the way you plan on shooting it. However, bench resting your rifle can save a lot of time and get you out shooting faster than using groups and MOA. Either way, if you are constantly adjusting your rifle scope to zero it out. Then you may consider checking that the mounts are tight and it’s a good quality scope. If you are still having problems then you need a little more training.