What range should i zero my scope

Educational Resources. Get Outside. Hunter Education. Shooting Sports. Hunter Education Instructor. Chapter 1 - Intro to Hunter Education. Chapter 2 - Firearms and Ammunition. Chapter 3 - Shooting Skills. Chapter 4 - Hunting Skills. Chapter 5 - Primitive Hunting. Chapter 6 - Hunting Safety. Chapter 7 - Responsible and Ethical Hunting.

Chapter 8 - Preparation and Survival. Chapter 9 - Wildlife Conservation. Certain types of scope rings fit only certain types of scope bases. It is important that these components match. Here is a great article on Outdoorlife. Get your eyepiece situated in such a way that you see a clear, distinct image. Fine tuning the scope and creating the perfect amount of eye relief — the distance between the end of the scope and your eye is a key component to sighting your rifle scope. You can choose to position your rifle on a shooting bench with a mount, or use a bipod.

There are many types of rifle mounts available in various price ranges that are specifically designed for scope sighting. Related: Best Rifle Scopes. Most shooters do not take the alignment of their recticle into consideration when zeroing in their scope. Put up a target at short range - 25 or 50 yards. A bull's-eye target is probably best for this because it's easier to align the round target within the round view through your barrel.

Line up your barrel on the target, make sure it's steady and then look through your scope or sights. Using the adjustments, move the scope or sights until you're seeing the same "picture" as through your barrel. Now it's time to shoot. I'm pretty darn good at boresighting, and once in a while, I get it spot-on- but it is not a perfect science, and neither collimators nor laser boresighting devices are perfect, either.

So I start with a big, clean target! If you have some confidence, you can start at 50 yards, which is what I usually do, but if you've just clamped a scope on something like a lever-action, where it's impossible to look down the barrel, better start at 25 yards with plenty of clean target; sometimes you can be way off! Shooting and making adjustments, I try to get the rifle more or less zeroed at short range. The legend is that a yard zero will be about right at yards, but this is not true.

It depends on the trajectory of the cartridge and the height of the scope, but generally speaking, a perfect zero at 25 yards will be too high at yards, so if you start at 25 yards with a scoped rifle, you'll usually save some ammo by making that initial short-range zero about an inch low. When I start at 50 yards I try to make it "point of aim, point of impact" - and then I'm ready to move out to longer range. Now that the rifle is roughly in zero, there are three basic decisions to make before fine-tuning: distance, load and point of impact.

For distance, I believe in zeroing at yards. Less is not precise enough, and while I know some good riflemen zero at yards and more, I prefer to sight in at yards so I remove as much human error as possible and minimize effects such as wind.

If you plan to shoot at longer ranges, it's a good idea- and maybe essential- to practice at longer ranges, but for sighting in, I prefer yards. If you've already decided what load you intend to use, then you're ready to move ahead. But all rifles display different levels of accuracy when you change brands, bullets, propellants or anything else. So if you're still working on what load you want to use, I recommend postponing achieving a perfect zero and just shoot groups.

At this point it doesn't matter where they land on the target. You may ultimately select the most accurate load that you try, or you may compromise a bit between optimum accuracy, bullet performance and even velocity. Once the load is selected, you need to decide exactly where you want your yard point of impact. At yards, time on the bench taught me to hold 7. Thank God for credit cards and irresponsible banks. When I was 19, I dropped a solid plains mule deer with the weapon at yards.

As my love of hunting grew and my budget jumped out of the red, I started expanding my adventures. He was watching through a spotting scope when I put a round an inch-and-a-half high on paper. I looked through the scope. The hole was right where I wanted it. I shot again. I spent the next hour learning about how shots over yards on the ranch are extremely rare, and the reasons a shooter should always be sighted-in dead-on at the exact distance they expect to harvest game at.

This scenario has played out a lot over the years. Of course, there are the odd balls — the same crowd that dial in their bows in meters rather than yards — that go dead-on at or two-inches high at yards. What should you do? Where you set your zero is secondary to time spent shooting the rifle.

Whether you reload or buy factory ammo, time spent finding the right load is well worth it. Plus, each round you send downrange provides extra practice and helps you become more familiar with your rifle and scope. A good buddy of mine saved his pennies and purchased a 28 Nosler.