Part II of shooting day
Another new shooter at the range was doing some load development, we had a chance to chat between the barrle kool down times.
He explained that he was getting better grouping with his factory ammo then his reloads, so we took the time to check things out in that department.
Everything looked with in specs with the reloading skills he's at,
Looking at his scope I noticed that the parallax knob on his scope was just set at infinity for 100 and 200 meter targets,,, I asked him if he understood the concepts of how Parallax works. His reply was, "I use it to focus."
Don't laugh my friends, I thought the same thing for 30 years, but I got schooled fast last year while getting up to speed on attacking the easy small things first,,, and tuning the Parallax for your eye,,, and your eye only is pretty important.
So we discussed what is, and how to set it,,, plus I shared in the idea of getting the cross hairs to move off the Bulls Eye just by moving your eye back and forth on the target with out touching the rifle.
At 300 meters I can manipulate the cross hairs on my scope to move 10" from the bulls eye in any direction when it's not set correct, I refer to it as wondering crosshair test.
So here's a link that helped me get up to speed, and my new friend at the range,,, well things down range are looking much better.
https://www.longrangehunting.com/art...parallax.1175/
So it will take a few times to get it set,,, get a color marker and the best of blue skies.
And a target beyond 200 meters really shows how it's working.
I test the parallax settings at all of my distances shooting to make sure its set,,, after that, I re-checked it every year just incase my eye sight changed.
So in stead of setting to where it's working,,, I go the other route of getting the widest spread I can at 300 meters on my target. A incorrect Parallax adjustment can do this.
Both of my optic Len's can get about 10" of drift from the bulls eye on either side,,, that 20" ish inches in total,,, that's alot my friends.
When we get to see this, we know what needs adjusting.
So I use the link above to get my scope adjusted, then fine tune the cross hairs from there,,, its kind of a work in process,,, but once you get it,,, your cross hairs will be on target no matter where your eye is on the "objective lens."
This is a must for those of us that shoot the tactical reticle lenses since we normally centre the black outter ring around the aiming bar we are using at what ever distance,,, I like to mount my optics forward so the black ring is seen all the time,,, just like archey sights,,, pin in the center, peep hole edges evenly around the pin.
No matter where my eye is while looking threw the objective lens, my cross hairs are true on the bulls eye evey time,,, so long as my Parallax is set for that intended distance.
Just to simple, and its like free accuracy that "could" improve the shooting sport.
Attack the simple easy stuff first, it befits the shooter the most, I always like this saying from my shooting coach friend.
"Not much sence chasing the rotation of the earth when there are many other things you can do to improve accuracy that will show better results sooner with better consistency time and time again,,, once I have that down pat,,, then take the time to chase the the more technical things to tighten up the package after that." The rotation of the earth along with other things fit into that category. Ha
I know most folks already know this.
I only shared the above with newer shooters that choose to get up to speed at their choosing, and yes, the above link is only 1 way of many to lock those cross hairs on to target.
It was interesting learning this last year, the new shooter at the range is grouping much better,,, between the parallax fine-tuning and some dry fires prior to a shot, his water line is much much better.
Even a mid age dog like me sometimes needs to refresh the game plan.
And yes, I'm sharing more information with him in the reloading category, this winter the both of us are on board with the "Reloader II course." time to get a handle on this to.