I set my scopes up for me. Apparently, the way I shoulder a rifle is different than most. I like my crosshairs to be perfectly verticle and horizontal when I look thru the glass. It seems that anybody else tries it and the crosshairs are canted, the vertical tipping left to about 11 O'clock. What I want to know, is this affecting my accuracy, or theirs, or both? I tried setting the rifle true up on a rest to get the crosshairs perfect, but on my shoulder the way I hold it they cant to the right, so I'm the oddball, anyway.

I'm the same way, it they look perfect to me, they must be "off".

This is common when you are not holding your rifle level in the shooting position. Not everyone mounts their rifles in a level position. I believe it is much more common than most think, if they think about it at all.

This is also why so many different scope leveling devices are available on the market. These devices are designed to "make" you mount the scope level to the axis of the bore, which is how the scope is supposed to be mounted.

A canted crosshair will cause POI deviation, but the amount and distance required to make a substantial deviation on target is dependent upon many variables and may not be enough to present serious problems when hunting.

In other words, even if you mount your scope in a canted position, it may not have an adverse effect on your 3"-5" kill zone on an animal. Only you can make this determination by practice at the range.

What I have found when mounting a rifle scope is that if the reticle looks level with my right eye I need to look through the scope with the rifle mounted left handed and if it looks level with my left eye, and if it looks level with both eyes it is indeed level. How I found out the reticles weren't perectly level is that I had seen the reticle looking level when looked through with my right eye and thought it was good to go, but when my left handed friend looked through it he said the reticle was canted. I don't understand this but it works for my friend and myself. Also, with the reticle out of level your rifle will not shoot the center at longer or shorter ranges.

Do you have a long neck?

If so, you're probably 'hanging' over the top of the stock.

George

Nope, I'm completely ordinary. Unless you ask the guys over in the political forum.

unclench your jaw :-)

It sounds as if you are holding your rifle at a cant. If so, regardless of whether the scope's crosshairs look level, you will find that your bullet strikes at an increasingly wider windage from zero as the yardage increases. However, unless you are shooting at extreme yardage, this error is not particularly significant. Assuming this is a hunting rifle rather than a bench rifle, keep on mounting your scopes so that they look "right" for you. At normal hunting distances it will make no difference.

On a bench rifle it is critical that you eliminate cant. But on a benchrest you will not have the same tendancy to cant your rifle as when you shoot offhand, so eliminating cant is not that difficult.

quote:

Originally posted by Luckyducker:
What I have found when mounting a rifle scope is that if the reticle looks level with my right eye I need to look through the scope with the rifle mounted left handed and if it looks level with my left eye, and if it looks level with both eyes it is indeed level. How I found out the reticles weren't perectly level is that I had seen the reticle looking level when looked through with my right eye and thought it was good to go, but when my left handed friend looked through it he said the reticle was canted. I don't understand this but it works for my friend and myself. Also, with the reticle out of level your rifle will not shoot the center at longer or shorter ranges.

I use the same method but have the rifle setting on bags on my shooting table when checking with both eyes. I've double checked the set up with machinist levels through the process and found it to be very accurate.