quote:

Suffice to say that I'm a 50 yard offhand hunter.

That makes 2 of us! I shot 20 from each of the 416T and 470M today, about 50/50 offhand and sticks, at 25, 50 and 100 yds. I hit plate everytime off the sticks...but there were a couple less holes than shots offhand at 100! I am definitely better offhand with the 416T too.

Do your refurbished scopes hold the zero or do they wander around a little? I am just curious how they result in bigger groups compared to the fixed M4?

Cheers,
Canuck

Canuck,

If you just shot one three-shot group with them you might get lucky and get a small group. (I didn't get any really small groups with them today.)

If you look at 4 three-shot groups you can see where the true "zero" is, and it is not drifting in any linear fashion as the groups progress. The 12 shots overlaid just make a bigger "cloud". Some of the groups seem to string vertically, some horizontally when looked at individually. But there's no trend when looked at as a 12 shot group. I think the crosshairs are not settling back into the same place every time, so in that sense the zero is wandering. But it seems to be a constrained wandering.

I don't know how or why they are doing it, and if I did not have the M4 to test against I'd say the rifle only held 1.5 to 2 MOA. Since I do have the M4 that consistently shoots .5 MOA groups (and since the rifle used to do that before the variable broke) I know that it's the scope, not the rifle.

The way it is now you could fire dozens of three shot groups and not get three in a row as small as the ones that started this thread, much less three in a row that small with the same center. And remember those original three three-shot groups were with three different bullet types!

I have all three scopes on QRW rings that are lapped to the rifle's bases, so it is easy to swap scopes and see how they act. I fire a "not-for-record shot or two every time I swap the scopes to settle it in. Those settling shots don't really seem necessary, though - they'd fit in the "12 shot group".

BTW, I think that lapping the QRW rings while they are clamped to the specific rifle is necessary for good, repeatable return-to-zero when dismounting and mounting the scope. The rear base on my rifle is higher than the plane of the front base - all three sets needed about .005 lapped off the front of the saddle to get 100% contact. If it wasn't lapped out that would result in a lot of tension/distortion in the scope tube.

quote:

I don't know how or why they are doing it, and if I did not have the M4 to test against I'd say the rifle only held 1.5 to 2 MOA. Since I do have the M4 that consistently shoots .5 MOA groups (and since the rifle used to do that before the variable broke) I know that it's the scope, not the rifle.

That bugs me too. For the price of those VXIII's you'd think that they would not be the limiting factor to accuracy. It also makes me wonder about a couple of mine. I always figured it was the rifle that wasn't capable of better groups, but maybe its the scope.

Good point about the lapping. I haven't done that with mine, but it probably would have been a good idea. Not going to worry about it now though!

Cheers,
Canuck