I have this beautiful Ruger .338WM Safari version M77 rifle that has iron sights. The scope I have for it is Leupold with a 30mm tube.

It would be ideal to mount the scope close to the barrel as much as possible, but if I do so I would be looking at the front sight through the scope. It seems that I have to buy rings that are very high in order to clear the sights.

I would appreciate your input on this before I buy the rings for it. Also, I will buy "extended" rings to allow for mounting the scope closer to my eye, much like another .338 I have.

I have several scopes that show the front sight. No big deal. Mount it to give you the best fit.

If you mount it high enough to not see the sights (especially with a low power scope) you will be so high you are craning your neck and will never shoot the rifle to its potential.
Mount your rings/ scope low as if the sights weren't there and just ignore them in the scope.
I once had a Leupold 1.5-5 scope that showed the front sight on my .375 so well that it bothered me, I moved to a 2.5-8 Leupold and I can still see it but it doesn't show up as definite and I can now ignore it on low power.

quote:

Originally posted by Ray Alaska:
I Also, I will buy "extended" rings to allow for mounting the scope closer to my eye, much like another .338 I have.

I would strongly advise against moving a scope any closer to your eye than the eye relief allows. Even a rifle with relatively mild recoil can give you a wicked cut above the eye shooting uphill, and a .338 is not what I would classify as a mild recoiling rifle. I would go for a scope with 5" eye relief, if I could find one which otherwise fit my requirements.

As far as the front sight is concerned, I am sure that after practicing with the scope for a while, you will never notice it. I certainly don't, and I have any number of low powered scopes mounted as low as they will go on my rifles. I find that mounting a scope as close to the line of sight of the iron sights as possible is ideal.

Don't fret over seeing the front sight; you should work on getting the scope to the height you are comfortable in shooting.

Thanks to all of you for the advise. I just won't worry about seeing the front sight through the scope, and will get used to it.

By the way, while my other .338WM rifle has had a Leupold Vary-X III 2.5-8x for a couple of decades already, and mounted so that it's very close to the barrel, I had to use extended rings. I still have to cram my neck into it when using anything past 6x, but not so when set at its lower numbers.

The new scope is a Leupold VX.R 3x9x40, which is a little longer than the 2.5-8x on the other rifle. What I plan to do is to buy a McMillan "Hunter" stock, and put the walnut one away. When buying the new stock I will get a gun smith, who's also a friend of mine, to measure my LOP, and order the stock with a Descelerator pad (the pad will be taken into consideration along the LOP). With the new scope and the right LOP, I won't have to use extended rings.

Thanks again. I appreciate you advise.

The front sight will phase out at about 4X, but seeing the front sight isn't a big deal to me...I use a 3X Leupold on most of my big bores, including a mod 77 Ruger African model..if you want a 20 mm straight scope and don't want to see the front sight use a 2x4 or 1.5x5 Leupold and use the high power..keep 20 mm scopes as low as the rear sight will allow.

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
The front sight will phase out at about 4X, but seeing the front sight isn't a big deal to me...I use a 3X Leupold on most of my big bores, including a mod 77 Ruger African model..if you want a 20 mm straight scope and don't want to see the front sight use a 2x4 or 1.5x5 Leupold and use the high power..keep 20 mm scopes as low as the rear sight will allow.

Thanks, Ray

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
The front sight will phase out at about 4X, but seeing the front sight isn't a big deal to me...I use a 3X Leupold on most of my big bores, including a mod 77 Ruger African model..if you want a 20 mm straight scope and don't want to see the front sight use a 2x4 or 1.5x5 Leupold and use the high power..keep 20 mm scopes as low as the rear sight will allow.

+1 I don't have with the front site I mount most of my scopes as low as possible.

General rule of thumb with scope mounting I have always used is to mount all scopes to just clear the objective or eye piece on 1-5x scopes to the action.

Cheers.

As a rule, a lot of gun stocks are simply designed for iron sights first because that's what's on the gun at the time of production and very little thought is given to what will be bolted to it down the road. Thankfully, that rule has been changing over the years, but at best a lot of stocks have become what one could best describe as: "a compromise between scopes and iron sights." They sort of work with both, but in practicality, when you start tossing the gun up with your eyes closed or facing a rabid polecat in the heat of battle, a lot gets lost in the translation. As has been said by tens-of-thousands of very observant people before me. When it comes to scopes, the lower the better is generally the best.

One thing that you should always also consider when you bolt something on to your gun is the mechanics of the fool things during operation. I have seen more guns than I can count that are literally, almost impossible to operate because the bolt handle is so close to the scope tube or eyepiece that you can't get your hand on the handle. It might be cute to operate your rifle with your thumb and poky pinky, but cute often doesn't cut it in the field. I have seen butter knife handles on various guns that literally had to be operated by lifting the handle and then pulling back on the shroud. People often never think of loading the gun either and a lot of them have to be loaded from the top. Fat fingered fawkers often have trouble with this little glitch with low mounted scopes. I have also seen a truck load of semi automatics that had to be operated with gloves. Any attempt otherwise would result in having half the bark ripped off of your hand from low mounted rings or rings located in a poor positions. Low is best. But take some time and play with it after you get your gadgets mounted on. Some times you have to compromise in an otherwise already compromising situation to get things to work properly. Wasting a split second finding the target is often a good compromise to having an unloaded gun in your hands.

quote:

Originally posted by speerchucker30x378:
I have also seen a truck load of semi automatics that had to be operated with gloves. Any attempt otherwise would result in having half the bark ripped off of your hand from low mounted rings or rings located in a poor positions.

I'm having a hard time visualizing this situation. I have two semi automatic hunting guns, a Ruger Mini-30 and a Winchester Model 100. Both have detachable magazines, so loading under a scope is not an issue. I have some military style rifles that I used to shoot in competition, but they too have detachable magazines, all except my NM M1 which is unscoped and my M1C clone, which has an offset scope to allow clip loading. What rifles are you referring to?

I couldn't agree more with your premise.

quote:

Originally posted by xausa:

quote:

Originally posted by speerchucker30x378:
I have also seen a truck load of semi automatics that had to be operated with gloves. Any attempt otherwise would result in having half the bark ripped off of your hand from low mounted rings or rings located in a poor positions.

I'm having a hard time visualizing this situation. I have two semi automatic hunting guns, a Ruger Mini-30 and a Winchester Model 100. Both have detachable magazines, so loading under a scope is not an issue. I have some military style rifles that I used to shoot in competition, but they too have detachable magazines, all except my NM M1 which is unscoped and my M1C clone, which has an offset scope to allow clip loading. What rifles are you referring to?

I couldn't agree more with your premise.

Imagine if you dare. A Browning BAR hunting rifle or a Winchester 100 that is pretty dirty and hard to operate. Now imagine that some turkey has used the low bases and Weaver rings and mounted the rings with those razor sharp thumb screws on the right hand side of the gun and as you rip it back the first knuckle on your pointy poky finger gets raked over that thumb screw leaving a big curl of human bark big enough to make a lampshade out of. Now imagine the more conventional method of excitement and pain where you anticipate the problem and instead, you curl your little finger around the operating handle and rip it back and as your hand goes back your little finger nail impacts on the nut or the side of the ring and RIPS YOUR LITTLE FINGER NAIL CLEAN OFF ! Now we're talkin pain! Perhaps the most fun is the HK 770 with it's slippery, flop out, operating handle which takes a team of horses to cycle manually and as you reef on it your hand slips off and your wrist or thumb gets dragged across a set of those very carefully thought out, EAW rings and bases with the 17 hundred sharp corners on it and slashes your wrist or knuckle WIDE OPEN. Shall I go on?

I'm very clumsy and yes, I did rip off my little finger nail on a BAR once. ONLY ONCE !

he he he

I was raised before scopes and high combs, we had Win. Mod. 70s and Rem 721,722s, all low combs for irons, then one Christmas Bill Weaver gave all the family a 2.5X Weaver with mounts to fit our rifles..He and Jack O'Connor hunted Mule deer and Coues deer with us from time to time...

We stuck those low power scopes on our low comb rifles and hunted with them..Only problem we had was we couldn't hit anything with those scopes, then Bill told us they had to be sighted in!!

We got that sighting in done, and never had any proplem killing deer, bear or elk, we didn't know about high combs, 3 point hold, and all that BS, and for that I am still forever gratefull!

I like a rifle set up for iron sights and QD mounts for a scope, it works for me..The opposite is awkward at best..but that's another post.