Some people shouldn't be allowed to get out of bed some days (Pt. 2)

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dakota.potts

New member
We had a similarly titled thread where a forum member confessed to getting a bunch of gear together and driving a good distance to a competition and wondering when everybody was going to show up before finally driving home. That member found out upon arriving at home they showed up on the wrong day.

Today I had an incident which I can only imagine to be similar. I have a CZ 452 and got a Nikon P22 scope for Christmas, but just got my rings in the mail yesterday. I mounted them and went today to zero my scope. I brought 100 rounds of CCI blazer thinking it should be plenty.

I sit down to shoot and my rounds are all over the place. Half of them I can't see in the scope. I start twisting the knobs to get them back in place, but I'm puzzled as nothing seems to be working and everything seems to be all over the place. Bullets going randomly, knobs seem to be affecting it but only randomly and haphazardly.

It was about 80 rounds into the zeroing process when the person at the next lane asks me if I'm having any luck sighting it in. I stand up, exasperated, thinking about putting the rifle in the car and going to re-mount it at home because something obviously wasn't working. He asks me if I'm using standard elevation and MOA adjustment and I look down at the rifle to confirm. I look down and see the knob on top of the scope marked "1 click = 1/4" at 50 yards" and beside it an arrow with the letters D and U.

My brain feebly sparked now, starting to make the connection... slowly now, could it be?

I had been using the top knob as windage and the knob on the side as elevation. It only made sense. The knob that turned side to side must change the horizontal point of aim and the knob that rotated vertically must affect the point of aim vertically. Alas, it was not so. With the problem finally figured out, it took me another 15 rounds to get it very close. My target was a shattered piece of clay pigeon on the berm at 100 yards, about 1 inch across. My last 5 shots brought it close until, on the last round I brought with me, my bullet hit its target finally.

And that's how it took me 100 rounds to zero my rifle.

Then I found 10 shiny rounds of American Eagle .22 in the range bag and pulled those out. I hit 7 out of 10 similarly sized targets (some as big as 2 inches, some as small as a half an inch). Not the greatest shooting on my part, and there is still some fine adjustment to go, but it is a very fine rifle and scope combination
 
Luckily I had just gotten a great deal on some CCI Mini mags so it only cost me about $7 to sight in my rifle :D

Just learn from my mistakes and read the labels on the knobs
 
It’s that proving your dumber time is it?
Ok, here goes. Doing the exact same thing. I bought a Star scope (I know cheep crap) but I wanted to try one and since it was only 90$. 4X 12, lighted cross hairs and range adjustment.
Put it on one of the AR’s and went to the range to try it out. WHAT A POS!
Thing has large MOA adjustment knobs. Turn it two MOA and it wouldn’t move an inch on target at 50 yards. Move it 6 or 7 and it would move a lot. Same as vertical.
Tried for an hour and a good 100 rounds, sometimes it would move an inch or less and sometimes for the same amount of change it would move 3 or 4 inches. Targets looked like I was shooting a shotgun at 2000 yards.
Went home to take the thing off and give it away.
When I was removing it I notice a screw on the sight adjustments knobs. The sight adjustment came right off to show a screw head with click adjustment. And small scratches where the loose screw was scraping it because IT WAS LOOSE!
This is so you can set it for 0 with the screw heads and then mount the wind age and vertical adjustment from 0.
Just glad no one noticed what I was doing.
Went back and found that for a 90$ scope it’s not all that bad.
 
Woebegone scope woes

Friend's (not referring to a hypothetical me) rifle would not zero despite heroic efforts. He mounted the scope with the windage adjustment knob on top and elevation knob on the left. Fixed it on the spot by loosening the bands and a 90 degree twist to the right.
 
That's a RTFM right there.
I saw a guy trying to sight in at the range last year. He had the scope rotated so the elevation knob was on the LEFT and windage was on TOP. I finally had to tell him unless he had something new on the market he should think about rotating it 90 degrees. Yup, RTFM.
 
When in doubt, reading the instructions is usually helpful.
Yeah, I know, that runs against the grain, but that's why they're in the box with the scope.
 
When in doubt, reading the instructions is usually helpful.
Click to expand...

Read the printed instructions? Real men don’t do that! The first thing a real man does is throw the instructions away! :p
 
Reading the manual briefly crossed my mind.

And then I remembered it was in the box at home because I had taken the scope out of the box to use it and hadn't bothered to bring the packaging to the range. Scopes are simple enough to operate that I shouldn't need a manual, right? :rolleyes: Guess not.
 
A good friend of mine spent several range trips, a couple hundred rounds of ammo and more than a few headaches sighting in the pistol scope on his Mosin Nagant. He would shoot next to me, trying to sight in as I picked off cans down range until he got too frustrated trying to sight it in and then we would go shoot pistols. (He consistently beats me at clay-smashing and pistol shooting.) so after many attempts on his part I asked to give it a try: I shot three times, measured the group mentally at 50 yards, made an adjustment and got him right on the bull at 50. My buddy had been turning the dials the wrong direction! And he was turning them inconsistently. He would try turning the elevation left, then try right when that didn't work; and he did the same with the horizontal alignment. Idk how he got so lost doing it; he's really a pretty mechanically inclined guy. Once I explained the problem to him he got it and we easily reset his sight-in to 100 yards.

As for myself; I once showed up to a skeet event with only my rifle! Left the shotgun at home in the safe. Doh!
 
Next door neighbors son, good kid, 23 but kind of knows it all. Didn’t belong to any range so last fall he asked to go along shooting with me to sight in his Rem 870 12 gage 3 inch mag shotgun.
He had mounted a 4 to 9 power scope on it. Yea that’s right 4 to 9 on a slug barrel.
I set him up with all my bench bags and told him to set the target up at 25 yards to start out.
“No I want to start out at 100 yards.”
I don’t argue with experts so let him take the target out to 100 yards.
I set the range hot flag up and started shooting. Every now and then I would look over and smile inside. He would fire one and adjust the scope then fire one then adjust the scope again and he was not hitting paper. After 15 or more 3 inch mag he was looking a little frustrated.
He was shooting Federal power shok 1 ¼ oz slugs. The 870 had a pistol grip and an AR type collapsible stock.
I shot it once and that was enough for me.
He finally came over and said those famous words you always hear from self proclaimed gun experts and I know you have heard it too. “Something’s wrong with the gun if wont *******” (Fill in the blank).
So I went over and picked up the gun and sighted it down range and instead of arguing with him I agreed that there had to be something wrong with the gun.
“Let's remove the barrel and reinstall it on the gun, there might be something wrong with the way the barrel is mounted and lets bring the target back to the 25 yard range and give it a try”.
Guess what, resetting the barrel fixed the gun, it started hitting paper,,, at 25 yards and was only a foot and a half off center!
Shot great at 25, sighted in then worked at 50 and a couple at 100. He shot a total of 25 rounds of that stuff. Now he thinks I’m a gun smith.:rolleyes:
I’m NOT!
 
some people.....

Well, I have done some of those things, but not all...I have standards you see.
After going through several sighting in evolutions, I read about an interesting little method for sighting in with only a couple of shots. Assuming this: the knobs are right and turned in the proper direction, the scope is mounted firmly and anything else that might throw things off is not present.
So, set the windage and elevation on 0, and for a rifle that you expect to be fired at 100 to 200 yds, make one very careful shot aiming at the center of the target at 28 yds on a solid set of bags.
Then aim with the crosshairs on the center of the target (the original aimpoint) and with the rifle held firmly on the bags, ask a buddy to rotate the knobs so that the crosshairs recenter on the bullet hole in the target.

This should get you on the paper at 100yds with a hint of what you need to do with the adjustments.
 
I mounted a new red dot on my Brand new AR build.... took it to the range and it was almost perfect from the get go. After just a few groups I thought it was good to go but I decided to shoot one more group... they were drifting high right! Next group after adjusting they were drifting high left! This went on for another couple of groups, adjustments before I had finally had enough. I reached up to turn the red dot off, and the entire mount wiggled back and forth. Apparently someone forgot to put loctite on the mount screws!
 
A friend of mine asked what rifle he should buy for his first rifle.
I suggested a 22 bolt action Marlin XT something rather.
He brought it, and was pretty excited.

I had a few messages a week later saying he couldn't sight it in.
He said he kept adjusting the scope but it did nothing, until eventually the windage adjustment came so tight, he used pliers to try adjusting it.
I was a bit confused by this, and felt bad for recommending this dude rifle and scope package. But I organised to come over and check it out for him.

When I went to check it out, I found the windage cap incredibly tight and big gouge marks on it. I asked him what happened and he said that way from the pliers. So after getting my own pliers to remove the cap he was surprised to see that the adjustment was actually under the cap. After a 20 shots and 10 minute I had it shooting bang on.
 
Yea, cleaning my ruger Mk III. Put it back together and I could not pull the bolt back or take it apart. It was froze! Had to take it to a gunsmith who got it unstuck for me.(chuckling the whole time, must have remembered something funny).
 
Yea, cleaning my ruger Mk III. Put it back together and I could not pull the bolt back or take it apart. It was froze! Had to take it to a gunsmith who got it unstuck for me.(chuckling the whole time, must have remembered something funny).
Click to expand...

He was chuckling because the Ruger Mark III is a secret jobs work program for gunsmith. Everytime one gets taken apart, a gunsmith gets richer.
 
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